As the Web continues to be a part of our everyday lives, there's an increasing need to enrich the browsing experience and save time. Most Web browsers provide some kind of toolbar to enable access to one-click bookmarks. Mozilla and Netscape Navigator call this the Personal Toolbar, while Internet Explorer refers to it as the Favorites bar. However, most people rarely exploit this feature, and many choose to hide the toolbar altogether.
When you first use your Web browser, you'll probably find this toolbar contains links to a handful of popular Web sites, but it has far more potential. Using small pieces of javascript, you can directly control various aspects of the browser window or the Web page you're currently viewing. These snippets of javascript are often referred to as 'favelets' or 'bookmarklets'.
Here, we'll show you how to create favelets that resize and reposition your browser window, and more. We'll be working with Internet Explorer, although most of what we cover should work in any Mac browser that can deal with javascript. You'll also need access to a text editor, such as BBEdit, to create the favelets in the first place.As Mac OS X users found with the Finder's new toolbar, one-click access to frequently used documents and folders saves a lot of time. The same is true for Web pages, so it's surprising that so few people take advantage of their browser's favourites toolbar. While we've concentrated on favelets here, you can also add any number of Web pages to such toolbars.
After adding a link, it's a good idea to rename it, using as few characters as possible, prior to recognition being lost. Like the Finder's toolbar, your most often used links should be on the left, as these will always be visible. Should the browser window shrink and not be able to display them all, a familiar '*<#' symbol provides access to the remaining links.
There are also a number of online resources with ready-made favelets for you to experiment with. Google offers a useful pair at www.google.com/options/buttons.html. Google Search prompts a small search box when clicked and the results page is shown once you've entered the text and hit return. Meanwhile, 'Google Scout' delivers a results page that contains pages similar to the one you're currently viewing. While neither works any differently than using the Google home page, both will save you time if you perform numerous searches.
Centricle has expanded on this by offering similar favelets for Google Groups, Google Images and also other popular online searches, such as eBay, Dictonary.com and Theasaurus.com. Note that the 'Search for Selected' favelets won't work in Internet Explorer for Mac, although they're fine in Mozilla. The address of this site's favelets page is centricle.com/tools/favelets.
Tentek Ãelik has a site at www.favelets.com that contains numerous validation favelets that check the current page against Web standards. Particularly impressive is the multivalidator, which returns a frames-based page with your original Web page, and the results for link checking, along with HTML and CSS compliance.
Finally, bookmarklets.com has hundreds of favelets, but many require either a particular browser, or a particular type of Web site (for instance, some don't work with a frames-based site, while others require it). Also note that many of the 'page look' favelets won't work on modern sites that make use of style sheets. Favelets are free to download and edit, so experiment and make your own. Aside from the odd browser quirk, little can go wrong when creating new ones, although take care not to use smart quotes, or add any spaces, including before and after the contents, when dragging them to a Web browser.
Click 'Next Page' below for the step-by-step guide...Author: Craig Grannell
Enhancing your Web browser with favelets