Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on July 04, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

URL’s make the Web go round, and depending on how easy or hard they are to remember can make a huge difference as to whether someone will return to a site or not. So it makes sense that URL’s and links are a good item to target when trying to make yourself more productive.

To get us started, I thought I would roll out some interesting stats that you may not know regarding the length of URL’s. Have you ever tried to see how many characters your browser would support in a URL? It’s fine if you didn’t, because one guy did and this was the result:

• Internet Explorer: The longest URL that’s supported is 2,083 characters
• Firefox: The longest URL that’s supported is 100,000+ although it stopped showing the characters in the address bar after 65,536 characters.
• Safari: The longest URL that’s supported is 80,000+ characters.
• Opera: The longest URL that’s supported is 190,000+ characters, where the author noted that in Opera 9 the URL was still “fully editable, copyable and pasteable” even at 190,000 characters.

So today I want to present some Firefox extensions that will make your life easier when trying to copy or manipulate URL’s and links. Here we go…

–Ones You Probably Know About–

The first thing that I want to point are the extensions that you probably already know about or ones that we have already written about. I decided not to count these against the 10, but thought I would point them out anyways:

1. Locationbar² (Homepage)
   This extension has become very popular because it makes the actual domain stand out in the address bar, as well as make different parts of the URL clickable similar to a breadcrumb trail. It was even nominated as a feature that should be included with Firefox 3.
   
2. Linkification (Homepage)
   Makes text links clickable that aren’t otherwise clickable. For example, someone pastes a hyperlink in a forum and it isn’t clickable since they didn’t use the proper code…Linkification will make that link clickable.
3. Link Alert (Homepage)
   When you hover over a hyperlink there will be a little icon showing you what type of file it is, or whether the link will open in a new window.
   
4. Snap Links (Homepage / Our Review)
   Lets you draw a box around a group of links and have them all open. It’s really nice when reading news, and is very configurable.
   
5. iReader (Homepage / Our Review)
   Shows a text-based preview of the the site being linked to. It’s similar to the Snap Previews that show the thumbnails, but this is purely text.
   
6. Next Please (Homepage / Our Review)
   This adds buttons to Firefox that are similar to Opera’s Fast Forward and Rewind. These are especially useful when going through search result pages where clicking the button will take you to the next results page.
   

–Address Bar–

The Address Bar is undoubtedly the most popular location for a URL to reside, so here are some extensions specific to the Address Bar:

1. Tab URL Copier (Homepage)
   Ever have a bunch of URL’s that you want to send to someone? With this extension you can copy the URL’s of all open tabs to the clipboard.
   
2. New TabURL (Homepage)
   This extension isn’t unique because it lets you pick the homepage for all new tabs that you create. Instead it is unique because you can adjust the settings so that it will load the URL that’s on the clipboard when you open a new tab.
   
3. URL Fixer (Homepage)
   Automatically fixes the errors you make when typing in a URL, such as “.con” instead of “.com”. You can set it up so that it notifies you before making any corrections to the URL.
   
4. MyURLBar_a (Homepage)
   Adds search-by-name capabilities to the address bar, so that you can type the name of the site you want to visit. It will search both your bookmarks and browsing history, with the bookmark results being placed on top.
   

–Hyperlinks–

Hyperlinks are an amazing tool, and with them we can navigate the Web faster. There’s always room for optimization though.

1. TinyURL Creator (Homepage)
   Makes a TinyURL of the site you’re currently on through the use of the right-click menu.
   
2. LinkChecker (Homepage)
   Checks to see whether the links on a page are valid, and highlights them accordingly.
   
3. Super DragAndGo (Homepage)
   Dragging a hyperlink and dropping it anywhere on the current page will open it up in a new tab. It’s essentially the same thing as holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on the link, but Super DragAndGo makes it a one-handed operation.
4. CoLT (Homepage)
   Let’s you copy a hyperlink into a specialized format. For example, you can copy a hyperlink into a format that makes it ready to be inserted into a forum. It even lets you create all of your own formats.
   
5. All Your Maps Belong To Us (Homepage)
   Translates URL’s to other mapping sites into a Google Maps link. It tries to avoid translating unsupported URL’s and seems to do a fairly good job.

