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Drag Safari links to find hidden URLs Web Browsers
If you don't have the status bar turned on in Safari v51, you can find out what URL any link points to by dragging it a few pixels in any direction. Depending on the link the URL will either be shown by itself or in small text beneath the link title.

This can be really useful even if you have the status bar enabled for when a web page uses Javascript to override the status bar text.

[Editor's note: This works most of the time, unless the URL is quite long, in which case you'll just get "http://www..." or similar. In those cases, just drag it to BBEdit or TextEdit and you'll get the full URL pasted in. One annoying "feature" of dragging links Safari is that if you drag a URL into iChat, you'll paste the title of the URL instead of the actual URL. If you're just trying to give someone a URL without their having to visit the site, this can be somewhat annoying. If you want the actual URL, you'll need to use TextEdit to first paste and then copy it before dropping the URL on iChat.]
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Drag Safari links to find hidden URLs | 7 comments | Create New Account
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Why not just use the statusbar?
Authored by: ElectricSheep on Jan 29, '03 12:09:35PM

It seems to me a better way to find out where links are pointing you is to simply enable Safari's status bar (View->Status Bar or command-\) rather than dragging links around.



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Why not just use the statusbar?
Authored by: ElectricSheep on Jan 29, '03 12:11:07PM

Wait. I'm stupid. Disregard previous post.



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JavaScript overriding doesn't work
Authored by: aranor on Jan 29, '03 05:14:25PM

I've never seen JavaScript overriding work in Safari for links. I haven't really tested it, but I looked at 2 sites that used it and I saw their redirect page instead of the JavaScript-displayed text.



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JavaScript overriding doesn't work
Authored by: filburt1 on Jan 29, '03 07:32:53PM
To test the use of the window.status Javascript property, try this page: http://www.turtletips.com/random/statusbartest.html

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Why use TextEdit?
Authored by: Eravau on Jan 30, '03 12:31:52AM
If you want the actual URL, you'll need to use TextEdit to first paste and then copy it before dropping the URL on iChat.

How about just right-clicking (ctrl-clicking for the single-button users) on the link and choosing copy link to clipboard and then pasting it wherever you wanted it in iChat. Seems this would be faster than opening a third app just for what should be a quick copy and paste between two.

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Why use TextEdit?
Authored by: rorya on Jan 30, '03 05:45:02AM

Safari (v51 anyhow) does not let you do the "copy this link to clipboard" when you right click a link. It doesn't give you anything actually. This is something every other popular browser for OSX lets you do. I don't understand why they haven't implemented this feature in Safari, as its incredibly useful. This iChat issue makes it an even more useful feature.



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Why use TextEdit?
Authored by: 010111 on Jan 31, '03 08:30:12PM

uh... yeah it does.

i use it daily. let me try....

(right click link... copy link to clipboard... paste)

http://www.macosxhints.com/

yup. worked.



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