I think bookmarklets are just about one of the coolest things on the net. For those who don't know, bookmarklets are small javascripts that you can bookmark and use on any page at will. They are incredibly versatile, and I have seen them used for everything from translating 1337 into english, to restoring context menus on sites that disable them, to counting characters on a page or in a selection, to decoding rot13. And that is just a small sampling of what they are capable of. But here's where it gets even better: what if you want to take the awesome power of bookmarklets with you? Sure you can constantly export your bookmarks file and import it on other browsers, but that's kind of clunky. And you can use portable opera or portable firefox on a usb stick so that you've always got your own browser with you, but that only works if you never switch operating systems and you always remember to bring your usb key with you. No, the real secret to making the power of bookmarklets universal is Delicious, and the firefox Delicious Bookmarks plugin (currently 2.0). This plugin lets you right click on any link and add it to delicious. (You can also highlight text on the page to use as the description for the link). That includes javascript links, though for safety reasons delicious will not allow those to be shared publicly. You'll still have access to them, though, on any computer you use. And if you open the links from the menu bar, toolbar, or sidebar provided by the Delicious Bookmarks plugin, it will work just as if you had bookmarked it in your browser itself. Handy, huh?

[Jarin Dreamsinger - Bookmarklets]

There are more uses for bookmarklets, too. One I'm working with at the moment is to make blogging or writing articles on the internet just a wee bit more convenient. See, I like to cite my sources when I'm writing. I find it to be a valuable practice, not least since it lets me and my readership find my sources in the future should there be need to review the original material or find related information. So I'm making a small collection of bookmarklets just for that purpose. I hope you find them helpful too.

The first is a small bookmarklet that opens a new window with HTML for Linking to the Current Page. Very handy for pointing someone to a resource they may not be aware of. An alternate approach is a bookmarklet that pops up a prompt window with the Page Title and Url selected for copying. Still another does the same with HTML for a Link selected in the popup.

What if you want to link your readers to a particular part of a long document? There are two options for that. The first is a pair of bookmarklets that show all named anchors on a page as links and that make a list of links to all elements with id attributes, each of which allows you to copy them and share them with others. The second is the PurpleSlurple bookmarklet. Try it out, it's hard to explain how it works, but it provides you with a means to link to any portion of a document.

Then too there are bookmarklets that allow you to select a portion of a page, hit the bookmarklet link, and pop up a new window displaying html code for the quote, with citation information in the source and a link to the original document. Blog Quote bookmarklet and Stylized Blogquote Bookmarklet. The second is what I used to quote my original post at the start of this entry. If you hover your mouse over the post, you should get the original date the material was accessed. The original url is also contained in a cite attribute for the blockquote.

Here's a last one, as a bonus: Annotate Links. Perfect for printing out a well sourced article while preserving source data.

Hope you like them. :) If you want to "install" any of them, it's as simple as bookmarking the links. Some browsers may give a security warning for this, as javascript bookmarks are a potential vulnerability, but I'm quite confident these are safe in that regard.