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Select links text in Firefox easily

Published: April 26th, 2007
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Has it happened that you need to select some text from a link? It can be a very delicate procedure: you have to carefully look for the end or the beginning of the link, click just next to either of them and then drag until the wanted text is selected. Then you paste it somewhere and remove the unneeded words.

Asa Dotzler brings up an alternative hidden method: press the Alt key while making a selection over the link just like it was regular text.

He has also suggested to improve it mimicking Opera’s behavior that autodetects whether you are trying to drag the link somewhere or making a selection based on the direction of your movement. Of course this doesn’t solve the discoverability problem completely but would be a step forward.

Edit: Due to an ugly bug when you Alt select text within a link it will also save the link to your default location. This is a conflict with another modifier: Alt + click on a link and the target will be saved automatically.

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6 Comments on “Select links text in Firefox easily”

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  1. 1. David Naylor
    April 26th, 2007 at 3:16 pm

    Didn’t you write previously that they have fixed this on the trunk?

    [Reply]

  2. 2. Percy Cabello
    April 26th, 2007 at 8:58 pm

    David, I don’t remember that. The closest that comes to my mind about selections and the trunks is the non continuous selections option (http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2007/04/discontinuous-selections-available-in-firefox-3/) but it doesn’t affect this bug.

    [Reply]

  3. 3. WulfTheSaxon
    April 29th, 2007 at 8:26 pm

    You can select parts of links very easily by positioning your cursor just below the link and selecting as usual.

    [Reply]

  4. 4. Mario
    May 27th, 2008 at 9:14 pm

    The method of WulfTheSaxon is the best. It woks. Thank you.

    [Reply]

  5. 5. SONSiVRi
    July 17th, 2008 at 9:02 am

    I had solution on ALT selection problem:
    http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=3873225#p3873225

    [Reply]

  6. 6. or
    October 28th, 2008 at 7:19 am

    Hi,

    The ALT key doesn’t work on linux, because it is already used to move the window (at least in kde 3.5).

    Any other workaround?

    [Reply]

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