Hi folks, I’m back, and today’s topic is “bookmarklets”.

That’s “bookmarklets” as in the diminuitive form of “bookmarks,” the web sites you save in your Internet browser. (They’re called bookmarks in Safari/Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape or “Favorites” in Internet Explorer.)

Bookmarklets require Javascript to be on (it probably already is) and they give special functionality to your browser. In Safari or Firefox, you can drag the links below right onto your Bookmarks bar. Then just click! Here are some examples:

Resize your browser window to 1024×768 and move it to the upper-left corner of the screen (0,0). You can replace those numbers with anything you want, to automatically make the browser window as small or large as you want:
javascript:self.resizeTo(1024,768);self.moveTo(0,0)

Stretch your browser window to the height of your screen and set the width to 860:
javascript:self.moveTo(40,0);self.resizeTo(860,screen.availHeight);

Stretch your browser window to the height and width of your screen:
javascript:self.moveTo(0,0);self.resizeTo(screen.availWidth,screen.availHeight);

Email the current page URL to the address you specify:
javascript:window.location='mailto:'+prompt('Send message to:','Email@Email.com')+'?body='+window.location+'&subject='+document.title

Validate the HTML of the current page (good for web developers):
javascript:void(document.location='http://validator.w3.org/check?uri='+document.location);

Validate the CSS of the current page (good for web developers):
javascript:void(document.location='http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri='+document.location);

Validate the links of the current page (good for web developers):
javascript:void(document.location='http://validator.w3.org/checklink?url='+document.location);

And my favorite bookmarklet and reason for blogging about them today: “Bugmenot”. This bookmarklet opens a window to “www.bugmenot.com” that shows a working name and password for whatever site you’re currently on. Today I opened a news article from some newspaper in the Midwest that was asking me to register before I could read the article. Instead of going through the hassle of registering and giving away my personal information, I simply clicked the “Bugmenot” bookmarklet on my Bookmarks bar and it opened up a window with a name and password I could use for the newspaper. I typed them in and got to my article right away. (By the way, if you click the Bugmenot button and no name/password is available for that site, it will ask you to enter *your* name and password so it can be shared with other bugmenot users. Of course, you would only want to do that for generic registrations that don’t have any of your personal information.)
javascript:void(window.open('http://bugmenot.com/view.php?mode=bookmarklet&url='+escape(location), 'BugMeNot', 'location=no,status=yes,menubar=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,width=385,height=450'))

Let me know if you need help getting bookmarklets to work. I think once you use them you’ll really like them.

richard miller