Bookmarklets

Oliver — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:58:07 +0000

So, to comply with a request, here’s a bit more about Bookmarklets (or Favelets, as they are called with an inferior browser). Bookmarklets allow you to execute small commands that interact with the current website (or a part of it). To be precise, they are just short (since bookmarks have a certain max size, depending on your browser) JavaScript commands, so they are quite easy to write. I could go into detail, but why should I when others already did that way better than I could. Go and have a look at these pages:

bmlet.com – Great page for ready-to-use Bookmarklets
Jessi’s Bookmarklets Site – More ready-to-use Bookmarklets
Bookmarklets.com – Guess what…
Any JavaScript website you know will help you develop your own.

Not all Bookmarklets will work for you, cause it depends on your JavaScript engine, browser and if the coin of fate fell so, that Tymora smiles upon you. But if you find some helpful little Bookmarklets, they will enhance your web-experience. Here are some that I use frequently:

Search Wikipedia (EN) – Does what it sounds like. Either a marked part of the website or if nothing is marked, a popup will appear. Can easily be changed to query whatever language on Wikipedia you prefer.
Search Leo Dictionary – Same as above. Hey, my English ain’t really that good, I really need it.
Sort table – unfortunally not all webdesigners think it is a good idea to add a sort function to cluttered tables. Well, this helps.
=0){spannode=document.createElement("SPAN");spannode.style.backgroundColor="yellow";middlebit=node.splitText(pos);endbit=middlebit.splitText(RegExp.$1.length);middleclone=middlebit.cloneNode(true);spannode.appendChild(middleclone);middlebit.parentNode.replaceChild(spannode,middlebit);++count;skip=1;}}else%20if(%20node.nodeType==1%20&&%20node.childNodes%20&&%20node.tagName.toUpperCase()!="SCRIPT"%20&&%20node.tagName.toUpperCase!="STYLE"){for%20(var%20child=0;%20child%20<%20node.childNodes.length;%20++child){child=child+searchWithinNode(node.childNodes[child],%20re);}}return%20skip;}window.status="Searching%20for%20"+regexp+"...";searchWithinNode(document.body,%20regexp);window.status="Found%20"+count+"%20match"+(count==1?"":"es")+"%20for%20"+regexp+".";})();">Highlight RegEx – Since there is no highlight search feature in Firefox and the fact about every search function in every application sucks (more about that in an upcoming post) and me being a RegEx freak, this is a wonderful function.
Edit webpage – As mentioned in an earlier post. Not a regular Bookmarklet of mine, but helpful when creating documentations or just to have fun.

There are a lot more helpful functions (taking the first two from this list will give you a hint how to use it with any other web(site) search function), those are just a few examples. Go browse and find some that work well for your. Or maybe even create your own and post them to the pages mentioned above.

And while we are at it, there’s another way to enhance your webbrowser (as long as it is called Firefox or can use whose Add-Ons). Check out the following two Add-Ons. No further describtion from me, just check the links.

Ubiquity – Great tool in development by Mozilla Labs. Even has a natural language parser.
Greasemonkey – Mostly for layout stuff, but some very useful scripts (especially for communities like deviantArt).

That’s it for now. Go and enhance your browser!

Edit webpages “online”

Oliver — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:54:07 +0000

I’ll start using the blog as some kind of notepad for stuff I always end up searching elsewhere.

Starting with a simple method to edit webpages (but only for display in the browser). Copy and paste to the url bar: Link

(Works as a bookmark as well.)

just another hack » bookmarklet

Bookmarklets

Edit webpages “online”