I think I'm in favor of Mick's suggestion for adding the URL after the Blue Clicky Thing, for lots of reasons.

One, I'm a very conservative User of Computers (just ask Roger in Baltimore, who keeps trying to get us to upgrade our hardware from steam-driven to the new early-20th-century AA-battery-powered model!) and I don't WANT to save threads as HTML. I was a computer analyst for 28 years and employers and clients were constantly asking me to learn a new piece of software in a backbreakingly short time frame. I HATE learning new software. Then too, we have been really broke since my original heart problems got disabling, and we can't buy software. Period. [Correction -- we did buy virus detection software this week, after four weeks without being able to use Windows.] We still use Write for our word processor, because it's too expensive to buy MSWord or Word Perfect. And when I really want to remember what's in a thread, I copy it into Write, along with whatever song, etc it's referring to. Sometimes I even *print* it, horror of horrors! (Before roasting my fresh-skinned antelope over an open fire, wrapping myself in untanned furs, and going to sleep in the back of the cave.) And I can well see how useful it would be to have URL's embedded, in clear text, right there in front of me. I've wished for it sometimes. (Especially now that Max has upgraded the site to the point where my old computer can't manage a Forum search.) But usually my strategy is to clicky on the blue thing, right away, and bookmark the site if I like it, then return to the thread.

Anyway, it would be useful to know if adding the URL's would be really useful to anyone besides Mick.

Second, it doesn't hurt anything. Joe, I feel it's easy enough to slip a URL into the text gracefully, so it doesn't hurt the flow of the thread.

The question is, does anyone besides Mick need it or want it? If not, people who add links could still include the URL as a courtesy to Mick if they want to, but, Mick, I can't see it becoming a standard.

Please note -- I woke up at four and couldn't get back to sleep, so maybe sound a teensy bit grumpier than usual? Sorry. - Rita Ferrara