Quick Tip: Super-charge Chrome’s “Home” button with bookmarklets

Bookmarklets are little bits of javascript that live in your bookmarks toolbar and perform advanced functions in your browser. For example, the note-taking service Evernote provides its users with two ways to add content to their account. They can install a native browser extension, or they can use a bookmarklet. Extensions are often more advanced than bookmarklets, but they can also hog computing resources because many of them are “always on,” even when you’re not using them.

Bookmarklets, on the other hand, are always off until you click them. I gravitated toward fewer extensions and more bookmarklets when I started using a CR-48 from Google as my full-time computer. It doesn’t have the power that many modern laptops pack because the hardware was meant as a cheap way for Google to get its Chrome OS into as many hands as possible.

That means that if you’re using too many extensions on a CR-48, it has a tendency to slooow dooown.

A lot.

That’s why I rediscovered my love for bookmarklets. They provide much of the functionality of resource-intensive extensions, but they don’t bring my computer to a screeching halt. If you’ve got a super-fast laptop, performance may not be an issue for you. But consider privacy: it’s easier for extensions to collect data about you, and much harder for the average geek to peek at what an extension is doing. Bookmarklets are open to anyone’s curiosity, and all you need to get a clue about what’s going on inside one is a quick tutorial.

I also like bookmarklets because sometimes I’m a screen-space miser and I’ll hide all my bookmarks away. Using this little hack, I can keep my favorite bookmarklet available even when I’m being stingy about screen real estate.

Now, onto the tip (admittedly, the only quick part about this post):

1. Choose your favorite bookmarklet. I use the Read It Later bookmarklet to add blog posts and other content to my account for later reading. Right-click the bookmarklet you want to use and select Edit from the menu. Copy the URL, which will be Javascript when it comes to bookmarklets, to your clipboard. Then click Cancel to make sure you don’t change your bookmarklet.
2. Click the wrench icon to the far right of your address bar and select Options from the menu. In the Basics section (should open by default), find the Home Page settings. Paste the bookmarklet code into the URL box next to Open this page. 
3. Make sure your browser is set to show the Home button by clicking the first checkbox in the Toolbar section, then close the Options tab.
4. Now, whenever you want to add something to your Read It Later account, just click the Home button and voila, it’s added! 

I’ve tested this on Chrome with bookmarklets from Instapaper (both the “add to” and the text reformatting bookmarklets), Tumblr, Posterous, and Evernote, as well. The instructions should be roughly the same for other browsers, so let me know if you try it with Firefox or Safari. If you have a favorite bookmarklet, tell me about it in the comments.

This was originally posted to joeross.tumblr.com.

This was originally posted to joeross.posterous.com.