Web: Bookmarklets

There's always some technology for the web or web-browsers that I haven't seen before, and this week it's bookmarklets. Bookmarklets are little in-line javascript programs that execute when you choose them from your bookmarks menu or bookmarks bar. (Or favorites, if you're an Internet Explorer user.)

My goal was to find a way where, when given an URL like:
  www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_228.html
I could easily get to:
  www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_229.html
without there being a link on the page and without having to hand-edit the URL.

Bookmarklets allow this. Basically, I wrote two little scripts that pick up the current web page's URL, scan backwards through it until they find a number and then either increases or decreases that number, and loads the resulting page. When you put them on the bookmark bar, it's like having two little extra controls that do exactly what I wanted. Since this probably has no useful number in its URL, you may want to make them bookmarks before you try them. If that sounds like too much trouble, try the "Show Images" bookmarklet, which should show every image on this page in a column.

Here's the one to Increase the current URL.
Here's the one to Decrease the current URL.

In many browsers, you can simply drag the above two links to your bookmark bar. Here are some more that I really liked, written by others. Some of these won't work fully unless you use them from a bookmark.

Look Up currently selected text at Dictionary.com
Check Freshness of the current web page.
Translate Page with Google's translation service.
Translate Page with Babelfish.
Show Images on the current page in a column.
Open Images directly linked to by current page.