One of the MarsEdit features that people really like is the simplicity of pasting a URL link into a post. Just copy a URL from anywhere, then press Cmd-Shift-A to transform the selected text in MarsEdit into a link.

Today a MarsEdit customer wrote with a more specific request: he would like to easily insert links to whatever page he happens to have open in Safari, while also using the title of the page as the link text. This is the kind of specialized feature that is less likely to show up as a built-in feature of MarsEdit, because if I added all the specialized features that might be handy here and there, it would quickly become overwhelming. But it’s the kind of thing where I’m very grateful for MarsEdit’s scriptability. Within a few minutes, I was able to share with this customer a script that does just what he wanted.

Click to download: Paste Safari Link script.

If you want to attach a keyboard shortcut to the script, you could use FastScripts, or you can add the script to MarsEdit’s Scripts folder, and then assign a keyboard shortcut using System Preferences:

1. From MarsEdit’s script menu, select “Open Scripts Folder”.
2. Drag the “Paste Safari Link” script into the folder.
3. Open System Preferences
4. Navigate to Keyboard, Keyboard Shortcuts, and select Application Shortcuts.
5. Add a new shortcut for MarsEdit, specifying “Paste Safari Link” as the menu title.

When invoked, the script will insert a link to the active Safari page’s URL, using the page’s title as the text of the link. If you want to use different text as the title of the link, the just type and select it in MarsEdit before invoking the script.

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