Anyone know of a Firefox extension that does this?

A lot of times I have a URL on my clipboard or URL (not link, plain text) on a page that I want to open up in a new tab. It would be real convenient to be able to quickly select the text, do some mouse mouse action (right click the text and select option) that will open the URL in a new tab. Do you guys know of anything that will do something like this? I know the mouse gestures will do this if the URL is already a link, but not if it’s just the link text. For instance, I would like something that I could quickly do to this text


www.google.com

that would open up Google into a new tab without copying the text, opening a new tab, then pasting the URL and clicking enter. Something to automate this would be nice.

I am looking into writing my own Firefox extension right now to do this because I don’t know of anything like this that exists. I have a lot of programming experience, I have never written a Firefox extension so it should be interesting.

Plain text to link. By default, it opens the new URL in the same tab, but if you change the options you can get it to do it in a new tab.

Sweet, thanks! I don’t have to write it after all. I may still do it as an academic exercise, but someone has already written a presumably functional and tested extension. I appreciate it.

I can just highlight that text google link, then drag and drop it into the address bar. AFAIK that’s built in to Firefox.

I see you’ve already gotten what you asked for, but in addition you might be interested in this extension: Linkification. It automatically scans for plain text URLs and turns them into clickable links. For instance, the Google URL in the OP for me now looks like a normal link - I can just click it and it takes me to Google. It works with most - though for some reason not all - plain text URLs.

I can too, but it doesn’t open it in a new tab. The linkification extension that Peak Banana posted is what I was looking for.

Thanks everyone!

Good Show… Thanks … I like that one.