March 2, 2000

10:35 PM

The new google bookmarklets are amazingly simple and useful. I've been wanting to do something like this for a while, and after seeing them, I decided to rework the code to make the web-based spellchecker I always wanted. If you bookmark this: Dictionary.com bookmarklet, highlight a word on a web page, and hit the bookmark for it, it will load that word into dictionary.com's site. It's IE-only, but I'll redo the Netscape one too.
posted by mathowie (7 comments total)

Here's the Dictionary.com bookmarklet for Netscape. These should work in Windows, let me know if they work on the Mac at all...
posted by mathowie at 10:43 PM on March 2, 2000

Cool... how'd you make these? JavaScript?
posted by hobbes at 12:15 AM on March 3, 2000

Yeah, bookmarklets are just javascript functions that run in a hyperlink or bookmark.

I realized after triumphantly getting these to work, Dictionary.com already has them on their site.

They operate identically though, and I'll rework the script tomorrow to make the dictionary lookup words open in a new browser window instead of the same window.

I encourage everyone to use them on this site. I just looked up "triumphantly" to double-check my spelling.
posted by mathowie at 12:30 AM on March 3, 2000

This is the coolest hack I've seen in ages. I'm sure this will turn into a long list of "wow, this is cool" comments.

Something tells me Dictionary.com is going to be getting a lot more hits in the future. Where do I buy stock in this company? Hmmmm......

The search and spelling applications for this are obvious. What other things are people using this for?
posted by y6y6y6 at 4:23 AM on March 3, 2000

Backflip uses bookmarklets to help you bookmark pages. There are a couple of other Web.apps that use them as well. You will be seeing more widespread use of them as folks in the development community learn about them.

Here's my humble bookmarklet effort: kottke.org cam.
posted by jkottke at 5:38 AM on March 3, 2000

That is a very pretty little tool. For the record, it works on Netscape (4.07, no less) on the Mac.
posted by mrmorgan at 6:52 AM on March 3, 2000

Matt, just so you know: the Dictionary.com bookmarklet in your original post does not pop up in IE 4.5 on the Mac.
posted by Awol at 9:40 AM on March 3, 2000