URL without a protocol support (// URIs)

[shawn]

There's an amazingly annoying trend on newer sites to remove the protocol portion of the URL (http:, https:, ftp:) leaving URIs that have only something like:

//example.com/path/file.ext

 

Google is just one example of the major companies who are using this format in their recent downloads. Picasa, for example. This method is used by many websites now to minimize errors when the potential to switch back and forth between SSL and non-SSL sites is likely.

 

Essentially, this would work by checking the URL that is in the download (and other URL sources such as variables) to see if the first two characters are "//" and if so, it inserts "http:" there.

[Tomorrow]

+1 for this request.

[shawn]

Another nifty feature (related to this) would be if the first character of a variable in the *download* box is a slash but the second character is NOT a slash, use the host/domain that that variable was based on.