Can I Click 1 Link to Open All Links in a Post?

August 2, 2006 9:28 AM

(I am not a programmer so I have no Idea how hard this might be...) Would it be possible to have a link attached to each original posting in Meta and AskMe, that could be clicked by the reader to open all the links the poster included in their original posting, in Firefox tabs? I know this sounds lazy, but I thought it might be a neat feature...
posted by iurodivii to Feature Requests at 9:28 AM (14 comments total)

You can do it yourself with linky.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 9:30 AM on August 2, 2006

This seems like a personal preference thing that is best suited to a script link the one monju_bosatsu suggests. Most people don't use Mozilla, so the appeal would not be too wide.

Also, some people go absolutely insane with the number of links they put in one post, and opening 35 tabs or browsers automatically at the click of a button because you didn't notice that every single letter of a sentence was a link to a different site (yes, this happens) is a real good way to crash your computer.
posted by twiggy at 9:53 AM on August 2, 2006

thanks for the input, monju_bosatsu and twiggy.

Feel free to let this thread die.
posted by iurodivii at 10:09 AM on August 2, 2006

There's no way to program things to open in new tabs. tabs are not targets allowed in HTML.

You could set MetaFilter to open links in new windows, then set firefox to open all new windows in new tabs instead (it's a preference setting) but honestly, I would just say use a wheel mouse, and set your middle click of the wheel to open stuff in new tabs.

I do it all the time. Also, if you're on a laptop, control-click can open links in new tabs.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:13 AM on August 2, 2006

Agree we shouldn't do this, but just to say Matt's solution is better than linky - which opens every link on the whole page (including every flag link and every 'x marked is as a favourite' link).
posted by athenian at 10:48 AM on August 2, 2006

With linky you can also select a portion of the page, and open just those links in tabs. There's no need to open all the links on the page.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 11:07 AM on August 2, 2006

Could probably be done quite easily with Greasemonkey.
posted by jckll at 11:30 AM on August 2, 2006

I've been asking for awhile to have a kuro5hin-style box on the side of each thread that grabs all the links for a given FPP and consolidates them. You could go down that list and center click everything, if you wanted. Would that be amenable?
posted by Eideteker at 11:59 AM on August 2, 2006

I, too, use linky. I like it, but dislike the required confirmation step.
posted by beerbajay at 4:31 PM on August 2, 2006

I wrote this greasemonkey script a short while back and mentioned it in metatatalk.

it automates opening a FPP and all of its links. It puts a red Omega in the at the end of each FrontPagePost. When you click the Omega, it opens the article in a new window and opens all of its links in new tabs.

It is helpful to run the heavy-links script to warn against auto opening a lot of heavy links.

posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 5:31 PM on August 2, 2006

whoops, here is the correct link to my greasemonkey script
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 5:36 PM on August 2, 2006

Wow, MonkeySaltedNuts... that script is killer. Nice work.
posted by Hanover Phist at 8:25 AM on August 4, 2006

There's also a bookmarklet that will change all links on a page to open in a new window.
posted by hootch at 9:34 AM on August 4, 2006

There's also a bookmarklet that will change all links on a page to open in a new window.

Javascript links are filtered out, apparently. So go here.
posted by hootch at 9:36 AM on August 4, 2006