Bookmarklets – Make Web Pages Do Tricks

Bookmarklets are handy little programs (called applets) that help you manipulate any web page you are currently visiting. Bookmarklets get their name because they are listed in your bookmarks. When you are on a web page and you want to use a bookmarklet, you just select it from your bookmarks. Poof! The boomarklet starts doing its magic to your current page.

Why is this cool?

You can do some very cool things with bookmarklets, like translate the page into another language or strip out all the junk (advertisements, flash, dancing aliens – whatever) and just read the text. You can also extract and send data from the page and even run specialized searches of selected text on the page.

Where do I get them?

For the most part, bookmarklets are scattered across the Internet. There are, however, a few places that are collecting bookmarklets in a single, easy directory. One is Marklets.com. This site sorts bookmarklets by highest rated, newest, and featured. It also has some good FAQs and instructions.

We will be testing and reviewing useful bookmarklets on this blog. We will also tag all of these “bookmarklets” (on the right sidebar) so you can quickly get to a list of useful bookmarklets.

How do I install a bookmarklet?

Essentially, you need to go to the page that offers the bookmarklet and install it in your list of bookmarks on your browser. Marklets.com has a good “how to” instructions, divided up by browser type. Here is a summary:

Internet Explorer

Make sure the Favorites Bar is visible. Click on any part of the menu bar and check “Favorites Bar”.
Using your mouse, right click on a bookmarklet and select “Add to Favorites”.
Select “Favorites Bar” folder in combobox and click the Add button.

Firefox

Make sure Bookmarks Toolbar is visible. Select “View” from main menu then “Toolbars” and check “Bookmarks Toolbar”.
Drag a bookmarklet to the Bookmarks Toolbar.

Google Chrome

Make sure Bookmarks Bar is visible. Right click on any part of the menu bar and check “Always show bookmarks bar”.
Drag a bookmarklet to the Bookmarks Bar.

Safari

Make sure Bookmarks Bar is visible. Select “View” from main menu and select “Show Bookmarks Bar”.
Drag a bookmarklet to the Bookmarks Bar.

Tags: Bookmarklet

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 6th, 2010 at 10:33 pm and is filed under For Twitter, Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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