TheRealURL Firefox add on (which also works in Thunderbird, Flock, and Seamonkey) lets users get URL information on links – once the extension is installed, right clicking a link will show a new option in the context menu, “Get TheRealURL”:
Clicking it retrieves the URL’s information from TheRealURL’s JSON service and displays the unshortened URL, the page title and the content type on the status bar:
You can change the information displayed via the add on preferences settings:
I find it useful for checking URLs in possibly-spam messages, which recently started using URL shorteners to mask their addresses, and generally checking short links in blogs/twitter/etc. I was happy to discover Softpedia now lists it, with a %100 clean guarantee.
TheRealURL extension’s code was contributed by Rod Whiteley, creator of Mail Tweak, following a message I posted at MozillaZine forums. It was pretty amazing to post an idea on the evening and have a working first version by morning. Rod did an incredible job, with a lot of attention to detail, which I’m very grateful for. Thanks Rod!
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