Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on August 22, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Like many of you, I use bookmarklets on a daily basis to complete tasks a bit faster. Many of them offer features that normally require Firefox extensions to do, and I am one of those people that try to minimize the number of extensions I use. Not only that but if you use other browsers, such as Opera or Internet Explorer, then you’re forced to look for an alternate method of doing some things.

What is a bookmarklet? Here is Wikipedia’s definition:

A bookmarklet is a small JavaScript program that can be stored as a URL within a bookmark in most popular web browsers, or within hyperlinks on a web page. Because Internet Explorer uses the term favorites instead of bookmarks, bookmarklets are also less commonly called favelets by users.

This article is the second installment in our “Best Bookmarklets” series. In the first edition we covered over 20 great bookmarklets that let you do everything from delete a site’s cookies all the way to searching a page for text. This time around we have about another 20, and we have personally tested each one in Firefox 2 , Internet Explorer 7 , and Opera 9 .

Note: To use any of the following bookmarklets just hold down the left mouse button and drag the hyperlink to the bookmark toolbar in your browser.

–Hyperlinks and Navigation–

• Open All
  Loads any URL’s found in the text you highlight.
• Target Alert
  Adds an icon next to URL’s that open in a new window, point to a different site, link to a movie clip, link to an audio clip, or the source is a PDF.
• 
  Makes internal links red, external links blue, and same-page links orange.

–Cache–

• Rewrite All – Google
  This will rewrite every link on the current page to point to the Google Cache version.
• Rewrite All – Coral
  This will rewrite every link on the current page to point to the Coral Cache
  version.
• Archive
  Pulls up a listing of archives for the current page on Archive.org.

–Websites–

• Digg All
  Diggs all of the articles submitted by your friends. All you have to do is go to your Friend’s submission page and run the bookmarklet. Be careful because you could probably get banned if you’re Digging too many articles too fast.
• MultiSubmit
  Submit an article to over a dozen social network sites at one time. The link for the bookmarklet points to a page where you can customize which services are used. Note: You will have to be logged into each service for it to work.
• In IE
  Opens the current site in Internet Explorer.
• In Firefox
  Opens the current site in Firefox.

–Web Development–

• Show Comments
  Shows and highlights any HTML comments that would otherwise not be seen.
• Show DIVs
  Outlines all of the DIV elements on the page.
• View Selection Source
  Lets you highlight some text/images on the page and view the source code for that section. Firefox has this built-in to the right-click menu, but this does kind of work for it if you need it.
• Get Site Size
  Returns the dimensions of the website.
• Show/Hide Grid
  Puts a grid on the current page divided out into boxes that are 50-pixels on each side. This makes measuring a bit easier.

–Other–

• Edit Site
  This lets you edit the content of a site. You can add/remove images, text, and just about anything. A great tool for taking screenshots and removing personal information from the page first.
• 
  Click on elements throughout the page to remove them, and then print the page. Great for removing ink-eating ads and sidebars before you send a page to the printer.
• Anonymous Form Filler
  Fills in forms and email address fields with anonymous information. Great for commenting on sites where you don’t want to enter in your information.
• Word Count
  Counts the number of words from the text you’ve selected.

We would love to hear about any bookmarklets you might be using. Let us know in the comments below if you have found any great ones, and we’ll add them to the list!

Sources for the above bookmarklets: Opera Watch, Jesse Ruderman, Bookmarklets, Masatomo Kobayashi, Opera Wiki, and Andy Budd

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