I-Acute (í.is)

A Literal URL Shortener

What if you could shorten URLs by both length and width?

12 chars7 chars

✘ bit.ly/3c5Op1H✓ í.is/ÏIįÎ

107px40px

How short could a URL get?

Short Domain Names

The shortest domain currently possible, length-wise, is 3 characters. 1 for the domain name and 2 for the domain ending (TLD). For example:

nameTLD

g.co

Realistically, all 3 character letter domains are taken. They're heavily desired and picked over by the domain community.

Special Characters

However, some TLDs allow special characters in the name. Special characters are infrequently used and could be our ticket to a short domain.

à á â ä æ ã å ā ç ć č è é ê ë ē ė ę î ï í ī į ì ł ñ ń ô ö ò ó œ ø ō õ ß ś š û ü ù ú ū ÿ ž ź ż

Narrowest Names

The accented i characters are the narrowest. That means that the narrowest available name is likely going to be one of these characters:

î (3.64 pixels)

ï (3.64 pixels)

í (3.64 pixels)

ī (3.64 pixels)

į (3.64 pixels)

ì (3.64 pixels)

Narrowest Letters

In addition to a narrow name, we need a narrow TLD. To figure out which are narrowest, let's measure the letters:

j (3.63 pixels)

i (3.64 pixels)

l (3.73 pixels)

f (5.48 pixels)

t (5.50 pixels)

r (5.78 pixels)

s (8.06 pixels)

x (8.08 pixels)

z (8.31 pixels)

v (8.36 pixels)

k (8.38 pixels)

y (8.38 pixels)

a (8.52 pixels)

c (8.64 pixels)

e (8.83 pixels)

n (9.02 pixels)

u (9.02 pixels)

h (9.10 pixels)

o (9.14 pixels)

g (9.44 pixels)

q (9.44 pixels)

p (9.45 pixels)

b (9.52 pixels)

d (9.52 pixels)

w (12.08 pixels)

m (13.61 pixels)

Narrowest TLDs

Using this letter data we can figure out the narrowest TLDs currently available for public registration. The 12 narrowest are listed below:

TLD	Pixel Width	Special Chars	Available Worldwide	Top Level Unreserved
.li	7.38	✓	✓	✘
.fj	9.11	✓	✓	✘
.fi	9.12	✘	✓	✓
.tj	9.13	✘	✓	✓
.it	9.14	✓	✘	✘
.lt	9.23	✘	✓	✓
.tl	9.23	✘	✓	✓
.ir	9.42	✘	✘	✘
.lr	9.52	✓	✘	✘
.tf	10.98	✓	✘	✓
.fr	11.26	✓	✘	✓
.is	11.70	✓	✓	✓

In addition to being public, the TLD also needs to allow special characters, be available worldwide, and not have 1 character names reserved.

Based on those factors, Iceland's .is appears to be the narrowest viable TLD.

Getting the Domain

Out of the six "i" variants, only í was available under .is. So I registered it.

í.is (19.78 pixels)

That means we now have a base domain that is less than 20 pixels wide.

Making the URL Shortener

URL shorteners are typically in the following format:

bit.ly/3c5Op1H

domainpath

The domain is the base of the URL and the path defines the destination.

For our shortener, we'll want to shorten the path as much as possible.

j (3.63 pixels)

i (3.64 pixels)

l (3.73 pixels)

î (3.64 pixels)

ï (3.64 pixels)

í (3.64 pixels)

ī (3.64 pixels)

į (3.64 pixels)

ì (3.64 pixels)

I (3.97 pixels)

Î (3.97 pixels)

Ï (3.97 pixels)

Í (3.97 pixels)

Ī (3.97 pixels)

Į (3.97 pixels)

Ì (3.97 pixels)

There are 16 characters under 4 pixels we can use for the path: j, i, l, capital i, i's six accented variations, and capital i's six accented variations.

Randomly stringing four of these characters together allows for 16⁴, or 65,536, path combinations. That should be plenty for our shortener.

í.is

So that's the final structure of our length/width-minimized URL shortener:

í.is/ÏIįÎ (39.89 pixels)

We were able to create a shortener that brings URLs to just 7 characters and about 40 pixels, shorter and narrower than the vast majority of URLs.

How to Access í.is

The easiest way is to just click on a link or copy-paste:

í.is

Domains with special characters are encoded by the browser. That means you can also type the encoded equivalent to access í.is:

xn--eda.is

Conclusion

Is it practical? Not really.

Is it cool? Yes.