Thanks! This probably falls in the 'Why didn't I think of that' category because it is so obvious. I just assumed that Win-V'ing the URL would create a new info item with the URL as the contents, but of course you had thought of this
This works exactly as I want, I am so glad I asked the question.
(FYI: in Firefox ctrl-L selects the location bar, so the sequence becomes: ctrl-L, ctrl-C, win-V)