So true. UI and UX was pretty much figured out around 1999, and the website useit.com (now defunct) by Jakob Neilson and others was the go to for articles and research for web design. How the fuck has it gone downhill since? Fucking bullshit.

Here's one single firefox add-on that displays the full url in a few different ways (href/status bar, mouseover, expanded link): http://www.longurlplease.com/ J

I agree they've become pretty annoying. But, they sound like they're here to stay, and I've found this to be handy: http://www.longurlplease.com/ Firefox extension (and others, I think) that gives you options for these shortened urls. Either expand completely, or in the title attr so you can see it on mouseover, of the href so you can see the full url in the status bar. J