appdb feature request: hide the ugly urls

[Dan Kegel]

On Feb 17, 2008 4:13 PM, Dan Kegel <dank at kegel.com> wrote:
>> People need to be able to guess the URL.
>> We should be able to look up 'adobe-premiere' and get '128'.
>> So maybe http://appdb.winehq.org/app/adobe-premiere.html
>
> I don't think that would work all that well.
> As-is AppDB having all sorts of problem with it's search function.
> You want to break all the links as well?

No, of course not.  All the existing URLs should remain valid.

> How about games with a huge long name?
> Like "Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars 1.x".

http://appdb.winehq.org/app/command-conquer-3-tiberium-wars/
doesn't sound too bad, actually.  And if somebody types in
an ambiguous URL, like
http://appdb.winehq.org/app/command-conquer
they should get a list of matching apps.  So this is kind of
like a search function rather than a unique ID.
The difference being that apps would normally be
displayed at their shortest unique human-readable URL
rather than by ID #.
This may have an obscure but important benefit: I
read on the web somewhere that it boosts search engine rankings.
(Not that I'd know; I'm way away from that part of google.)
- Dan