About

The Text2Link Firefox and Thunderbird extension makes it easy to open URLs and send emails to addresses not marked up as HTML links with the a tag (<a href="..."> ... </a>). For example, to open the following URL, one has to select, copy and paste the text into the address bar:

  • http://www.google.com/

To send an email to the following address, one has to select, copy and paste the text into the compose window of an email program:

  • Send an email to text2link@jeffreyjmorgan.com.

Sending an email is even more complicated when the address is written in the following format:

  • Send an email to text2link AT jeffreyjmorgan DOT com

In these situations, the Text2Link Firefox extension comes to the rescue.

URLs

After selecting a URL and right-clicking the mouse, Text2Link displays the following three context-menu options:

  • Open URL
  • Open URL in New Tab
  • Open URL in New Window

These options only appear in the context menu when the selection contains a URL.

Can’t be bothered to select the URL within a line? Triple-click to select the whole line and Text2Link will identify the URL.

Text2Link can identify the URL in a range of selections. For example, here are four URLs presented in plain text:

  • http://jeffreyjmorgan.com/text2link/
  • jeffreyjmorgan.com/text2link/
  • https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
  • Text2Link lives at http://jeffreyjmorgan.com/text2link/.

Text2Link will identify the links in the following selections:

  • http://jeffreyjmorgan.com/text2link/
  • http://jeffreyjmorgan.com/text2link/
  • jeffreyjmorgan.com/text2link/
  • https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
  • Text2Link lives at http://jeffreyjmorgan.com/text2link/.

Text2Link can also identify links with ** in the protocol name:

  • h**p://
  • h**ps://

The following example shows the context menu displayed after right-clicking a selected URL.

Opening a selected URL with Text2Link

I often want to visit the website that hosts an image I have found with Google’s image search. However, the URL under the image is not marked up as a link. With Text2Link, I can triple-click to select the URL and then right-click to open the website in the current page, a new tab or a new window, as shown in the following example.

Opening the URL of the website that hosts an image found with Google's image search

Email Addresses

After selecting an email address and right-clicking the mouse, Text2Link displays the following context-menu option:

  • Send Email

This option only appears in the context menu when the selection contains an email address.

Text2Link will identify the email addresses in the following selections:

  • text2link@jeffreyjmorgan.com
  • Send an email to text2link@jeffreyjmorgan.com.

Text2Link can also identify email addresses that substitute DOT for . and AT for @, such as the email addresses in the following selections:

  • text2link AT jeffreyjmorgan DOT com
  • Send an email to text2link AT jeffreyjmorgan DOT com.

The following example shows the context menu displayed after right-clicking a selected email address.

Sending an email with Text2Link

Link Text

Right-clicking on a regular, marked-up link adds a Copy Link Text option to the context menu. Invoking this option copies the text users click on (rather than the link location) onto the clipboard. The Copy Link Text option is placed above Firefox’s Copy Link Location option.

The following example shows the Copy Link Text context menu option displayed after right-clicking a regular, marked-up link.

Copying link text with Text2Link

In this example, invoking the Copy Link Text option will copy usability metrics onto the clipboard.