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Auto Copy and Copy Plain Text: Monday Firefox add-on double-feature
These Firefox extensions are great for the type of person who is constantly copying and pasting while in Firefox, perfect for bloggers. The first one is Auto Copy.
Auto Copy is a great extension that makes copying and pasting anything mere child's play. If you wish to copy something, all you need to do is highlight the text that you wish to copy. And that's it! What you just highlighted is now on your clipboard awaiting the paste command. The part I love the most about Auto Copy is its built-in paste shortcut key functionality that uses the mouse wheel. Those who use Linux know what I'm talking about. All you need to do is press the mouse wheel down while hovering over the area that you wish to paste to.
One thing that you might notice about Auto Copy while using it is that it will also copy the formatting that is with the text that you are trying to copy. For example, if you are copying some text from the header of a website, that has over-sized bold text that is several different colors, it will bring the size, boldness and color along with it. This may not show up when pasting into a small text field, like a Google search, but it will show up if you are posting to a rich text field, like a blog post. To get around this, all you need is the Copy Plain Text extension.
With Copy Plain Text and Auto Copy together in action, you are ready to copy anything and paste it anywhere, in Firefox that is. Auto Copy also has built-in support for Copy Plain Text. All you have to do is check the box for it in the Auto Copy options. And there is also a shortcut to Auto Copy in the Firefox status bar. If you do not want something copied to the clipboard you just need to click on the small image of a note pad (shown above with a green check mark on it). When the green check mark turn into a red X, and Auto Copy is off.
Comments
4
Subscribe to commentsClaus ValcaFeb 5th 2007 10:32AM
I just knew (since you mentioned how these Add-ons would benefit bloggers, that you would be mentioning CoLT as well:
CoLT: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1812/
Quoting:
CoLT adds two menu items to the browser's context menu, both of which are only visible when right-clicking a hyperlink. The "Copy Link Text" menu item copies a hyperlink's associated text to the clipboard, while the "Copy Link Text and Location" menu item copies both the hyperlink's text and URL to the clipboard in the format you choose: either as plain text, as an HTML hyperlink, or as a custom format (which you may specify). A very handy tool for blogs!
This tool along with Copy as Plain Text has really enhanced my blogging, and even more specifically, my ability to quickly add HTML formatted links to comment boxes!
Check it out!
I also used Copy URL+ a lot as well but it doesn't appear to be updated for Firefox 2.0+.
http://copyurlplus.mozdev.org/
I've got it working with the Nightly Developer Tools, but I don't think it is working perfectly that way.
It is similar to CoLT but gives additional and custom HTML link code formattings as well.
FYI.
Ryan SullivanFeb 5th 2007 11:47AM
Thanks for the info Claus! I'll definitly be checking out CoLT. As for Copy URL+, I have tried that with FF 2.0, I had to hack it a bit to get it to work though. It's functionality is actually already a part of FF 2.0.
In 2.0, if you want to copy a url, you just need to right-click on the url in the address bar and then click on copy. When you do this it will automatically highlight the entire url, so there is no need to manually highlight the entire url. I found this a bit easier to do instead of right-clicking and then finding the "Copy URL" text in the shortcut menu. When you have a bunch of extensions in FF, your right-click shortcut menu tends to get pretty busy.
Thanks for the suggestions!
datterFeb 5th 2007 1:04PM
"Auto Copy is a great extension that makes copying and pasting anything mere child's play."
Well now, it's not like hitting control-C and control-V is particularly taxing exercise. :)
datter
BillyGFeb 6th 2007 2:10PM
I use the two you mention too, they're awesome!
For plain text URLs, I use need Text Link: double-click on the text and it opens up (in a new, focused tab for me)!
IE users have no idea!