urls
SwiftPreview Automatically Previews Links When You Hover Over Them
Chrome: If you want to quickly glance at a link within a news article but don't want to click on it, SwiftPreview is a simple way to do it. When you hover over a link, SwiftPreview shows a graphic preview of the page linked, and the extension is fully customizable so you can keep it from being annoying. More »
YouTube Link Title Tells You Where YouTube Links Lead, Lets You Watch Them Without Leaving the Current Page
Chrome/Firefox/Safari (User Script): If you're like me, you probably avoid most YouTube links because you don't know what's on the other end, and you don't want to waste time finding out. User script YouTube Link Title saves you from NSFW videos, rickrolls, and things that just aren't worth your time by warning you what's on the other side. More »
Google Introduces an Official URL Shortener for Google Pages Only
For awhile, Google's been using their own goo.gl shortener to compress long links, but as of today they'll be using a different shortener, g.co. However, the goal behind g.co is not to provide another URL shortener for you to create short links. Instead, it's a service that only Google can use to shorten links to their own pages—that way, when you see a g.co link, you know that it's coming from a trusted source and you can click on it. For your own links, you can still use Goo.gl, but just know that when you see a g.co link around the internet, it's coming straight from Google and is safe to click on. [Official Google Blog] More »
Set Bookmarks to Open in a New Tab [URL Hacks]
If you have a few sites that you visit particularly often but you want them to open up in a new tab every time you visit them, reader Java-Princess shows us how to make them do so.
How to Move Up One URL Level in Chrome and Firefox [Downloads]
Chrome/Firefox: Ever been reading a site and wish not to go back to the last page you visited, but the last page in that web site's hierarchy?
Goo.gl URL Shortener Is a One-Click URL Shortener and QR Code Creator for Chrome
Chrome: The Goo.gl URL Shortener Extension adds a button to your Chrome toolbar that brings one-click URL shortening via Google's super-speedy and reliable URL shortener, goo.gl. More »
Handy Extension Puts Right-Click Image Properties Back in Chrome (Kind Of)
Chrome only: One of the many things new users learn about Chrome, fairly quickly, is that right-clicking on images doesn't offer a "Properties" option. Get back your simple image information window with the Image Properties Context Menu extension. More »
FastestChrome Soups Up Search, Auto-Loads Pages [Downloads]
Chrome is a terrific browser on its own, but FastestChrome makes it even better. It adds extra search options to the Omnibar, creates "endless scrolling" for multi-page articles, fixes text-only URLs, and tunes up other Chrome features.
FastestChrome gives search a big boost, adding other search engines, displaying related articles from Wikipedia, and even showing related results from Amazon at the top of your Google results page. Highlight text on a page, and a customizable bubble pops up to let you search that string of text in Google, Delicious, and even Twitter. FastestChrome also turns text URLs into links, making navigation a lot quicker.
Options are easily turned on and off by clicking the extension's settings button in your toolbar. Once you've checked out FasterChrome, have a look at 18 other extensions we think are worth downloading (and, hey, maybe 13 more?).
Have a favorite Chrome extension of your own? Tell us about it in the comments.
Create Goo.gl Shortlinks Without the Google Toolbar
Geez, Google really wants you to install its toolbar, right? They usually introduce new web features, like their goo.gl URL shortener, into it first, leaving developers to figure out non-toolbar executions. Luckily, a webapp and Chrome extension are on it.
Digital Inspiration points us toward both a webapp that spits out a goo.gl URL in one click, after pasting in a full URL first (don't forget the http:// bit, or you'll get an empty result). If that's a bit too much work for tossed-off links, and you're a Chrome user, you can install the goo.gl shortener extension and do your link shortening with a toolbar button.
The appeal of goo.gl-shortened links is their theoretical longevity, but, at the moment, they lack the statistics and tracking that makes the de facto standard, bit.ly, widely appealing. We'll see what improvements come along, but for now, you can grab Google's server re-direction benefits without having to keep their toolbar installed.