blog.rightreading.com

I guess everyone knows about bookmarklets — little javascript programs that you save as “bookmarks” or “favorites” to access through your browser. Some of these are very handy, and they don’t require you to download or install anything. You just drag the link to your favorites or links toolbar, or else you right click and add to favorites as for any site. In firefox you can also assign a keystroke to access them if you want to. (Caveat: Some are designed for traditional html pages rather than CSS; still, the worst that can happen is they will do nothing.)

These are some of the ones that I use most often:

1. Remove background image (Make an unreadable page readable!)
2. Page color to white (Get rid of the mauve background behind that chartreuse type).
   UPDATE AUG 07: Since writing this I’ve added the zap colors bookmarklet, which sets the page color to white and also sets the text to black.
3. Wikipedia look-up (Highlight text and the bookmarklet will search Wikipedia for it)
4. Show non-PR links (This highlights “nofollow” links. Many people use ChromEdit, I guess because it was recommended by Matt Cutts, but it uglifies your browsing experience. I prefer the bookmarklet because you only use it when you want to)
5. Page freshness (A little disappointing now that many pages are dynamic, but it used to be good for showing the last time a page was updated)
6. Up a directory (Saves a little typing when you get in too deep)
7. Go wayback (Brings dead pages to life! If you come to a 404 page this will search the internet archives for it)
8. Linearize (Turns multicolumn text into single column. I haven’t actually used this much yet, but it should be useful when you want to copy text (to revert to multicolumn simply refresh the page)
9. My page (Formerly called Click2Zap, this lets you remove items from a webpage, used mainly if you don’t want them to print. It also lets you resize elements, etc. Click the box at the upper right of the screen after selecting this bookmarklet.)
10. Tiny URL (Creates an alias url to replace a long one. Useful where the url is so long that it would wrap around lines in an e-mail. This will produce a short version that will direct to the same site.)

So there you have it. Ten of my favorites. What are yours?

UPDATE: Steve Rubel’s favorite bookmarklets.

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