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Firefox Ubiquity Command : fyi

Sunday, August 31, 2008

I have just created a new Firefox Ubiquity plugin command named “fyi”. The command makes it super simple to email info about a web page to anyone.

I wrote the command because I am often finding myself forwarding URLs to friends and co-workers. This is normally much more tedious than it needs to be, involving the following steps:

  1. Copy the URL from the browser
  2. Switch to mail client
  3. Create new Email
  4. Paste URL into the email body
  5. Switch back to the browser
  6. Copy the post title
  7. Switch back to email
  8. Paste the title as the subject
  9. Switch back to the browser
  10. Copy a snippet from the page
  11. Switch back to the email
  12. Paste in the snippet
  13. Enter the TO email address
  14. Finally send the email

Phew…

Well, no more. By using the “fyi” command, you can quickly and easily forward information about a page to anyone.

Install:

Press the “Subscribe” button that appears at the top of the page. (You must be running in Firefox, and have the Ubiquity plugin installed).

Usage:

fyi [to_email]

Open the Ubiquity command window and type:

fyi

and hit enter. This will open your default email program and create a new email with the current page title set as the email’s subject, and the current page url / location included in the email’s body.

The command optionally takes 1 argument, which includes one or more email addresses, separated by commas. The email address(es) will be placed in the TO field of the generated email.

If any text on the page is selected, then the selected text will also be included within the body of the generated email.

Requirements:

Note, the command has only been tested with Ubiquity 0.5.0 on Mac with Mac Mail. Please post results with other operating systems, and email programs in the comments.

Version History:

Version .90 (July 13, 2009)

Version .87 (September 1, 2008)

Version .86 (September 1, 2008)

Version .85 (August 31, 2008)

Known Issues:

License:

MIT

Source:

View Source

Post any bugs, questions, comments or suggestions in the comments.

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