A Consuming Experience: CoLT: copy link text Firefox extension improved

Saturday, 18 February 2006

CoLT: copy link text Firefox extension improved

Jonah Bishop's free CoLT (copy link text) extension for the free Firefox browser, which I've blogged about before, has been upgraded to version 1.1.

The new version now has an option to let you copy both link text and URL if you wish, yay! (How to install Firefox extensions.) Furthermore you can control exactly how you want the link text and location to be copied: as plain text, as HTML code, or in some other way that you can customise.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I find this extension indispensable for speeding up the process of e.g. updating my manual categories or finding the post which a Haloscan trackback (or comment) relates to. These options really ice the cake.

There are full instructions and a screenshot on Jonah's page (scroll down a bit), but I'd just add that the new option isn't ticked by default (which would be my personal preference), you have to turn it on via the extension's options (menu Tools, Extensions, select CoLT, click Options) by ticking Display the 'Copy Link Text and Location' menu item. Then, in the context menu you get when you rightclick on a link in Firefox, as well as the Copy Link Text item you'll also see a Copy Link Text and Location menu item.

Also, what I get for the "Copy as plain text" setting (see below) isn't quite the same as on Jonah's page so maybe he's tweaked it since he wrote those instructions. This is what I get in my clipboard for the different options:

Copy as plain text: A Consuming Experience (http://consumingexperience.blogspot.com/)

Copy as an HTML link: <a href="http://consumingexperience.blogspot.com/">A Consuming Experience</a>

Custom format (filled in, to start with, with the format for posting on bulletin boards/forums as an example): [url=http://consumingexperience.blogspot.com/]A Consuming Experience[/url]

Thanks to Jonah for taking on board my request and more, and for the heads up on the upgrade. Of course, never giving the man any peace, I'd personally like that extra menu item to be there automatically (with an option to turn it off instead of on), and furthermore (being greedy) it would be great to have the plain text, HTML link and custom options available not just in the extension's options, but also from the rightclick context menu.

Updated 10 March 2006: I see Jonah has now enhanced CoLT further, including taking account of my wishlist from this post! From his site (the first new feature is particularly cool) -

A new %N parameter is now available for specifying a new-line in the custom format string.
The plain text format for the "copy both" command has been updated.
The "copy both" option is now enabled by default.
The default format for "copy both" is now HTML rather than plan text.