Since I am lazy and like staying in line, I enabled a plugin that expands links automagically in most cases. For the most part it should be automatic and only require you to put the link on its own line.
Let me know if you think it is annoying or you run into issues.
Made some changes and brought them back. There is a semi-annoying bug that causes the URL to reload in the preview pane every time you type. Lazy workaround for now is to not put in the URL until you are done typing