INTERNET BROWSER'S ADDRESS BAR UTILITIES
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| Address Bar Utility |
You are already
familiar with quite a few browser address bar shortcuts. For instance, type
some text in the address bar of your browser (e.g. apple) , press Ctrl + Enter
and the browser will automatically send you to the corresponding .com website
(in this case, www.apple.com )
The search and
address bar of Google Chrome
Or type in some
complex search query (e.g., site:firefox.com internet explorer) in the address
bar, hit go and the browser will show results from your default search engine*.
The address bar of Google Chrome is even smarter as it can offer live
suggestions while you are typing the search query.
Other than these
built-in shortcuts, you may also want to know about a couple of URL (a
better term would be “ address bar commands “) that let you do stuff from the
address bar itself – they are pretty
easy to remember and don’t require you to install any bookmarks or add-ons
(so you can use them on any computer and even some mobile phones).
1. Capture a screenshot
Go to your browser’s address bar, type aviary.com before the
http:// part of the URL and hit Enter. Aviary will immediately capture a full
screenshot image of the web page that’s currently open in your browser – here’s
an example .
2. Download videos
If you are like to download a YouTube video, just add deturl.com to
the URL (see example ) and you’ll be able to save the video in either Flash or
Quicktime format. This is a pretty useful option for mobile phones that don’t
support the flash player but can play Quicktime.
3. Shrink the address
There are about a million URL shortening services out there but if
you want to quickly shrink the URL from the address bar itself, try this – just
type bit.ly before the URL and it give you the short form on the next screen.
4. Email a web page
If you want to email a link of the current web page to a contact or to
your own self, here’s a trick. Just type the mailto command in the address bar
and this will compose a new message in your default email program – you can
have the URL of the page in either the body of the message or in the subject
line itself.
mailto:a@b.com?body=
http://google.com/ (a@b.com is the
email of your contact)
5. Share or bookmark a web page
If you find the above email command a bit scary, here’s
something more simple. Go the address bar of your browser and type smub.it/
just before the URL as in this example . You can then share that page on any
social site or even send the link to your friends via email. A perfect option
for mobile phones .
6. Who owns that website
If you want to know the email address and other contact details of
the owner of a site, the whois record of that site can sometimes help. To view
the whois details of the current site, type whois.domaintools.com/ in the
address bar (just before the http:// part) and there you have all the
information – see example .
7. Send yourself notes
Futz.me is a free service that lets you email text notes, hyperlinks
and even images from the right the address bar of your browser.
Go to the address
bar, type futzme.com/xyz followed by a space (xyz is your unique username) and
anything that’s after the space will be sent to your email address. If you use
Futz.me with a URL that points to an image, the image will be sent you via an
email attachment or even through MMS (if you are in the US).
8. Mobile friendly web
If you are reading web pages on a mobile phone, you can easily
convert the current page into a mobile friendly version by adding
http://mopwn.com/ in front of the URL in your address bar as in this example .
Internally, the mopwn service will simply forward your request to
Google Transcoder but it’s still very handy.
Related: Browse
the web faster on a slow Internet connection
9. When the default is not Google
When you type a search phrase in the address bar of
your browser, the query gets executed using the default search engine which is
Google in both Firefox and Google Chrome (factory settings).
Now if you are using
IE with Bing or have manually changed the default to something else, here’s how
you can still query Google from the address bar without changing any of the
current settings. Go to the address bar and type gog.is followed by the search
terms. For instance, gog.is/digital,inspiration will show Google pages for
“Digital 
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