Bookmarklets, Favelets and Snippets

• By Vitaly Friedman
• January 24th, 2007
• Bookmarklets, Tools
• 15 Comments

If you’ve used them once you’ll never be able to work without them. Bookmarklets (or Favelets) are tiny Javascript-Snippets, which are stored within a bookmark and add particular functionalities to the browser you’re using. It doesn’t matter whether you browse, bookmark, look up, search, design or program – depending on your interests, bookmarklets can significantly enhance your efficiency and productivity. However, if you take a look around, you’ll find hundreds of sites, which offer favelets of any possible kinds. Indeed, you’ll find thousands of bookmarklets, many of which you aren’t really interested in. What you eventually are interested in, is a hand-picked choice of the most useful snippets you can directly copy and use from one single page.

We’ve chosen some of the most useful bookmarklets, written new ones and listed them below. You’ll find the source, from which a bookmarklet is copied or modified, or a detailed description of the snippets, in the brackets.

To install the bookmarket just drag’n'drop the JavaScript-Code from the link to the toolbar of your browser. To use the bookmarklet select the text on a page or an address of a web-page and click on the bookmarklet. If you don’t select any text or url and click on the snippet, you’ll get a JavaScript window, in which you can input text manually.

If you use many favelets, you might be willing to check out the Blummy Bookmarklet (The Bookmarklet Management Bookmarklet), a free tool for quick access to your favorite web services via your bookmark toolbar.

Looking up

• Acronym & Abbreviation Finder to look up unknown abbreviations and acronyms.
• Amazon.com, Ebay.com enable to search for products with one click.
• Google Search Bookmarklet [sf], del.icio.us, Wikipedia.com can be used to look up for any information you might ever be interested in.
• Cddb.com, Discogs.com and Last.FM to look up CDs information, popular tracks bands, music styles etc.
• Internet Movie DataBase (IMDB), EPGuides.com deliver information about movies and TV-series.
• Google Translate [sf] translates from 5 languages to English (the language will be detected automatically).
• Oxford English Dictionary [kp] and Merriam-Webster Word Lookup (with audio samples) [XHTMLed] explains English words and terms.
• myBookmarklets is a collection of useful Bookmarklets you can use every day. You’ll find there all Google-Search-Bookmarks, Look-up-Bookmarklets in different encyclopedias and so called “Multi-Bookmarklets”, which enables you to retrieve the information you’re looking for from many sources – simultaneously and automatically.

Social Networks, Web 2.0, Online-Services

• BugMeNot delivers Login- and Password-data for services which require user registration and authentification.
• Check PageRank returns the PageRank of the page, you are visiting.
• Delicious: Super Fast Bookmarklet, Lazy Sheep For Del.icio.us and posticious let your store your bookmarks in del.icio.us instantly.
• Filext.com informs you about unknown data types and file extensions [wb].
• Flickr.com: instant search in Flickr.
• Microformats Bookmarklet helps to extract existing hCards and hCalendars and can show and store contacts and events on a given page.
• MultiSubmit bookmarks one page in 19 social networks – of course, if you are registered in them.
• Send To Flickr [vh]: to submit an image from a page to your personal Flickr-Fotostream, just select the image, click on the snippet and confirm your submission.
• Similicious lists similar pages to the page you are currently on.
• Technorati lets you explore what other users write or talk about in the blogosphere.
• TinyURL shortens your web address URL. [el]
• Video Bookmarklets lets you download YouTube- and Google-Video-files automatically.

Web-Design, Web-Development

• computed_styles lists the computed styles of an element and of its ancestors. [sf]
• list_classes lists classes used in the document. [sf]
• show_blocks draws borders to show tables (colors indicate nesting), paragraphs, and divs. [sf].
• test_styles type in CSS rules to experiment or to create a temporary user style sheet. [sf]. Alternative: edit_styles experiment with changes to the page’s style sheet. [sf].

• Color List Favelet creates a color palette which is used on a given page.
• Elements inspector offers the same functionality as Aardvark Firefox Extension; it shows the information about Div-Containers, Headers, Paragraphs etc. [Favlets.com]
• Favelet Suite is a package of 16 Bookmarklets, which can be used in web-development. Document Tree Chart, Javascript Object Tree, Mouseover DOM Inspector, Ruler, Style Sheet Viewer etc.
• Layout Grid Bookmarklet creates a Grid-Overlay of the page; useful, i.e. if you want to calculate the layout size.
• SEO Bookmarklets is a collectino of 22 Favelets for SEO-analysis. It uses search engines, social networks and further services.
• Web Developer Favelets: 9 simple Favelets a web-developer will use on a daily basis.
• string2html converts strings to HTML-Entities [wzb].

Links Functionality

• Finds and follows a link to a “print-friendly” version of a page [sf]
• click2zap removes elements from the page for printing (remove text/images to save paper/ink) or reading comfort purposes. [s. click2zap]
• Set Target-attribute of all links at “new” (open in new window) [Bookmarklets.com]
• Set Target-attribute of all links at “self” (open in current window) [Bookmarklets.com]
• Show all mailto-Links [bookmarklets.com]
• Hide visited Links [sf]
• Add sorting functionality to a table [sf]
• Search on a page for a keyword and highlight it [sf]; alternative: Highlighter.
• Show the data stored in the password fields [sf]
• To mark the links of a page and Create a pop-up-windows, which lists all links on a page [stichpunkt].
• Show all links as footnotes in printed version [askmefi].

Better Navigation

• Jump to the parent-page (abc.com/archive/2006/ -> abc.com/archive) [sf]
• Jump to the top-level-page (abc.com/archive/2006 -> abc.com) [sf]

Tools for Bloggers

• Show the last archive copy of the current web-site [sf]
• Create HTML-Code with a link to the current page [sf]
• Send a link to the current web-page [wb]
• Send highlighted information from a web-site via e-mail – automatically [wb]
• Quote from a Blog copies selected text and pastes it automatically with via-Links in a pre-defined HTML-Code-Template. [b101]
• Creates the XHTML code to include the current image. [sf]

Useful Tools

• Bookmarklet Crunchinator minimizes the size of bookmarklets and creates Oneline-Links, which are typical for Favelets.
• Bookmarklets Builder simplifies the writing of Javascript-Snippets with an integrated Formatter and DOM Browser.
• The Bookmarklet management bookmarklet (The Bookmarklet Management Bookmarklet), a free tool for quick access to your favorite web services via your bookmark toolbar.

Further Collections

• All the Bookmarklets! a huge bookmarklets collection, in which you’ll find everything you always wanted – or not wanted.
• Andy Budd’s Bookmarklets: Andy Budd’s personal choice.
• Francois Jordaan’s Bookmarklets: a popular collection with many links.
• Opera Bookmarklets and Phil Burns’ Collection presents Favelets for Opera Browser.
• Pixy: Let’s Favelets: a collection of Snippets for Web-Development, site presentation and Links functionality. Worth mentioning are List computed (cascaded) styles, Create comparing Windows and Window Resize Bookmarklets.
• Squarefree Bookmarklets: a catalog with hundrets of Favelets, with detailed description and in 16 categories.
• Tantek Favelets: a collection of Web-Design-Bookmarklets by web-guru Tantek Celik. Multivalidator and Microformats Bookmaklets.
• XHTMLed Bookmarklets: an enormous collection of useful Favelets.