Aussie Matt

With the rising popularity of Firefox and the 1000′s of useful extensions it may appear that Bookmarklets are indeed, dead.

Bookmarklets or Favlets, are our old friend who helped us through the years of Netscape 3/4/5 and Internet Explorer 3/4/5/6 and indeed 7. Today, Netscape is dismissed at large (thankfully), and Internet Explorer’s extensibility still remains paltry at best. But then there’s Firefox.

Firefox has revolutionised the way we work on the web via the amazingly usefulness of extensions; but extensions are expensive…. as in they use resources. Most extensions run everytime you open your browser, or when a specific command is performed Eg loading a web page, and some extensions run continuously in the background, which all adds up.

I have 40+ extensions installed and still I feel i’ve made huge sacrifices by passing up on other extensions for fear of slowing things down too much. The performance costs would add up quickly if you installed every extension you liked – which is terribly hard NOT to do considering the massive amount of choice we have.

Enter Bookmarklets!

Yep, our old friend can fill in for the jobs where extensions or plugins may be considered overkill. Bookmarklets are great for keeping things simple, and fast. In essence, they have several advantages;

• They execute when you tell them too, and never otherwise.
• It’s Javascript!
• You can create/edit them without having to compile any source code.
• They work on almost any browser and any operating system.
• They are easily shared as bookmarks.

 

To use: Simply drag any of the following bookmarklets into your bookmarks/favourites folder or toolbar, or right click on them and choose “Save Bookmark…”. You can even left click on them to see them in action.

Feel free to use/edit/mash them up however you like, they’re yours to keep.

 

• GmailThis! – pops ups a Gmail “Compose Email” box using the current webpage as the subject.
• Google Bookmark – Add the current page to Google Bookmarks
• Google Site Search – Search the current website on Google.
• Google MP3 Search – search Google for MP3 files.
• Subscribe in Google Reader – subscribes the current page to Google Reader.
• Google Translate – translate the current webpage using Google. TIP: also can be used as a proxy at work .
• Flickr++ – shows the full size image on a Flickr page
• img+ – enlarge all images on the current page incrementally.
• img- – shrink all images on the current page incrementally.
• post to del.icio.us – post the current webpage to del.icio.us.
• View cookies – view cookies set by the current web page in an alert box.
• Zap – zap the current webpage’s stylesheet away!
• SpiderTest – test the effectiveness of your page’s seo.
• TinyURL – convert the current web address into a TinyURL.
• View passwords – reveal the real text instead of the **** in password fields.
• Enable Context Menu – re-enable the right click menu on websites that disable it.
• Hide Images – hides all images on the current webpage.
• 800×600 – resize the browser window to 800×600.
• 1024×768 – resize the browser window to 1024×768.
• 1280×1024 – resize the browser window to 1280×1024.
• W3C Valid – validates the current webpage at the W3C.

 

Here’s another useful tip; to make them easily accessible, put them inside a folder in your bookmarks toolbar for some drop down action. Check out the screenshot below.

 

 

So perhaps bookmarklets aren’t dead after all? Do you have any bookmarklets or improvements/hacks on the ones listed here? Shout it out in the comments box.

And by the way if you’re still using Internet Explorer, check out my other article Microsoft Vs Scarface – Say ‘ello to my little friend!

 

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