software to drag & drop multiple links & automatically translate the links into urls?

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by studentguru2, Nov 17, 2006.

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  1. studentguru2

    studentguru2 Registered Member

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    Is there a software or utility that when I use the mouse to highlight to drag and drop multiple links (e.g. a list of blogs a blogger links to from his or her website ) , this software will automatically translate the list of highlighted links into a list of urls that I can drop into a text file ?


    To make it clearer what I mean, the difference between links and urls are as follows:
    A link (hyperlink) is usually blue text that we can click on to go to another web page .
    A url is a web address spelled out , e.g. http://ask.metafilter.com



    I am using Windows XP. But if you are using Linux or Apple or other non Microsoft operating system I would also like to hear from you if you know of such utility.
    I think if no such software exists then the blame lies with Microsoft because from what I know Microsoft does not provide a published format for selecting multiple links at the same time.


    Thanks a million.
     
  2. Mrkvonic

    Mrkvonic Linux Systems Expert

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    Re: software to drag & drop multiple links & automatically translate the links into u

    Hello,
    You could try Zotero extension for Firefox. Allows you to export the libraries in several formats, including PDF. Furthermore, did you know that Firefox bookmarks are just one big page with links on it? You can easily export it.
    Mrk
     
  3. studentguru2

    studentguru2 Registered Member

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    Thank you very much for the suggestion.

    Zotero looks pretty useful for bibligrophay purposes.

    I took a look at the demo on its website. And I don't get the impression that it can actually do what I want with a bunch of hyperlinks (i.e. the links we can click on to go to another webpage).

    I want this feature becauase I am now using the newly introduced Google Custom Search Engine and I want to just highlight, drag and drop a bunch of links (e.g. a list of links many bloggers link to from their blogs) and drop the links into a notepad text file and then into my Google Custom Search Engine database .

    The purpose is to build up a database of websites which Google will only search for stuff in.

    If I am wrong about Zotero please let me know. Zotero only works with Firefox 2.0

    Right now I am still using Firefox 1.5.0.8 because I want to wait for Firefox 2.0 to stabilize .
     
  4. Mrkvonic

    Mrkvonic Linux Systems Expert

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    Re: software to drag & drop multiple links & automatically translate the links into u

    Hello,
    Firefox 2 is very stable.
    Zotero can do what you want - save a load of links to whatever you like, export a PDF, not really drag and drop but you have a link button that will do the same.
    If you need help with examples, tell me.
    Mrk
     
  5. iceni60

    iceni60 ( ^o^)

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    Re: software to drag & drop multiple links & automatically translate the links into u

    i think in windows you can highlight URLs then drag them to the desktop and a text file will automatically be made with the URLs in. i haven't used windows for a while though so i could be wrong, maybe it only works with certain programs o_O
     
  6. studentguru2

    studentguru2 Registered Member

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    iceni60 ,

    I don't know of any windows software that can do what you just described. I don't even know such software exists for other operating systems.

    And it certainly would be a winner because links are different from urls and need to be handled differently for my purposes.


    Mrkvonic ,
    Thank you very much for your helpful advice and offer to help . I will check out Firefox 2 and Zotero in my old laptop and let you know if it works.
     
  7. studentguru2

    studentguru2 Registered Member

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    Here is what I have found so far that have worked quite satisfactorily, in the absence of the software I want.

    In Firefox, when you highlight a link and rightclick and then choose "Copy Link Location", the url of that link will be copied and can be pasted to a text file. Now this is fine if I only have one link I want to translate into url, what happen if I have a bunch of links I want translated into a bunch of urls in the easiet manner?



    Looks to me , right now , without a standalone software or utility, the easiet (and still quite troublesome ) way to translate a bunch of links automatically into a bunch of urls is:
    In Firefox, go to a website (e.g. http://newmarksdoor.typepad.com/ ) , highlight the bunch of cool links, rightclick and then choose "View Selection Source" . Then a new window will show up with the urls and some excess garbage. Copy them and then paste into a text file and then start deleting the garbage.


    Mrkvonic ,
    by the way, I have tried Zotero and Firefox 2 , unfortunately Zotero does not do what I want. For example, in the website http://newmarksdoor.typepad.com/ , I tried to zotero the bunch of cool links on the right hand side and nothing happens. As a matter of fact, zotero icon does not even appear in the url box ( as it would in an amazon.com webpage)

    So , unless somebody can come up with a really good software to automatically translate a bunch of cool links into urls , I am going to stick with the easiest method I have found so far, without Zotero.


    Mrkvonic , for taking notes purposes, I use netsnippets (free version) . It is good enough for my purpose as it records the url of the website where I got the information from.

    And , on top of that, I can use a free desktop search engine (e.g. x1 , google) to index the contents as I would any text file or pdf file or html file.

    I don't think Zotero contents can be indexed by a desktop search engine. Don't quote me. Just a guess.

    If you find yourself doing a lot of copying and pasting good stuff from websites , use the Firefox extension autocopy ( https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/383/ ) ---- best extension (of Firefox ) for somebody who does a lot of research.

    So , does anybody know of a software that can do what I want with a bunch of cool links?
     
  8. studentguru2

    studentguru2 Registered Member

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    And if I want to copy and paste different things from differnt locations, I use
    Mike Lin's Clipomatic , which describes itself as
    "A clipboard cache program it remembers what was copied to the clipboard even after new data is copied, and allows you to retrieve the old data."
    at http://www.mlin.net/Clipomatic.shtml
     
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