Thunderbird URL Link
URL Link is a very sophisticated add-on for the email client Mozilla Thunderbird that provides advanced link manipulation techniques.
The most obvious - and probably common as well - option is to join links that are displayed across multiple lines which is often the case when verification emails are received. It also substitutes spaces in links to %20 so that network paths can be followed. It detects those automatically so that you do not have to do anything manually in this regard.
If you ever had troubles verifying an email address because of a multi-line link that was not set up properly, you will appreciate that URL Link fixes this behavior once and for all.
Another excellent feature is the ability to mark text and perform a search or create a link from it. By default Google and Wikipedia are available but the add-on provides access to custom search engines as well which can be added in no time in the add-on's options.
Three links can be created from any word that is marked, they lead to www.word.com, www.word.org and www.word.net with the option to add custom extensions like co.uk as well.
Here you can also add custom search engines, say to search Amazon, eBay, Bing, or any other search engine. The newly added search engines become available in the right-click context menu as well then.
Another interesting feature is the option to convert email addresses in the mail body to links. Say someone added a mailto link in the body text of the email. This can be converted into a link to the domain of the email, e.g. from [email protected] to www.something.com. The extension handles JavaScript links properly as well.
The option to add custom manipulations is what makes this Thunderbird add-on special. Each function is accessible through the right-click context menu.
The context menu entry that you are looking for is "Open Selection". Here you get the options to perform a search on the Internet or open a domain name by adding www and a domain extension to your selection automatically.
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