And Last, but Not Least…

I came across one extension on my journey that did something I had never heard about. The extension is called Mobile Barcoder and it creates a 2D barcode (also known as QR Codes) that can be scanned using certain cellphones. By having these barcodes you could quickly scan a URL into your phone so that you didn’t have to type it in.

As of right now this feature is found mostly on Japanese phones, but if you have a phone that supports it, this barcode should take you to our homepage :

–Overview–

So there you have it…URL madness! I’m sure there are a lot more useful extensions for managing and manipulating URL’s, so hit us up in the comments below with related extensions!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

CyberNotes: What Are Your Favorite Firefox ExtensionsYour Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryYour Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryWhat do you want your Firefox to do?The Ultimate Firefox Test: Installing Over 100 Extensions

So Opera Mini for iPhone has proved to be kind of a big deal, and that HTML-laden beacon of hope is putting a twinkle in some other developers’ eyes. Take Skyfire, for instance. CEO Jeff Glueck posted this week a congratulations to the Opera team for its inclusion in the iTunes app store — a surprise to many, us included. He also explained that “this will certainly accelerate our strategy on iDevices,” and seeing as its only product is a mobile browser with Flash and Silverlight, Jeff certainly has our attention here. That said, we’re not exactly getting our hopes up, especially since the App Store’s rules have always forbidden any app from running a code interpreter and we don’t see how SkyFire can bypass that aspect of Flash and Silverlight entirely, even though it uses a server-side rendering model similar to Opera Mini’s. We’ll see what happens.

Skyfire boss on possible iPhone port: ‘stay tuned for news’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Apr 2010 21:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Download Squad  |  Skyfire blog  | Email this | Comments

Admit it, your love for Firefox is tempered by sometimes sluggish performance and a penchant for perennial plugin crashes. Google did what it could with Chrome to isolate such issues by ensuring the entire browser didn’t crash when Flash (or any other add-on, for that matter) went belly up. Now it looks like the gang at Mozilla are adopting a similar tactic, and if you want to try it out for yourself, the Lorentz beta is now available for download. So sayeth the site, “If a plugin crashes or freezes, it will not affect the rest of Firefox. You will be able to reload the page to restart the plugin and try again.” Whodathunk we’d ever feel actual elation at such a proclamation?

Firefox Lorentz beta doesn’t crash entirely when plug-ins get fussy originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 10 Apr 2010 05:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Lifehacker  |  Mozilla  | Email this | Comments

Apple’s big announcement of the day might have been iPhone OS 4, but another reveal that’s gone slightly under the radar might actually turn out to be a bigger deal: WebKit2, which now runs browser elements as separate processes, much like Google Chrome. Actually, Apple’s devs say it goes a little farther than Chrome, since the process model is built into the foundation so other non-Safari clients can use it. That’s pretty wild stuff, considering how prevalent WebKit has become across the mobile space and the fact that Chrome itself uses the rendering engine. No word on when this will all go final, but hey — it’s all open source, and you can actually grab Mac and Windows binaries right now. Let us know how it goes, won’t you?

Apple announces WebKit2 with Chrome-like process splitting originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Daring Fireball  |  WebKit  | Email this | Comments

It’s still not a true Gmail app (sigh), but it’s a step in the right direction, we suppose. Google has today announced that it has released an experimental user interface for the iPad built on the Gmail for mobile HTML5 web app, but unlike the iPhone and Android versions, this one has been retooled a bit to best take advantage of those extra pixels. iPad Gmailers will find a two-pane view with their conversations on the left and messages on the right, and while it’s not exactly revolutionary, it’s certainly better than what we’re being forced to use on existing smartphones (and their comparatively minuscule displays). The company’s openly asking for feedback once your iPad lands, and we couldn’t help but notice that it pointed to the fact that Google is still the default search engine embedded into Safari. Who knows — maybe Steve and Eric really were talking about butterflies and buttercups the other day.

Google tweaks Gmail’s HTML5 web app to better utilize iPad screen space originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Apr 2010 15:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Gartenberg  |  Google Mobile Blog  | Email this | Comments