If you’re a web developer, you know that clipping text is a common practice. It’s easy to clip text when you want to keep a specific part of a document or page, but it can be difficult to do it consistently across all your pages. Firefox has a built-in library of clipped text that you can use to keep your pages more organized and consistent. You can create new clips by selecting them from the Clipboard menu, or by pressing the “Clipboard” button in the toolbar. You can also use the “Clipboard History” feature to keep track of all the clips you’ve made in Firefox. This will help you remember which clips are important for later on, and will also help you find anyclips that have been deleted or changed since they were last used.
Using Clippings
For our tests we found the easiest way to get started with Clippings was “composing” a new e-mail. In the “Text Area” right click to access your “Context Menu”, go to “Clippings”, and select “Organize Clippings”.
The “Clippings Manager Window” and a one-time only “Message Window” will both appear.
Once you have closed the “Message Window” you can get settled into creating your new text clips library. Click on “New Clipping” to start your first text clip.
You can see our first one here with a custom name and a “standard/default fill-in-the-blanks letter”. Once you have your new text clip finished you can associate a “Shortcut Key” with it, create a “New Folder” for it, or “Move/Copy” it to a previously created folder. You can finesse the organization of your text clips as much as you want here (extremely nice).
We wanted to test our new text clip out so once again we right clicked in the text area, went to “Clippings”, and there was our new text clip ready to go.
Clicking on our new text clip’s name automatically pasted the entire text into the text area. This is the kind of “shortcut goodness” that can save you from a lot of frustration on a daily basis.
Ok, so what if you have just come up with a perfect bit of text while composing an e-mail (such as a new standard letter or e-mail signature)? It is very simple to add it to your text clip library…highlight/select the appropriate text, right click, go to “Clippings”, and select “New From Selection…”.
You will see a new popup window appear just like the one shown here. The “Description Area” will have whatever text was contained in the first line of the text you highlighted/selected. You can easily rename it to best suit your personal needs and make any last minute editing changes to the main text itself. If you have a folder system established you can also designate where you want it located and assign a “Shortcut Key” if desired. Once you are finished click “OK” to add the text clip to your library.
Right clicking in our e-mail shows our new text clip ready to use if needed.
Very nice…
Curious about the “Clippings Manager Window” after we added the second text clip? Here it is with the most recent addition automatically highlighted/selected in the left column.
Conclusion
If you have a lot of “repetitive text” typing to do throughout the day then we definitely recommend this extension. After a few days you will wonder how you ever managed without it.
Links
Download the Clippings extension (Mozilla Add-ons)
Download the Clippings extension (Extension Homepage)
