I have written before that TinyURL Creator is one of my favorite Firefox extensions. That is no more. I have a new favorite: Shrinkify. Both of these extensions do the same thing. Namely, they take a really long web address and convert it into something that is short and easily used.

For example, if you search for Shrinkify on Google, the search results web address is: http://www.google.com/search?q=shrinkify&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

That same address shrinkified is http://shrinkify.com/837. Similarly, the same address in a TinyURL is http://tinyurl.com/6ao2m4.

Given that both of these do the same thing and both are accessed in the same manner (right click on the web page), one may wonder why I prefer Shrinkify over TinyURL Creator. That answer is simple. When I shrinkify a web address, I temporarily get a black band across the top of my screen telling me what the URL is. When I use TinyURL Creator, I get a box that tells me the URL. With TinyURL Creator, however, I have to click the box closed to make it go away. With Shrinkify, the information goes away automatically. Thus, Shrinkify saves me an entirely unnecessary mouse click.

If you aren’t using anything to shrink your URLs, I encourage you to try one or both of these services. Both work fine and will make your URL life much more simple.