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Opera Snap Links, Another Useful Extension Ported

Martin Brinkmann — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 13:46:16 +0000

The introduction of extensions in Opera 11 and the release of Opera 11 final has seen an increase in third party development for the web browser. Popular browser extensions, like the Last Pass password manager, have already found their way to the Opera browser. The latest port of a useful add-on is called Snap Links which adds options to open multiple links at once in Opera.

The feature works exactly like it does in Firefox; Draw a box around selected links by holding down the left mouse button. Releasing the button will open all selected links at once in the background. Only major links are opened in the browser if the mouse button is released.

Opera users can press Shift to include all links in the selection. This can for instance be handy on Google to open the site links as well.

There is also an option to move the rectangle by pressing the Alt key.

Snap Links can be very handy to open multiple threads in a forum, links on Twitter or lots of images if they are linked on a page.

Snap Links is only available for Opera 11. Opera users can visit the extension page to install it directly in the browser. Google Chrome users should check out Snap Links for their browser, Firefox users can check Multi Links.

Google Chrome Gets Snap Links Finally

Martin Brinkmann — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:59:39 +0000

There are only a few add-ons in Firefox that I want to see implemented in other web browsers as well. The security add-on NoScript which blocks all scripts from being loaded by default, the password manager Last Pass and Snap Links or Multi Links. The Multi Links add-on allows a Firefox user to draw a rectangle with the mouse over an area on a website to automatically open the dominant links in that rectangle in new tabs. There are options to change how the links are opened, where they are loaded in and how the extension presents itself.

The extension is very useful for users who often have to open multiple links on websites, like opening all new threads in a web forum or new popular links on sites like Delicious or Digg.

Snap Links Lite is a port of the Firefox extension for the Google Chrome web browser. It is not as customizable but offers the core feature of drawing a rectangle on the screen to open the links in tabs in the web browser.

Only the right mouse button can be used to draw the rectangle and links will always be opened in new tabs in the same web browser window. Snap Links Lite will also open all links in the rectangle unlike the Firefox original which can for instance block all but the target urls in search engines.

Snap Links Lite can be downloaded from the Google Chrome Extension gallery.

An alternative to Snap Links Lite is Linky for Google Chrome which works different as it opens all links that are currently highlighted in the browser. (via Lifehacker)

Open Multiple Links At Once In Firefox

Martin Brinkmann — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:20:53 +0000

Snap Links was one of the few Firefox add-ons that were installed all the time on my computer systems. It allowed Firefox users to draw a rectangle with the right mouse button on the screen to process all the links found in the rectangle at once. Options included to open the links in new tabs, windows or to bookmark them. Snap Links was discontinued and hacked quite a few times to make it compatible with newly released Firefox versions. Eventually Snap Links Plus was created which worked fine for some time but has not been updated since February 2009. The add-on can still be forced to be compatible with Firefox 3.5x but it sometimes causes problems afterwards.

That’s were the new add-on Multi Links comes into play. The add-on offers the same functionality as Snap Links with the difference that it is compatible with the latest version of Firefox without having to force compatibility. Some users reported that Multi Links processes links better than Snap Links.

Links can be selected by right-clicking and drawing a rectangle around them. It is possible to cancel the operation with the left mouse button or pressing Esc. One interesting option is the ability to only open some of the links on the page by pressing the CTRL or Shift key to draw smaller rectangles around links.

Options are available the add-on options of the web browser that cover those of Snap Links.

You can choose to open links in new tabs or new windows.
You can choose whether to go to those new tabs/windows or stay on the current tab/window when they open.
You can choose to copy to clipboard or to bookmark selected links.
You can choose a selection and link box colour from the preset colours or in put your own hexadecimal colour code.
You can choose the thickness of the link nd selection box borders.
You can choose the line style of the box border to be solid, dotted or dashed.
Smart selection is for search engines. It helps you by only selecting search listing results rather than including other links such as “similar”, “cached” or “filter” as well as other links that the search engines display.

Multi Links works perfectly and has replaced Snap Links Plus on my computer systems.

Firefox Snap Links Got Finally Updated

Martin Brinkmann — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:34:31 +0000

Snap Links, one of our favorite Firefox add-ons of all time, was not updated for quite some time by the original author. The only way to use it was to rely on third party fixes for the add-on to make it work in later versions of Firefox 2 and Firefox 3. The Firefox add-on provides the means to work with multiple links in the web browser with ease. It can be used to draw a rectangle in the web browser and perform actions on all links inside the rectangle.

Actions can be opening all links in new tabs or windows, bookmark them, copy them to the clipboard or initiate downloads. The function can be set to the right, middle or left mouse button. The rectangle will be visualized with a green border and the links that are selected with a red border. The selected action will be performed as soon as the mouse button is released.

The good news is that Snap Links finally got updated. It is now available directly from the official Mozilla website (and not Rapidshare or other third party sites like before). The developer has translated the add-on to 17 languages by now which is another bonus.

Snap Links is compatible with Firefox 3 including the soon to be released Firefox 3.1. Definitely one of the best add-ons if you regularly work with multiple links that you want to open or download.

Snap Links for Firefox 3

Martin Brinkmann — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:53:40 +0000

Snap Links was one of the most useful Firefox 2 add-ons in my opinion and it was one of the few add-ons that I missed dearly after switching to Firefox 3. The add-on could be installed with a little tweak of the install.rdf file that can be found in every Firefox add-on installation package but it turned out that this version, it was Snap Links 0.0.4, was causing some side effects like opening the right-click menu or disabling it for a certain time that made it unusable for me.

I researched the topic and finally discovered a link to version 0.0.5 of Snap Links that is compatible to Firefox 3. Yes that is right, it is working perfectly and one can finally use it again to open multiple links in one fluid motion in Firefox.

Let me explain how Snap Links is working. By default it provides an option to draw a rectangle with the right mouse button. Every top level link in that rectangle will be opened in a new tab on release. Mighty useful if you want to open the last ten forum posts or search results in a search engine.

I discovered the link on Andrew Sherman’s website who posted the link to the Snap Links 0.0.5 download.

Update: Snap Links is no more.It can be replaced by Multi Links which is compatible with all recent versions of the Firefox web browser. Multi Links offers a similar functionality.