25 essential browsing bookmarklets from TechRadar.com

This file contains direct links to the bookmarklets - simply drag and drop the ones you like onto your favourites bar.

Accessibility

It's fun to explore your friends personal web pages. Unless, that is, they're utterly clueless about web design, and use a mix of coloured text and intrusive background images that makes the page almost impossible to read. Fortunately there are some very easy solutions. These accessibility bookmarklets, for instance, can change the background colour or remove images in a single click (though they may not all work if the page uses frames). Paste the JavaScript code into a favourite to give them a try.

Set background to black

Set background to white

Remove background image

Zap all images
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This bookmarklet removes all embedded content from a page: Flash ads, media players, Java applets and more. Refresh the page to bring them back.

Zap plugins
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If you find yourself squinting at a spidery font then use the following bookmarklets to change to something more readable.

Change font to Verdana

Change font to Arial

And this bookmarklet uses the TidyRead site to rework a poorly formatted web page to make it easier to follow. It's drastic and occasionally makes things worse, but is worth a try as a last resort.

Tidy Read
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Links

Links are one of the most important parts of any web page, yet most browsers provide very few tools to help manage them. And that's where bookmarklets can help.

If the link colours are so subdued that you can barely see them, for instance, then click the "Highlight links" bookmarklet to display them with a very obvious yellow background. (Click again to remove it.)

Highlight Links

This one colour-codes links, so that internal links are red, external ones are blue, and links pointing to the current page are orange. If you don't like these colours then change them to whatever you need.

Colour-code Links
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The Linkify bookmarklets converts plain text URLs into clickable hyperlinks, saving you from all that cut and paste hassle.

Linkify
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Sometimes, just occasionally, you might like all links on a page to open in a new window or tab. You can always do the right-click, "Open in New Tab" thing, but it's easier to just click our bookmark and have everything else open in a new window automatically.

Open in New Window
(Source))

Here's an undo, something to get links opening in the same window again.

Open in Same Window
(Source))

If you ever need a list of links on a page then use this bookmarklet to display one.

List All Links

And this bookmarklet will hunt down and display all the email links it finds on the current page, handy if you can't spot them yourself.

List email links
(Source))

Navigation

If you want to go back two or three pages then your browser history menu will take you there in a couple of clicks. But these bookmarklets will do it in one.

Back 2

Back 3

Going back a page just to check something can be a hassle, as you then have to step forward and reload the next page. As an alternative, use this bookmarklet to open your previous page in a new window or tab.

Previous page in new window
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Another option is to open a new window or tab with a copy of whatever page you're viewing, so you can follow links on one and quickly return to the original page in the other.

Duplicate page
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This bookmarklet will back you out of a lengthy URL, one directory at a time. So as you click it you'll move from www.domain.com/directory/page.html, to www.domain.com/directory, then www.domain.com (if the site allows this, anyway).

Up

If you can't decide where to go next then click here, and the bookmarklet will take you to a random link on the current page.

Random link

Alternatively, use our next bookmarklet to view robots.txt for the current site. This file is used to tell search engines that they shouldn't index particular areas of a site, and may point you to interesting hidden areas. Robots.txt

Handy shortcuts

Perhaps the best bookmarklets are those that work with other web sites to deliver powerful features at a click. Do you ever need to take screen grabs of web pages, say? Don't launch a graphics editor - this bookmarklet and kwout.com deliver everything you need.

Capture screen grab
See Kwout.com) for more.

You don't have to waste time manually visiting a site like TinyURL, then using copy and paste to create a shorter address. This bookmarklet will give you a simpler URL for the current page at a single click.

Short URL
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IE8 adds new features to help translate web pages, but it's still quicker to use this bookmarklet, which uses Google to automatically translate the current page to English.

Translate
(Source))

And PrintWhatYouLike.com offers an easy way to reformat web pages and ensure you only print (or save) the content you need.

Print What You Like