Remember bookmarklets? I remember getting online as a young person and being really amazed by the power of these. I hardly even knew what Javascript was back around the year 2000, but I knew these things were cool.

As I got older and started to work on the web I remember using some very powerful bookmarklets like Firebug Lite. It launched a trimmed down version of the Firebug developer tools suite in browsers outside of Firefox. That was a big deal back then when I was still having to make things work in internet explorer 7 and 8. It felt like magic.

Browsers are a lot different than they used to be. They are some of the most sophisticated pieces of software you may ever use. Today they have robust and powerful plugin and extension ecosystems that make the magic of bookmarklets feel pretty ancient. Extensions are simply more powerful. They integrate much better to the browser, as well as the pages they work on. Extensions can do a whole log of things that bookmarklets just cannot do. Extensions can access protected browser features like dedicated storage, background processing, tab and window control, etc.

Extensions are really impressive and useful kit for anyone using a web browser. Sometimes though, you just need to throw a little javascript at a page to make it do something. That's where bookmarklets still shine. I don't need a whole extension to generate a link to specific text on a page, but I can do that with a bookmarklet pretty quickly. Those are the kinds of bookmarklets I want to collect: things that enhance the page I'm on, or fix the page I'm on, but don't require access to the browser features that extensions offer.

It has been really fun collecting these over time and learning how other folks out on the internet are still using them. I've even written a couple myself. Bookmarklets really take me back to my early days on the web when it was all super new and exciting. Unfortunately, I don't know the source of all of the bookmarklets in my collection, but where possible I've tried to give credit or link to the sources.

I have made my bookmarklet collection available here in my Bookmarklets page. Try them out!