Some useful bookmarklets

In case you don't know, bookmarklets are bookmarks which run JavaScript code rather than open a specific web page. Here are a collection of bookmarklets I use on a semi-regular basis to speed up searching of frequently used web sites. Bookmarklets can do other things, since they run arbitrary JavaScript code.

To install them click on the hyperlink and drag it to your bookmarks bar (or maybe right/control-click on the link and choose a menu item to add to bookmarks). They may not work in all browsers, but these all work in Safari.

You can use them in one of two ways. First, if you just choose the bookmark it will pop up a dialog asking for the query text, then search the corresponding site for the text you enter. Second, you can select a piece of text on the current web page, then when you choose the bookmarklet it will automatically search the corresponding site for the selected text.

Wikipedia

javascript:x=''+getSelection();if(!x.length){x=prompt('Wikipedia:','')}if(x&&x.length){location.href='http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search='+escape(x)}

Dictionary

javascript:x=''+getSelection();if(!x.length){x=prompt('Dictionary:','')}if(x&&x.length){location.href='http:/dictionary.reference.com/search?q='+escape(x)}

Thesaurus

javascript:x=''+getSelection();if(!x.length){x=prompt('Thesaurus:','')}if(x&&x.length){location.href='http:/thesaurus.reference.com/search?q='+escape(x)}

Google Images

javascript:x=''+getSelection();if(!x.length){x=prompt('Google%20Images:','')}if(x&&x.length){location.href='http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q='+escape(x)}

Google News

javascript:x=''+getSelection();if(!x.length){x=prompt('Google%20News:','')}if(x&&x.length){location.href='http:/news.google.com/news?q='+escape(x)}

Google Maps

javascript:x=''+getSelection();if(!x.length){x=prompt('Google%20Maps:','')}if(x&&x.length){location.href='http://maps.google.com/?q='+escape(x)}

IMDB

javascript:x=''+getSelection();if(!x.length){x=prompt('IMDB:','')}if(x&&x.length){location.href='http:/imdb.com/Find?for='+escape(x)}

Amazon

javascript:x=''+getSelection();if(!x.length){x=prompt('Amazon:','')}if(x&&x.length){location.href='http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search/?keyword='+escape(x)}

eBay

javascript:x=''+getSelection();if(!x.length){x=prompt('eBay:','')}if(x&&x.length){location.href='http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?query='+escape(x)}