Quick QR codes for URLs from your browser
November 23rd, 2010
I’ve been doing some work on Firefox Mobile lately, and I keep winding up in situations where I have a URL that I want to load on my mobile device. It’s a pain to type URLs in with a virtual keyboard (or a tiny keyboard), so people have taken to using QR codes to encode them, and there are lots of mobile apps that can read the codes and load the URL contained within. Conveniently, the Google Charts API supports generating QR codes, so I threw together a tiny bookmarklet that generates a QR code of the page you’re currently viewing. Go to this page and drag it to your bookmarks toolbar to use it, then just click it whenever you’re viewing a URL that you need to view on your device. I’ve been using Barcode Scanner on Android to read them, and it works pretty well.
November 23rd, 2010 at 12:09 pm
There is also this firefox addon that will do the same thing, but a little more user-friendly:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2780/
November 23rd, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Cool! I personally prefer the ease of use of a bookmarklet, especially since it magically winds up on all my various Firefoxes via Sync.
November 23rd, 2010 at 12:33 pm
This is really cool and will save a ton of time and frustration – thanks!
November 23rd, 2010 at 1:37 pm
If you use sync, why would you not be able to just use that to open up a page on Fennec? I think I’m gonna do a quick screencast showing that.
November 23rd, 2010 at 1:45 pm
I do use Sync, but it seems like a pain to have to load a page, click “Sync Now”, wait for it to sync, then click “Sync Now” on device, wait for it to sync, then find the open tab from my computer, as compared to clicking the bookmarklet, scanning the code, and loading the URL.
November 23rd, 2010 at 2:24 pm
Other options include this Ubiquity command script, and particularly for Android, Fox to Phone, a Firefox extension implementation of the Chrome to Phone protocol.
November 23rd, 2010 at 3:17 pm
You shouldn’t have to manually click “Sync Now” on either end; report that as a bug.
November 25th, 2010 at 9:59 am
Or you could just use Google’s URL shortener goo.gl – just adding “.qr” to the end of any URL generates a QRCode instead.
November 26th, 2010 at 10:50 am
I didn’t know that. Clever!