How can I open URLs (not links) in Firefox without C&P.

Factual Questions
1

Can any Firefox Power Users help me out here? I did a little Googling and wasn’t able to turn up anything. Is there a way that FF3 can open a URL in a new tab when that URL isn’t a hyperlink on the web page? Currently FF3 has the ability to highlight a word and within the left-click context menu you can Google the term/phrase, but nothing to open a URL if you highlight it. This seems like an obvious omission and I’m guessing there’s a option or plug-in out there that does this. Thoughts?

http://www.straightdope.com

I want to be able to highlight the link above and open it without having to copy, open a blank tab and paste it in.

2

This is a hijack but K-Meleon can do that, it’s a great browser and like Firefox it’s based on Mozilla.

3

The Firefox add-on Plain Text to Link lets you do exactly what you want.

4

Knew it’d be something simple. Thanks!

5

This isn’t what the OP asked for, but you can highlight the plaintext url with your cursor and drag it to the address bar.

6

That doesn’t open in a new tab, though.

I use the linkification extension. It has a little icon at the bottom of the browser to turn it on for the page I’m viewing, so that it doesn’t go nuts with links I don’t need to have.

7

It does for me. What am I doing differently?

8

Try this

9

I believe rowrrbazzle meant the tab bar, not the address bar. If I select Omniscient’s link and drag it to a blank bit of the tab bar, it spawns a new tab. This is somewhat suboptimal, though, as it requires the tab bar to be visible, which is not always the case.

10

No, I drag it to the address bar and a new tab opens. Although your way works as well.

11

Huh, I never knew about the tab bar thing.

It could be that I’m the one with the unusual settings, re: address bar dragging. I expect some of my extensions may have changed things around occasionally.

12

When I drag it to my address bar it doesn’t open a new tab but instead loads the page in the current one.

Dragging it to the Tab bar works like a charm too. That one never occurred to me.

13

Select the URL by dragging your mouse pointer across it, and then middle-click anywhere in the browser window (except on a link). This works on GNU/Linux; not sure if it will work on Microsoft Windows. If not, try copying the URL into your clipboard (Ctrl+C) and then middle-clicking in the browser window.

(Needless to say, this requires a three-button mouse, or a two-button one configured to emulate a third button when both buttons are clicked simultaneously.)

14

I think the two have FireFox options set differently.
There are settings for opening a link in a new window or new tab, switching to a new tab when opened, etc.

You could probably ask on the FireFox forums, and some expert will explain how to make it work the way you want.

15

Sorry, but anything K-Meleon can do FF can do three times better with knobs on. :slight_smile:

BTW I’m using Firefox 3.5 Beta and I promise you people are going to be just blown away by its speed when it goes official.

16

Actually, the first source of confusion is that I wrote browser Creole. :slight_smile: “Address bar” is what the field is called in IE! I should’ve written “location bar”.

The other source of confusion is that I use Tab Mix Plus and have it set to always open a new tab if I type in a URL, which also happens if I drag the URL up.

But I had no idea it’d work for the tab bar, too! Thanks for pointing that out.