Text URLs made click-able

As a heavy computer user, I am forever looking for shortcuts - any tweak or tool to make my daily life that little bit easier. I wouldn't put that down to being lazy, I'd say it's more to do with wanting to be as productive as possible. Although if I spent my time working rather than looking for shortcuts, by now I would have made enough money to last me the rest of my life - providing I'm dead by next Tuesday.

The Problem at hand

By default, browsers assume little - in an effort to be compatible and render pages as intended, it is left to the developers and content writers to state functionality. This applies to links, where domain names and URLs are not click-able by default. This was only ever a minor inconvenience but with the ever growing popularity of forums and blogging, content can now be placed online by those having no programming skill. This is of course a positive and important step in the sharing of information online - yet one side effect is that it is increasingly common to find URLs and domain names posted without being coded into links.

The solution as a Firefox Add-on

Linkification Add-On Download

To the rescue comes a simple yet clever add-on for Firefox called Linkification. Available from the official Firefox add-ons site, Linkification scans a webpage while loading and automatically converts text URLs into click-able links. The add-on presents many options (such as where to open the link and the ability to blacklist/whitelist domain names) - yet the default configuration will serve most just fine.

The add-on will go unnoticed, silently helping you day in day out - like the monkey under your desk (as said, you wouldn't have noticed it), but there are instances where the power of Linkification is apparent. One such case is for members of file sharing websites like Rapidshare and MegaUpload. Large files downloaded through these websites are often split into many parts and you will often find the forums and blogs that provide these links intentionally in pure text form. I assume one reason for this is to prevent the service provider (eg Rapidshare) knowing where the link was posted. In these cases, all links will be made click-able thanks to Linkification, potentially saving a good deal of time for those who frequent such sites.

Another useful note is that Linkification works for any document read using firefox, meaning plain text documents containing links suddenly become a lot more usable. I hope this add-on benefits you lovely people, for those who are unproductive, at least this may help you get nothing done at a faster speed than before.

Screenshot of the program

It happens to all of us, we catch Megan Fox strolling through our local supermarket - she catches your eye and teasingly winks before placing her hands on her hips and throwing her head back - while you casually pull out your camera phone. You return home, post the picture on the internet, only to find that other sites on the internet have managed to get the exact same shot - after your initial amazement at how coincidental the event is, you realise your photo has simply been stolen. One way to protect against this is to watermark the image to identify it as yours.

In the most simple case, a watermark can be a plain text URL of your website but can be as complex of a logo image as you'd place. This guide illustrates a simple method to watermark a group of photos, suitable in the scenario where you have an album of photos taken at an event and want to upload these to your website or facebook profile to share with the world, while keeping credit.

Steps to batch photo watermarking

1) Prepare your input and output folder

To simplify matters and save yourself a headache by losing track of your files, have two folders ready - one for the original photos that you want to watermark and another to hold the soon to be watermarked photos (after all, we don't want to overwrite the originals).

2) Grab FastStone Photo Re-sizer

This guide uses the freeware software available from the developers download page. The 1.4MB download should be rapid regardless of your internet connection, get it installed and then launch the program to be presented with interface shown in the screenshot above.

As the name of the software would suggest, at heart it's a batch photo re-sizer but offers many features such as rotating, cropping, adding borders and of course - watermarking. The left hand side is for you to browse for the original photos, the right hand side has the 'Input List' - the group of photos that you are putting forward to be watermarked.

3) Add chosen photos to the input list

If you are following along to this guide you will have your two folders prepared. Using the left hand folder navigation, locate your folder of original photos and with this selected, click 'Add All' to place its contents into the 'Input List'.The right hand area should now contain a list of all photos that you want watermarked, if this looks correct move on. If not, double check the folder selected.

4) Enter advanced options and set the watermark

This guide assumes you have your watermark already prepared - this can be any image you chose to represent your site, more often than not it'll be your sites logo or a relatively small image of your sites name. An example can be seen on this image of Megan Fox presented by Getty Images.

To set the watermark to apply, click the advanced options found on the lower right hand side, which will present the advanced options screen. From here click the watermark tab before ticking the 'Add Watermark' box which will display the following options:

Applying the watermark

From here, click the '...' button on the right hand side of the 'Watermark Image' textfield and browse for your watermark image. The blue gradient box represents your photos and where the watermark will show in relation to the rest of the image. The default options should be fine for most cases, but here you can experiment with the options - changing the opacity of position of the watermark if wanted.

The XY Offset option allows you to tweak the position further by specifying the movement on the X or Y axis (horizontally or vertically). As an example, if the position of 'Bottom-Right' is too far in the corner for your liking, by placing negative values into the offset box you can bring the watermark further up and to the left - in this case, positive values would position the watermark in the opposite direction, eventually off-screen. When happy with the watermark location and settings, click OK to return to the main screen.

5) Set output folder and begin the process

This final simple step is to tell the software where to place the newly created watermarked photos. This option can be seen on the first screenshot of this post, under the right hand side, located under the input files list. Hit the browse button and select the designated folder. Now hit convert and watch the magic happen - done.

Further note: If your watermark is to be simply text, the 'text' tab of 'advanced options' may be all you need and saves creating an image. Oh and if you do actually bump into Megan Fox, tell her about me - I'm everything she could ever want. I can program PHP.