Copy ShortURL 1.2 now with more awesomeness
Last week, I secretly released version 1.2 of my Copy ShortURL add-on. It contains a lot of improvements based on your feedback! Here’s the 411 on the new features and how to use them:
is.gd is the new default
I switched to is.gd (from tinyurl) as the default shortening service. I am affiliated with neither of them, but I though the point of short URLs is, well, being short. So is.gd wins on that front. If you don’t like that, don’t fret, because…:
You can pick your own short URL service now
If you have a short URL service that you like more than the default, you can pick your own now. Instructions are in the README file on github (towards the bottom). By setting the preference extensions.copyshorturl.serviceURL in about:config, you can for example use tinyurl, bit.ly (requires an API key) and lots of other URL shorteners. If you have additional service URLs to share with the class, please leave a comment!
Notifications
Initially, there was no way to tell if the add-on had already done its job, except for checking your clipboard contents (hint, if in doubt, yes, it worked). So I added unobtrusive Growl notifications for platforms that support it. For example:
If you don’t have Growl, a Firefox notification bar is shown instead:
Finally, Copy ShortURL is now compatible with Firefox versions 3.6 to 4.0b5pre.
Hope you like it, and feel free to leave a comment here or file issues on github if anything is not working as expected.
I love this add-on, but would prefer to use goo.gl (reasons below) — can’t find docs for it, though. :[
http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/17/url-shorteners-speed/
Coincidentally, Sean, when I came up with the example URLs I was looking for goo.gl as well, but all I could find was a third-party app that claimed to generate goo.gl addresses but it was down. So, if you stumble across docs for that sometime, I’d gratefully include it in the list. Sometime down the road, I could also make an options dialog where you can just pick, but we’ll see.
goo.gl reads:
“Google URL Shortener is currently available for Google products and not for broader consumer use.”
Have I mentioned how awesome this add-on is? It’s awesome, AWESOME I tell you! (I get overly excited by ridiculously simple things that I end up using all the time).
Glad you like it, Mossop! Did you get it to work with bit.ly?
Being able to switch between “Notification alerts/In-browser notification bar/None of the above” would be sweet. (Doesn’t really need GUI, about:config would be enough.)
Thanks a bunch! Really neat stuff.
Fredrik: Thanks for the comment! I agree, a switch would come in handy. In fact, I myself might even like the notification bar better than Growl, and currently it only uses the bar if Growl is unavailable. I’ll probably add a simple 0/1/2 option to about:config in the next version.
If you’d rather use the j.mp version of bit.ly:
http://api.j.mp/v3/shorten?format=txt&login=&apiKey=&longUrl=%URL%
Thanks, James! I added that to the docs.