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Wikipedia:Snap Links tutorial

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Snap Links is a mass tab loader add-on for the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browsers. It auto loads links into tabs when the user holds down the right mouse button and drags a selection rectangle over those links (an action called "lassoing"). You create a rectangle, then release the right mouse button, then the rectangle disappears, and the tabs open up.

A "tab" is a window opened within a web-browser. Each tab independently displays a web page (such as a Wikipedia article). Tabs are especially useful for browsing and editing multiple Wikipedia pages.

Then what?

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Well, after you have the desired web-pages displayed in tabs, you can take full advantage of your browswer's tabbing features, which let you inspect or batch edit lots of pages fast.

In Firefox and Chrome, the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Tab ↹ is used to switch between tabs. Use Ctrl+W to close the current tab as you make the switch to the next tab.

Tab controls in Firefox and Chrome

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These controls are built-in to Firefox and Chrome:

  • Rapid page viewing:
    • Middle-click to load pages into tabs one-by-one (or you can use Snap Links to load them all at once)
      • To skim through lots of random articles, middle-click on "Random article" multiple times
    • Read or work on one
    • When done, press Ctrl+W to close the current tab and instantly go to the next one
    • Great for skimming sets of articles, where you are checking for a missing element, or looking for a particular kind of page or element. Just keep pressing Ctrl+W to instantly get rid of the current tab and go onto the next one, cycling through them fast until you find one you are looking for. Blam, blam, blam, blam, blam!
  • Middle-click on link - create new tab with linked page as its contents
  • Ctrl+T - Create new (employ) tab
  • Ctrl+Tab ↹ - Switch to next tab
  • ⇧ Shift+Ctrl+Tab ↹ - Switch to previous tab
  • Ctrl+⇧ Shift+T - un-close a tab (this will even remember contents entered in text boxes like Wikipedia's text editor)
    • Or go to the History menu and choose Recently Closed Tabs
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To maximize the power of multi-page processing with Snap Links, use it on customized lists of links to pages you wish to work on. WikiProject subpages and user subpages are convenient for holding such lists. One advantage of this approach is that you can easily ensure that unrelated links are not included.

But the real power here is that you can use search/replace on such a list to modify the links and thereby create your next list to work on. For example, Politics of x (where x is a country name) could easily be changed to Culture of x.

Search/replace is also useful for changing wiki-links to URL-links, so that you can open each page in edit mode, etc.

Here's an example of a URL-link that opens a Wikipedia page in edit mode (in fact, it opens this page in edit mode):

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Snap_Links_tutorial&action=edit
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Firefox's and Chrome's tabbing features (especially when combined with the use of Snap Links and macros) is one of the most powerful tools you can use to work on Wikipedia. It beats AWB in many operations, though AWB beats it in many others.

WP:AWB is an auto-page-loader, and a semi-automatic editor with powerful search/replace features. It works on lists of pages which you specify, opening one-at-a-time, executing your pre-specified search/replaces, and then loading each page in AWB's own edit mode so you can edit it. When you are done and save the page, AWB saves it, automatically closes it, and then opens the next page on the list in the same way. But, if you need to see what you are doing, that is, actually look at each page you are working on, AWB's view feature is rather cludgy and time-consuming. Pages are not initially loaded in view mode, so you have to click on "view" and wait each time for the server to respond, which can be very time-consuming, especially when you are working on a lot of pages and have to repeat this operation.

"Tabbing" is task-switching technology. You are basically working in windows, directly on Wikipedia pages using Wikipedia's interface. So if you need to inspect pages (that is, actually look at them), you simply open their links with Snap Links and each page is in display mode by default. In firefox, you switch between pages (in subwindows called "tabs") with Ctrl+Tab ↹ or with Ctrl+W (which closes the current window as you make the switch). Once in tabs, you can switch back and forth between pages very rapidly.

In AWB, once you've processed a page, you can't go back to it. But in Firefox you can, even if you've already closed the tab! (Restore a tab with Ctrl+⇧ Shift+T).

Notes

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See also

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