Pump Your Productivity with "Mini Me" Bookmarklets

Tabbed browsing has been a staple of the modern browser for awhile now. The feature is built into Firefox and Safari. Moreover, with the launch of Internet Explorer 7 it's now available to pretty much all.

However, tabbed browsing is sometimes a pain when you want to look up something quickly - for example the weather, sunrise/sunset times, a sports score or your RSS feeds. Of course you can simply open another tab to accomplish this. However, I am now using a new hack that combines bookmarklets, pop-up windows, widgets and mobile web sites in a way that has made me a lot more productive. I use these to look up information a lot.

I know about as much Javascript as I do Japanese. Zilch. But, I do know how to make small edits to code to get by, just as I know how to say sayonara. That's all I had to do to put this system into place

Hawk Wings has two handy bookmarklets that spawn separate "distraction free" Gmail and Google Calendar windows. Once you bookmark them they pop-up in front in IE and Safari but for some reason they load in the back in Firefox.

I have cloned these bookmarklets and adapted them by changing the URL they open and the window size. Each bookmarklet is assigned to either a) mobile-friendly versions of one of my favorite sites or b) a Google widget. The result is instantaneous information! When I want to look up say a sports score, I pop the window. In addition, sometimes I minimize my main browser window and keep "Mini Me" open. This makes it easier to look up Wikipedia articles, for example, while I work on a document. (See screen grab below)

To start using these, simply right click on each one and add to your Favorites/bookmarks. Depending on the browser you're using you might get a warning. Just click ok. If you use Firefox you can even assign keywords to these. If you clone the WeatherBug or sports scores widget and change it to the URL for any widget in this directory, you can run widgets as pop-ups. Most work.

Answers.com Dictionary

CBS Sportsline Scores

Digg

Google

Google Reader

Google Talk

Techmeme

Technorati

WeatherBug

Wikipedia

Comments

[James D Kirk]

Steve are you having challenges with where the window locates on the screen? I've got two monitors, but not sure if that's causing the challenges. Right now the code pops the window under my open window (blah) and in the upper right corner of the monitor, which is where I keep my main browser window (the one I am clicking the js bookmarklet from) so the net result is I have to move my main window to get to the cool sized little window. I see where/how to change the size, but not 100% sure about the screenX and screenY stuff for positioning.

Thanks for any advice!

[Geoff]

Thanks Steve - they work fine for me in Firefox - coming up in front too :-)

[James Joyner]

If you're using Firefox, why not just put Gmail and whatnot in the toolbar? That's what I do for the things I use all the time (blogging widgets, Gmail, Yahoomail, and others).

[James Joyner]

BTW: I frackin' hate capchas. The computers are so sophisticated nowadays that they have to render the "please type this" box into fonts that are virtually indecipherable by humans.

[Wired Dude Dave]

This is like a lightweight google desktop (without search).
very clever.

[Jeremy Kandah]

Great Concept. I think this a step towards the right direction. What I really want is to divide a window up. Put my Gmail in the top 1/2 and Google Calendar in the bottom. Anyone figure that one out yet (guess we could use frames).

[Brian]

@Jeremy: Try this firefox plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4287

[Status Eye Care]

Good Concept.
Have already added 5 of them. Thanks.

[Fred F]

Well let's see.

Instead of using our Tabbed Browser we revert to opening pages in a new window.

Is this looking forward to 22nd Cent. or poss. back to APRIL FIRST 2007 [Date of original post].

Have you bin ad.

Best

F.F.

[tek428]

Very clever!!

I like it!

http://www.bloggingwv.com

[Rafael Zayas]

Your Google Talk popout just replaced the full client on my computer. Love the tabbed chatting.

[Bryan]

I'm not sure how a bookmark that triggers a popup is better than one that opens in a new tab - I guess maybe the advantage is the size? In any case, for things like Google, Wikipedia (really anything with a search) I find Firefox's keyword feature to be far more useful. Open a new tab and type in the keyword with the search term - no need for mouse tomfoolery. It's the only real feature that has me tied to Firefox now.

[phil]

It opens at the back in my firefox. Whats the solution ?

[Patrick Murphy]

i really like the google reader and digg popups and would like to try to get some more from the directory that was given above but i can not get them to work. whenever i try to copy another widgets' url and paste it and then try it again, it just comes up in another tab, which defeats the point, in my opinion.

any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks!

[n1c0]

To bring the window in front in Firefox, you can modify the code like this (without the quotes) :
- before "window.open" add "var w="
- at the end, just before the closing brace "}" add "setTimeout(function(){w.focus();}, 500);"

Note : one useful mini site is http://m.rememberthemilk.com the mobile version of the famous task manager.

Here is a bookmarklet to quickly add a task RTM : Add task

[Abhijeet]

can anyone plz tell me how to hack a yahoo email passwords ???

thankx .. lukin fwd towards positive results....

[AG]

here's one for the DC metro.
javascript:(function(){javascript:window.open('http://www.wmata.com/metrorail/Stations/showpid/showpid_refresh.cfm?station=96','Courthouse','width=300,height=300,location=no,toolbar=no,status=no,menubar=no,hotkeys=no,directories=no,resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes,screenX='+(screen.availWidth-410)+',screenY='+0);})();