url bookmarklets

The following JavaScript functions are a short-cut for repetitive hand-editing of URLs. Don't click on these links: instead, drag the links into your toolbar.

I put these bookmarks in a sub-menu called "URL" that sits next to my Bookmarks menu on the toolbar, as pictured to the right. You do that by doing "Edit Bookmarks", making a new folder with these in it, then dragging then dragging that folder to the toolbar.

[ up ]

If the URL contains a "?" search term, this will remove it. Otherwise, it will take off the part of the URL after the last "/". So, when executed successively, it will load the pages:

http://.../AA/BB/CC.html?xx&yy http://.../AA/BB/CC.html http://.../AA/BB/ http://.../AA/
etc.

[ + ]

If the URL contains a number, this increments that number (being careful to pad with the same number of leading zeros.) So, when executed successively, it will load the pages:

http://.../img_0998.jpg http://.../img_0999.jpg http://.../img_1000.jpg http://.../img_1001.jpg
etc.

[ - ]

If the URL contains a number, this decrements the number, as above.

Flickr Image

Sometimes Flickr pages try to prevent you from copying or saving images; they do this by using CSS to overlay a transparent "spaceball.gif" image over the main image, so your copy/drag hits that instead. This bookmarklet extracts the real image from the page and loads it into the window by itself.

YouTube Verify

If a Youtube URL doesn't work because you aren't logged in and the content might be "inappropriate for some users", this bookmarklet will show you the video anyway, and let you decide for yourself what the weasel-word "appropriate" means.

YouTube Search

Pops up a prompt dialog and searches Youtube for it, videos only, no playlists. Saves a few clicks.

YouTube Toggle Wide Mode

Turns "Wide Mode" on or off on Youtube. In Wide Mode, the video is the width of the window, and the "related videos" sidebar is below it.

Search for this image

Google Image search on images like the on you're looking at. If the page has more than one image on it, it searches for the largest one.

Open this image

Find the largest image on the page, and open it. This is useful on iOS when you're trying to copy an image, and you want to copy the URL of the image itself rather than the URL of the enclosing HREF.

Feedly Subscribe

Find the RSS feed of this page and subscribe to it in your Feedly account. If the page has more than one RSS feed on it, takes the shortest of them (in an attempt to get the "posts" feed instead of the "comments" feed.)