You may not be away of bookmarklets which are an underused tool in web designer or developer’s toolbox. A bookmarklet is a a term that merges bookmark and applet to add functionality to a web browser. They can be stored in the bookmark bar of any browser and used from there to perform useful tasks and consist primarily of Javascript code.
As Javascript is synonymous with web development, some clever developers have created some extremely helpful bookmarklets that can improve your day to day work. Here are ten of the best available.
1. Firebug Lite
All web designers and developers should be familiar with Firebug (if for some reason you’re not then go now) and Firebug Lite is a striped down version that works on all browsers. Especially useful for fixing IE issues.
Interesting fact: Firebug inspired the name for Inspect Element.
2. MRI
Enter the name of any selector into the text box and click the MRI button and this bookmarklet will highlight all of those selectors on the page.
3. Design
4. Resize Viewport
Very simple, click on the following links to resize your browser window to these common resolutions. Only works in Firefox but that’s most of you who read Inspect Element.
1024 x 768 | 1280 x 1024 | 1440 x 900 | 1680 x 1050
5. ReCSS
One of the most useful bookmarklets for development is ReCSS. It reloads the CSS file independent of the HTML which speeds up work considerably when you’re only writing CSS code.
6. Save to Delicious
Delicious is one of, if not the most, popular way of saving articles especially in the web design and development community. This bookmarlet provides a quick way to save the current page to Delicious. Give it a go and save this article to Delicious!
Bookmark this page on Delicious
7. Edit Current Website
Sure, you can preview edits of HTML text using Firebug or WebKit’s Web Inspector but this bookmarklet turns the whole page into a WYSIWYG editor. Of course these changes aren’t permanent and are only local to your machine but gives you a good idea of what changing content does to the page.
8. XRAY
Similar to Firebug Lite in that you can inspect elements on a page but much clearer to see what you have selected. Also seems to be quicker.
9. Layout Grid Bookmarklet
Having trouble lining up elements on a page? Andy Budd’s layout grid bookmarklet will come in handy as it overlays a transparent image of a grid, complete with pixel rulers along the X and Y axis.
);void(myBody=document.getElementsByTagName('body')%5B0%5D);if(myDiv!=null){void(myBody.removeChild(myDiv));}else{void(myDiv=document.createElement%20('div'));void(myDiv.id='_grid_div_mrb');void(myDiv.style.background='url(http://www.andybudd.com/images/layoutgrid.png)');void(myDiv.style.position='absolute');void(myDiv.style.width=myBody.offsetWidth+%20'px');void(myDiv.style.height=myBody.offsetHeight+'px');void(myDiv.style.top='0');void(myDiv.style.left='0');void(myBody.appendChild(myDiv));}){kind=link}
10. Favelet Suite
The Favelet Suite bookmarklet is the Swiss Army knife of the web design bookmarklet world. It includes the following features:
- Color List
- Document Tree Chart
- HTML Attribute Viewer
- HTTP Header Viewer
- Hidden Field Modifier
- Javascript Object Tree
- MODIv2
- Mouseover DOM Inspector
- Object Dimensions
- Page Info
- Remove Children
- Resize Fonts
- Ruler
- Show Source
- Style Sheet Tweak
- Style Sheet Viewer