418241 - Automatically convert non-linked URLs to links

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Camino Graveyard :: Page Layout, enhancement)

Description

[Markus Amalthea Magnuson]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; sv-SE; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12
Build Identifier: 

I am sure there are several downsides to this idea but I thought I'd file it for discussion.

Sometimes I stumble upon URLs in plain text i.e. they are not linked with an a-tag. To visit the URL, I have to copy the text, open a new window/tab, paste the URL and press enter. Of course it would be easier if it was a link in the first place.

Some non-linked URLs are intentional; the author doesn't want it to be a link. But most of them are either unintentional or (which is most common I think) unlinkable. The last is common on for example blog comments and similar, where the users aren't allowed to use HTML or other markup.

So, the suggestion is to automatically convert URL text to actual links.

The toughest argument against this would be that converting the links obscures actual errors on behalf of the page author. I could easily miss unintentionally unlinked URLs if the page renders as if it was linked.

What are your thoughts on this?

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

I think this is a dupe of an old WONTFIX, although I can't find it now.

Note that if you're using tabs, you merely have to drag the text url to a tab/the tab bar/the all tabs button, and we'll open a new tab.

Comment 2

[Stuart Morgan]

I don't see an old bug either, but I do think this is WONTFIX in favor of the bug to add greasemonkey-like support, since this is basically the AutoLink greasemonkey script.

Comment 3

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> I don't see an old bug either, but I do think this is WONTFIX in favor of the
> bug to add greasemonkey-like support

Which is bug 329309.  I suspect this particular use-case can even be handled now on an as-needed basis with a bookmarklet.

Comment 4

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

It appears the system contextual menu, at least on 10.5, is smart enough to do this with things that start with http:// -- just try Cmd-L, then a Control-click in the location bar. I suppose that's an argument for at least including it in the page context menu where appropriate.

cl

Comment 5

[Stuart Morgan]

That's not what this bug is requesting.

Comment 6

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

WONTFIX per comment 1 and comment 2, then, since I agree with them.

Comment 4 should be its own bug if anyone feel strongly enough to file it.