Is there a Firefox extension for copying the details of the page I am on?

June 15, 2008 3:06 AM

Is there a Firefox (3) extension that will copy to the clipboard a HTML formatted link of the page I am currently on? The Copy Link Text will copy a link to another page, but not for the page itself. I would like to be on the website I want to link to, and have a link copied to the clipboard in the format <a href="PAGE URL" title="PAGE TITLE">Link</a>. Thanks.
posted by chorltonmeateater to computers & internet (11 comments total)

If you drag the mouse to select the text of the URL, then right-click and 'view selection source', you'll get a window where what you want should be selected, then just 'edit|copy' and that will put it into the clipboard. It's a few steps, but just wanted to put it out there as an option.
posted by hungrysquirrels at 3:46 AM on June 15

CoLT will do this I think.
posted by gergtreble at 3:49 AM on June 15

CoLT will only the text of a hyperlink, but this isn't what I'm after (sorry, I don't think I explained myself very well). I don't want to get the details of a link to another page copied to the clipboard, I want the details of the page that I am currently viewing.
posted by chorltonmeateater at 6:01 AM on June 15

If you are in Internet Explorer, click Page, then View Source. This opens Notepad with a file that contains the HTML code for the web page you are currently reading. Now just save it. I think this is what you are after.
posted by retiree at 6:13 AM on June 15

@retiree: thanks, but I was looking for a more elegant solution than that. I just want to be able to click one option and then have a link to the page I'm on formatted ready for pasting into a blog post, with an easier way of having the page's title in there other then opening the source to copy it.
posted by chorltonmeateater at 6:50 AM on June 15

I think this will do what you want.
posted by davar at 6:55 AM on June 15

Davar, your link was broken. It was just a typo. Fixed.
posted by sharkfu at 7:00 AM on June 15

Thanks davar, but it doesn't seem to work with Firefox 3. I could probably change the max version number to get it working (although it doesn't seem to have been updated since the days of Firefox 1.5). I'll give it a go!
posted by chorltonmeateater at 7:17 AM on June 15

Make Link does exactly what you want, and it supports FF3 without hacking it.

It will also do ForumCode, Markdown, or any other format you care to specify. It will make a link to the current page just as you've described, or copy a link from the page, or make a link to the current page with the selected text as the link text. Very flexible, but still very easy to use.

Disclosure: I wrote Make Link.
posted by roryparle at 7:51 AM on June 15 [2 favorites]

If you're willing to cut and paste it yourself, you could easily write a GreaseMonkey script that wrote the code that you want at the top of the page. Or you could simply make a bookmarklet that generated the code you wanted and displayed it in a prompt() dialog. There are also ways to make the clipboard available to JavaScript (although unfortunately it looks like this is on a per-website basis, which is probably something you don't want).
posted by Deathalicious at 7:52 AM on June 15

@roryparle: Brilliant! That is exactly what I was after, even if I couldn't say so in a simple way. Thanks for the recommendation. Oh, and making the thing!
posted by chorltonmeateater at 8:55 AM on June 15