Almost every day we browse hundreds of webpages, and hence we come across links, these links are sometimes pointing to a specific filetype, like may be a PDF, an image, a PPT, an excel file etc. We can know where are these links pointing to, just by taking our mouse pointer on the link and you see the complete URL to which this link points, and this a common feature in every browser, and if the link points to a specific file, that too can be understood as the URL will have the file type extension in the end.
Now, if you want the file type to be displayed right next to a link with an icon of specific file type, or you can see the type of file on the mouse cursor as well, below is the list of such scripts and browsers extension, have a look and choose the one for you.
Link Alert [Firefox add-on]
This Firefox extension is great in terms that it displays an icon next to the mouse cursor when the mouse cursor hovers over a hyperlink. It has wide range, displays several things, like New Windows New Windows, Secure Sites, Email Links, Javascript, Word Documents, Excel Spreadsheets, PDF Files, Zip Files, Applications, Text Files, Images etc. here is a snapshot which shows the Link Alert displaying the zip file icon for a rar file link, have a look –
You can install Link Alert and enjoy the icon display adjacent to your mouse pointer for links.
Cursor Indicator :
Cursor Indicator basically is a script, which displays the file type icon on the mouse cursor itself, have a look at snapshot below.
This script is capable of displaying icons for several formats like, Word files (.doc), PDF (.pdf), Text (.txt), etc. The snapshot below shows the complete list as well as the icons.
You can install this as a user script with Greasemonkey in Firefox. It works well with Chrome too, and should also work with other browsers.
Icon Identifiers for Links Redux :
This too is another script almost on same lines, file types are displayed, but unlike the Cursor Indicator and Link Alert, instead of the mouse pointer, the Icon Identifiers for Links Redux displays the file type icon adjacent to the link itself, and has nothing to do with the mouse pointer. Have a look –
The icon being displayed is that of the program installed on your system as the default program for specific file type, like in the snapshot above, PDF file is being displayed by the Foxit PDF reader icon, which is the default PDF reader on my system.
You can install Icon Identifier from the official page; this too works great on Chrome.
Best way to install both the scripts is Greasemonkey in case of Firefox; you can download and install the Greasemonkey here.
So, go ahead, and install the one which suits you best, though all three options are great, however the Link Alert add-on is probably a better choice and the reason behind is the wide range of displays it provides, I personally liked the Cursor Indicator script, looks good enough to see the icon on the mouse pointer. Which one did you like, share your views with us.
