Shortcutting Domains
This is pretty cool. The people at OpenDNS have released a tool to allow users to create shortcuts for web sites.
I think this is a great idea. Instead of typing in something like this:
We can simply enter:
What I like most about this is that the shortcuts would be globally available to every computer on your network. So if everyone visited the same site often enough, the same shortcut could be used by everyone while at home.
Shortcuts like this have been available for quite some time (Opera and FireFox do this quite well), but they often require being set up computer by computer, and login by login. If five people were sharing the same computer, that would either mean five items in everyone’s “Favourites”, or potentially five people setting up their specific shortcuts in their browser of choice. OpenDNS gets around this.
All this said, there are a few issues that may need to be worked out. One of which is how many current browsers try to make sense of what people type. If someone were to type in “mail” in Safari or Camino, the application would automatically assume you mean to have a www. in front and a .com at the end.
Despite all the ranting on OpenDNS’ blog for the feature, I think this is a great little tool. It will save a bit of time in the long run and I’m sure developers are already thinking of ways to extend this for their applications.
Great work, OpenDNS. I look forward to the potential benefits of this tool.
Comments (1)
Jason, thanks for the writeup.
We think we’ve found why Safari is erratic. If you have an optional search domain entered (any domain you like), then shortcuts work in Safari. At least, that solved the problem for me. We’re testing more, but let me know.
Cheers,
John Roberts
OpenDNS