Use PithHelmet to allow simple URL typing

Oct 27, '05 05:51:00AM

Contributed by: dhirsch226

Recently, somebody in the DNS system started serving advertisements to me when I type in simple URLs, like foo. I used to get failed lookups, which would make Safari try to load http://www.foo.com, and I think try http://www.foo.org if that too failed. With the advertisement system, I feel like I'm using a Windows machine -- I have to type the whole thing out. Grr.

Enter PithHelmet. If you have this shareware add-on for Safari, you can rewrite the URL before it gets requested. This turns out to be even faster than the old way. Here is how to do it:

  1. Make a new Rule.

  2. Type the following in the URL field:
    ^(http://)*([^./]+)(/*)$
    This will match any text that lacks a period mark in it, optionally starting with http:// and optionally ending with /.

  3. Choose "Matching URL request action:" Transmogrify

  4. Enter the following in the Transmogrification Replacement field:
    http://www.$2.com/
I hope this helps some folks out. Other variations could be easily written to alllow replacement for *.org or *.edu (by typing, say, foo o or foo e in the location bar).

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