Web Browser Wednesday
Could you imagine going through a day of using your computer without being able to copy and paste stuff? I know, it sounds crazy! Being able to copy and paste saves me unbelievable amounts of time every day, and I have a huge appreciation for the copy/paste keyboard shortcuts.
With the help of some Firefox extensions we’re going to demonstrate how something as simple as copying and pasting can be taken to a new level! I’m sure you’ll find at least one or two extensions that can make you more productive. Here are our top 10 Firefox extensions for copying and pasting:
- CoLT (Homepage)
Do you find yourself copying and pasting hyperlinks into forums or sites that require specially formatted links? This extension will take care of that problem by copying the selected link into any format that you designate, and if it doesn’t include what you need out-of-the-box you can always add your own.
- Paste and Go (Homepage)
Imagine for a minute that you have copied some text or a URL from within your browser. What do you plan on doing with it now? Maybe you’ll paste the URL into the Address Bar to open it up, or maybe you’ll paste the text into the search box to pull up the search results? Paste and Go simplifies the process of doing either task with a simple context menu entry or buttons that you can add to the toolbar. With it you’ll be able to paste a URL and go to it, or paste some text and perform a search all with a single click!
- PasteIP (Homepage)
How often do you go hunting around for your current IP address? Let Firefox do the work for you with this simple extension. Whenever you decide that you want to insert your IP address just right-click in the text field and select the “Paste IP Address” option.
- Copy All URL’s (Homepage)
With this extension you’re able to copy all of your open tabs to the clipboard, and then paste them into a new window. It also has some more advanced options that make sharing your open tabs with other people a little more convenient. Take a look at the options to see the different ways that you can format the output.
- Table2Clipboard (Homepage)
If you’ve ever tried to copy and paste a table from the browser into Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice Calc you may have noticed that things do not copy over as well as they should. This extension aims to ease the tedious burden of reformatting an HTML table to look right in a desktop application such as Excel. Just highlight the cells that you want to copy, and in the context menu there is a new “Copy table elements” option that will take care of the formatting for you. Then go ahead and paste them into the application just as you normally would.
- Extended Copy Menu (Homepage)
You’re probably familiar with copying content from Firefox and pasting it into a word processor. All of the formatting and everything is typically carried over, but with this extension you’ll be able to specify whether you want the text copied as “plain text.” Not only that but you’ll also be able to grab the underlying HTML using the “Copy as HTML” option in the context menu:
- Lorem2Clipboard (Homepage)
You can never get enough Lorem Ipsum text, can you? This extension will let you quickly copy a few paragraphs of Lorem Ipsum text to the clipboard so that you can use it in any way you desire. All you have to do is click the button located in the Status Bar to have it automatically copied to the clipboard:
- Auto Copy (Homepage)
This is an extremely simple extension that serves a valuable purpose for a lot of people. The Auto Copy extension, as the name implies, will take any text that you highlight and copy it to the clipboard automatically. No right clicks and no keyboard shortcuts… it’s automatic baby! - Copy Links (Homepage)
I’m sure it’s happened to you before where you’ve wanted to copy several different hyperlinks that appear in a body of text. With Copy Links you can actually do that. Just select a body of text and hit up the respective option in the context menu.
- Copy/Paste Form (Homepage)
Note: This is an experimental add-on and will require that you login before being able to install it.Have you ever gotten burned out of filling in the same form one after another? Copy/Paste Form will let you copy every field from a given form, and paste it directly into another form! Or even better… save the form and paste the content back in later on. It supports text fields, passwords, selections, checkboxes, and radio buttons.
Now I know that not every one of those extensions will apply to you, but hopefully there are a few that sound like they could be helpful. Copying and pasting content has always been about being more productive, and many of these extensions assist in that area. Let us know in the comments how you make the most of copying and pasting.
Great post Ryan – I have often wanted some of this functionality (especially paste&go and extended), but always so infrequently that I never bothered to hunt for them, even though I knew they must have existed.
This kind of article is exactly why I subscribe to Cyber – especially since you go through so much effort to screenshot everything – it makes a huge difference, and as a blogger I know what a pain it can be.
I hate to sound like an ad, but CyberNetNews probably has the best signal:noise ratio of any of the dozens of blogs I read daily.
Ryan, you have made an excellent research on this topic. Copy/paste really enhances your productivity over the Internet. For about a week, I’ve been using Auto Copy in both Mozilla Firefox and Flock and the results are outstanding.
I’ll be testing your other suggestions and see which ones work best for me.
Thanks a lot.
Ryan, great job as usual. Almost everyone will find at least one of these useful. Personally I’ve installed two.
However, what I didn’t find is a copy/paste to use when the article includes an IMAGE. The image doesn’t want to paste – just a placeholder. The text makes it, but not the image.
Thanks
We’ve quickly found how much value a screenshot adds to a post, and that’s why we always try to include them. Both Ashley and myself really appreciate your kind words!
That’s actually one of my favorite extensions out of the ones that I listed. I don’t highlight text too often, and when I do 95% of the time it is to copy it into another application.
Does that happen from every site you try to copy and paste from? The image should be copied without any trouble, and so I’m not exactly sure where the problem might lie.
For images, it would be worth looking at free-standing program EverNote, which can be integrated with most browsers. It’s a little on the *large* side… but works well.
I used PasteIP when it was new and mostly for the “Paste User_Agent”. I moderate at three forums, two being quick enough to see what IP am using and past IP’s to not need the Paste IP feature. I used Nightly Tester Tools which has the option of the putting Build ID in text boxes.
Since I use Firefox on Linux, the clipboard is much more reliable than say WinXP (takes 2-3 or more tries to copy new clipboard sometimes) and the default is to paste clipboard contents with middle-click is useful. The Linux version also does what “Auto Copy” does by default, just highlight and middle-click to paste say in a text box. I think you can enable one or both of these features in Windows version, though I do not have the preferences at moment.
Huh, didn’t know that. I searched around for any possible preferences, but didn’t see anything.
clipboard.autocopy
This is unix only as it does not work on either Mac or Windows at moment.
[kb.mozillazine.org]
Darn, was hoping that it would be cross-platform. Thanks for hunting that down though.
Paste&Go in Opera (built in, no extension needed):
Paste and go in current or new tab Ctrl + B
Paste and go in background tab Ctrl + Shift + B
(Changed in current Opera 9.5 beta to Ctrl+Shift+V)
As far as I understood Copy/Paste Form: in Opera it is possible to copy (any) selected text to a note and to insert the content of a note in any form – I’m pretty convinced the FF extension will do somewhat more.