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.
