I recently had a discussion about how annoying I find it when people post a URL, but don't actually make it a hyperlink.

For example:

"Follow this link to stabeler.com".

Is a nice hyperlink. However:

www.stabeler.com

Is a plain text URL which I have to copy and paste into my browser! (requiring far too much effort!), unless i'm using Opera (*or Safari?) which has the "Go to URL" context menu option".

Someone suggested that Firefox uses Javascript to do its widgets/extensions, and as I have been learning Javascript lately, I decided to have a go at a solution to my laziness problem.

Solution:

A (VERY) simple javascript button on the toolbar, that simply gets the selected text, and opens it as a URL.

Drag and drop this onto your toolbar (Firefox) and then test it by selecting a URL and clicking the button.

OpenAsURL

As I said, it's dead simple!! Still involved selecting the text, but one less click :D (Depending where u put it!).