I've always been a fan of bookmarklets, small pieces of JavaScript code saved as bookmarks in your browser. Often they provide features only available if you install a plug-in and they're pretty easy to backup.
Here's a small list of bookmarks related to Google's services. Most of them provide features from Google Toolbar. To save them, make sure bookmark toolbar is visible (go to View > Toolbar and check Bookmarks Toolbar, Links or Personal Bar, depending on your browser) and drag the link to the toolbar.
1. Subscribe to a feed using Google Reader: Subscribe. This is especially useful for browsers like Internet Explorer that don't have a proper way of handling feeds.
2. Translate a web page into English: Translate. This also works for text selections, but you have to choose the destination language. Other translation bookmarklets are available here.
3. Bookmark a page: Bookmark. If you don't want to install Google Toolbar, this a very good way to bookmark the current page at Google Bookmarks.
4. Add an event to Google Calendar: Add event. You can select some text from a web page or enter the description of an event after you click on the bookmarklet.
5. Map this. Select an address from a web page and instantly get the map.
6. Download a video from Google Video as an AVI file: Download Google Video. This is useful if you don't want to download Google's video player. You'll be able to play the video using VideoLAN, Media Player Classic, MPlayer. If you want to use Windows Media Player, you'll need to remove Google's special header from the video using this tool.
7. Google Cache bookmarklet lets you view the cached version of the current page. This may be useful if a page doesn't load because of a server error.
8. Definitions lets you select a word or an expression from a web page and get the definition from Google.
9. Blog links shows all the blogs that link to the current page. Web links is the same bookmarklet adapted for links from the entire web.
10. Send text by SMS - this only works in the US and you must know the name of the mobile carrier.
11. Highlight the words from your Google query in the search results: Highlight. This extremely cool bookmarklet created by Dominique Hazaël-Massieux checks the referral, parse the query from the URL and highlights the words so you can easily find the relevant sections of the web page.
Labels: Tips
roody102 said on July 11, 2007 2:44 PM PDT:
Most of the links to bookmarklets in this post don't work :(
Really? Which ones don't work and what browser do you use? I tested all of them in Firefox and some of them in IE and Opera. Please note that you shouldn't click on the links, bookmark them or drag them to the links toolbar.
roody102 said on July 11, 2007 2:52 PM PDT:
For example "download google video" leads to "can not find page" from blogger.com:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/07/macdownloadlink
I tried also to d&d this link to my toolbar (on FF2 browser), but it's still the same.
said on July 11, 2007 3:07 PM PDT:
That is a good list of handy bookmarklets. /full I find the fullscreen bookmarklet also useful. Just click on it to make videos full screen. It works on most of the video sites.
javascript:%28function%28%29%7bvar%20s,F,j,f,i;s%20=%20%22%22;
F%20=%20document.embeds;for%28j=0;%20j%3cF.length;
%20++j%29%20%7bf%20=%20F%5bj%5d;
s%20=%20f.getAttribute%28%22src%22%29;
%20window.location%20=%20s;%20%7d%20%7d%29%28%29;
Ken said on July 11, 2007 4:09 PM PDT:
One bookmarklet I wish I had was to mark the current page as starred or shared in google reader. If I find a random page out there that I want to share or come back to (my greader starred items) I have to subscribe to its rss feed (if it even has one), go into greader, star/share the link and unsubscribe the feed.
I wish Google would step up their bookmarks features and integrate it with google reader.
Ken,
That's what Google Notebook is for. Google Reader is really just for feeds.
http://www.google.com/notebook
Reggie said on July 11, 2007 4:30 PM PDT:
Thanks for the highlight bookmarklet. It is now on my bookmarks toolbar folder. That saves me typing CTRL-F and retyping the search string again.
Alastair said on July 11, 2007 6:26 PM PDT:
The Web Links bookmarklet is a bit broken. It generates Google searches of the form "link:link:URL".
said on July 12, 2007 2:15 AM PDT:
Well that might be nice for an IE user, but actually the functionality most of the bookmarklets, at least the ones which require you to select text, can be replaced by one single Firefox extension : "Context Search", and the appropriate search engines in the FF searchbar!
said on July 12, 2007 4:36 PM PDT:
Hello,
I also experienced the issue of the bookmarklets not working - in Firefox, via the RSS feed in Google Reader, they all have a url of "javascript:void(0);"
The links on the blog page itself are fine, however.
Mansoor said on July 19, 2007 7:18 PM PDT:
Send Free Sms Text Messages to Canada without specifying the provider.
http://freetext.hopto.org
NiH said on July 27, 2007 8:49 PM PDT:
Those were pretty awesome. Thanks :)
But does anyone know how to create a custom google bookmarklet? Is there any webservice available for that? Or do I have to become an expert on javascript to do so?
Proton said on December 3, 2007 12:32 PM PDT:
Nice, thank you!
I would suggest small change in the "Map this" bookmarklet. Funstion encodeURI() seems to be more appropriate replacement of the escape() used in there. The encodeURI() enables using non-latin characters in the query.
Thanks again for the nice tools!
said on December 15, 2007 4:52 PM PDT:
Happy happy! Every one of these Bookmarklets work for me in SeaMonkey. Without clicking on the links in this article, I simply dragged each link "as is"up to the personal bookmarks toolbar. DONE!
I'm curious to see if these bookmarklets work as well in other browsers where (sadly) there isn't yet support for the Google Toolbar (i.e. Opera---and maybe even Safari for WinXP, who knows, huh?;-)
Thanks for making this so easy!
pink said on December 15, 2007 5:05 PM PDT:
Happy happy! Every one of these Bookmarklets worked for me in Mozilla's SeaMonkey. Without clicking on the links in this article, I simply dragged each link "as is" up to the personal bookmarks toolbar. DONE!
I'm curious to see if these bookmarklets work as well in other browsers where (sadly) there isn't yet support for the Google Toolbar (i.e. Opera---and maybe even Safari for WinXP, who knows, huh?;-)
Didn't know there were other G-Bookmarklets aside from Bookmarks---so Thanks for letting me know and for making this tooooo easy!
Have a Cool Yule;-)
said on December 16, 2007 12:39 AM PDT:
I updated the mapping bookmarklet to open a new window like the Gmail This! I prefer the new page to not move me away from the one I started from:
javascript:popw='';nw=window;d=%22%22+(window.getSelection?window.getSelection(): document.getSelection?document.getSelection(): document.selection.createRange().text);d=d.replace(/\r\n|\r|\n/g,%22 ,%22);if(!d) d=prompt(%22Enter the address:%22, %22%22);if(d!=null) popw=nw.open('http://maps.google.com?q='+escape(d).replace(/ /g,%22+%22), 'test','scrollbars=yes,width=680,height=510,resizable=yes'); if (!document.all) T = setTimeout('popw.focus()',50); void 0
said on February 11, 2008 2:16 PM PDT:
Is there a way to get/modify Map This and Define to open in a new window/tab?
