The word bookmarklet is an amalgamation of bookmark and applet, and this describes it pretty well. It is a small application (‘applet’) which is stored as the URL of a browser bookmark, usually as JavaScript.

Bookmarklets add functionality to a web browser, without the need to install any third party extensions. Firefox is an example of a browser for which there are literally thousands of extensions available ((More on this in another post)), but each of these extensions require a small amount of resource to run, and when many are installed it can lead to a slow browsing experience and long launch times.

Perhaps even more handy than this is the potential for bookmarklets to add functionality to browsers which do not allow any kind of third party ad-on, for example the Safari app on the iPhone. The following is a list of my favourite iPhone bookmarklets:

• LastPass is a cross platform password manager. It stores all of your passwords in an encrypted format, and allows access to them via a Windows application, a Firefox extension or a web interface. This means that I am able to set long, random passwords and access them from anywhere. Lastpass has a couple of handy bookmarklets as well, which auto-fills log in forms when activated. No link is provided for this bookmarklet, as you need to first sign up for and start using LastPass.
• NewsGator is an online service which synchronises with the popular Mac and iPhone feed reader NetNewsWire. When browsing a page which has a feed associated with it, this bookmarklet will add it to your NewsGator account. As with the LastPass bookmarklet this requires a signup first.
• iTransmogrify by Joe Maller translates embedded flash content into something recognisable by the iPhone – this can be used to provide a link to content in the YouTube application or to play various flash based MP3 content. Here is the bookmarklet. To add it directly from your iPhone, bookmark the link, and then edit it to remove the ‘http://appleton.me?’ section (so that it starts at ‘javascript’).
• iCopy is a basic copy/paste implementation for Safari. It allows for the URL of a page, of for a paragraph of text from that page to be copied, and pasted to another web page or to an email. It isn’t quite the full blown copy and paste functionality that the iPhone needs, but it is a good start. Here is the bookmarklet. As before, bookmark the link and remove the ‘http://appleton.me?’ section from the front.
• Short URL takes the URL for the current web page, and creates a mini version using bit.ly. This URL can then be used in a Twitter Tweet. Here is the bookmarklet.
• Find in this page is a simple one – it allows you to search for text on a web page, and highlights the results. Here is the bookmarklet.