URLs should be masked by anchor text

I just started trying out Flexinode and love it, but the URL fields have problems. I found a patch for duplicate "http://" text which I'll try soon.

A deeper problem is that Flexinode seems to require that the full URL is displayed on the screen. This long string of characters can really mess up page formatting, and people should never be forced to look at full URLs anyway.

Here's my example. I want to let users link to a map. So far I get something like this:

Maps and directions:
maps.google.com/maps?...*an extremely long link!*

I'd prefer to just have "Maps and directions" as the anchor text of the link in traditional hypertext style, so the user just sees:

Maps and directions

Of course geographical maps aren't the only cause of long URLs, and long URLs aren't the only reason for this change. It's more of a user interface issue.

I'll be working on this if anyone's interested, but I'd like to hear from anyone who has done this already, of course.