Skip the Middleman

Always one for time saving techniques, I ran across these several years ago. Bookmarklets, or Favelets, are javascript bookmarks that perform some action instead of just taking you to a web site. Say for instance you are reading an article and you want more information about a topic. You can highlight the word/phrase and click on a bookmarklet sitting in your links bar in IE for instance and get the information you need right away instead of having to open another browser window, go to Google (or Wikipedia, or Onelook, etc) and then typing in the phrase and waiting for the results. With these you're directed right to the answer page! Skip the middleman (or web page as the case may be). There are a number of pre-coded bookmarklets on Bookmarklets.com, or SquareFree , but I think the most powerful one is a bookmarklet that actually creates other bookmarklets like this one.

I have 10 on my links bar that I use daily for searches on my employer's intranet sites and several that I use at home for Internet-based searches and other functions.

There is also a good collection for web designers to do things like validate web pages, change the "view resolution", add a grid image for layout, and MANY more…

A few seconds saved here and there add up to a few minutes that can be enjoyed doing other things…