I like seeing URLs, whether in the link text or by hovering over a link. They are often truer to their content than what the person adding the link writes. I always have the status bar turned on in my browsers. It annoys me that there is no status bar on the iPad. It pleases me that Chrome shows URLs without taking up space for a status bar, by fading them in when hovering over a link. But a significant percentage of URLs aren’t worth a whole lot. They are either too long, or contain nothing identifying but numbers.
Some say that URLs will go away. But do they have to? If people still care about them, I don’t think so. That’s why we need URLs worth caring about. Just like we need buildings worth caring about, and neighborhoods worth caring about:
(Yes, I realize that this blog’s urls suck, and don’t have to. I plan to change that soon.)