TinyURL Creator

You can download it from the developer’s website or the Firefox Add-Ons site.

TinyURL is a free online service that shortens extra-long URL’s into TinyURL’s.

Both URL’s will take you to the exact same webpage.

Now why would you want to do this?

Well, let’s say you’re writing an email and you’d like to share a webpage with someone. Or maybe you’re writing a blog post and you’d like to include a hyperlink. It’s much easier (and more pleasing to the eye) to let others click on a TinyURL rather than one that takes up 4 lines.

The Firefox extension TinyURL Creator makes it super-easy to create TinyURL’s. There are several ways in which this can be done: via Toolbar Button or Context Menu.

We’ll start with the toolbar button. You’ll have to manually place the button on one of your toolbars. To do so, go to the top of your browser and click View > Toolbars > Customize:

Locate the TinyURL button:

Then left-click and drag the button to one of your toolbars:

Now let’s create a TinyURL.

We’ll use the following URL as an example: http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2007/06/20/thinkfree-takes-office-suites-offline/

To shorten it, we’ll just click on the toolbar button and choose “From Current URL”:

A message box with your new TinyURL will appear:

The TinyURL is automatically copied to your clipboard, so you can quickly paste it wherever you want.

You can then either “Close” the message box, “Goto” the site, or “Save” the TinyURL.

Let’s choose “Save”.

This is a really cool feature because you can save the TinyUrl’s just in case you’d like to share them again. After choosing “Save,” you’ll be asked to name the TinyURL: