Depending on the terms you search for, you may end up with results from YouTube, Google News, Google+, Google Images or other products that Google has hard coded into the search results. That’s fine if those results are relevant to the search term. More often than not though, they are not.

Engineers from Facebook, Twitter and other social networking companies have now released a Don’t Be Evil bookmarklet and browser extension to make Google’s search results more impartial and relevant at the same time.

Once you have dragged the bookmarklet to your bookmark bar or bookmarks folder you can run it whenever you have performed a Google search.

Below are two screenshots. The first is a copy of a standard search for AT&T on Google, the second how the page looks like once you have run the bookmarklet.

The bookmarklet has replaced the Google+ listing with the more relevant Twitter account listing. We need to look at how relevancy is computed to make sure that it does not just favor other social networking sites over Google. According to the developers, their tool checks Google Search for the term to select the first social networking listing in the standard results as the most relevant term. Standard result means a page that Google has not hardcoded into the search results.

The bookmarklet will also analyze people and pages results on the right side with relevant results

and the suggestions when you start typing a name into the search form.

It is interesting to note that the bookmarklet enables the feature for the session, and not only for the current page that you are on. Results are automatically adjusted if you use Google Search functionality on the same page again.

Is this making the search results on Google more relevant? The answer should be yes if you look at a pool of users. When it comes down to the individual user, it depends solely on that user’s preference. Some users do not want to see social signals in the results at all, others may be using Google+ exclusively or a mixture of services. Users should not turn this into a Google vs Facebook vs Twitter vs Whatever fight. Instead, they should look at what they want their search results to be and voice that opinion loud and clear.

How they do that? By switching to another search engine for instance if they feel that Google Search has deteriorated in the past year. If users flock to other search engines, then Google may be willing to reanalyze their latest strategies and may return to impartial search results.

The developers have created a browser extension for Google Chrome that automates the process. You can download it only directly from the Focus on the user website.

Here is a video demonstration of the bookmarklet.

Keep in mind that while not officially released by Facebook or Twitter, it still has their stamp all over it. I suggest you read Giga Om’s comment on this.

What’s your take on this? Voice your opinion in the comments.

Microsoft’s Translation service is without doubt not as popular as Google’s service. The service is available over at Microsoft Translator. It works pretty much as Google Translate works. The translation service auto-detects the original content language and offers to translate it into one of the supported languages.

Users can enter text or website addresses at the translator site to get the textual contents translated.

Microsoft has released a bookmarklet for their translation service recently that everyone can use to translate web contents on the fly. The bookmarklet is available on this page.

You first need to select the language that you want the original text to be translated to. The pulldown menu lists many languages, from English and German to Spanish, Portuguese or Japanese.

You then need to drag and drop the bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmark’s bar or bookmarks. You can alternatively right-click the link on the Translator Bookmarklet page to bookmark it this way. Depending on the frequency of use, you may want to place it prominently in the browser.

A click on the bookmarklet on a foreign language page invokes the translation. The bookmarklet adds a small toolbar to the top of the page that is visualizing the translation process and the original and destination language.

A click on a language displays a selection menu where it can be switched to another language. That’s handy if the automatic language detection did not detect the correct language used on the page, or where you may want the text to be translated into a different language.

The original text on the page is displayed whenever you move the mouse over a translated sentence.

Microsoft’s Translator bookmarklet is a handy tool for users who need to translate web contents regularly. Google is also offering translate bookmarklets for their Google Translate translation service. (via)

The Firefox add-on Readable, a direct port of the bookmarklet Readable, falls into the same category of tools such as TidyRead, Paragrasp or Readability for the Firefox web browser. The basic principle is always the same. The script removes elements on the screen that are not necessary to access the core information posted on the website. Some do that automatically with barely any configuration options, others like Readable offer an impressive collection of options to create a custom solution best suited for each individual usage scenario.

The Firefox extension places an icon in the Firefox status bar that triggers the action. A click on the icon extracts the main text from the page and overlays a bare-bones version of it on the screen.

The main text, links and images are included in the new version, everything else is removed automatically.

A right-click on the icon opens the configuration menu with options to change the font type and size, the width of the overlay box, the inner margin and the color theme.

It can happen that the add-on is not able to extract the information properly. You can then highlight the information that you want to read first before you click on the icon in the status bar. The add-on will then process only the highlighted parts of the website and ignore all other web elements.

The bookmarklet offers the same functionality. Well, that’s not entire true as it lists more configuration options than the Firefox extension.

Among the additional options are the inclusion of video contents, transparency settings, text line height and image alignment.

So what should you use: The Firefox add-on or the bookmarklet? The bookmarklet offers several advantages, mainly better configuration options, the fact that it is not loaded into memory during browser start and that is is compatible with other web browsers as well. The small downside of the bookmarklet is that its configuration page is not that easily accessible.

Interested users can download the Readable bookmarklet from the official website, and the Readable add-on from the Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

This starts with pretty basic annoyances, blinking text for instance or background music which are thankfully more or less a thing of the past. It goes one with annoyances that many modern websites have, exit popups, tracking cookies, articles that are split into multiple pages to increase pageviews or links that use a custom color to make them harder to detect.

Bookmarklets for Zapping Annoyances is a collection of web browser bookmarklets to get rid of specific annoyances. Bookmarklets are small programs that affect (for instance change, add or remove features) the active website when they are executed.

The website lists 20 bookmarklets along with descriptions of what they do and in which browser they can be used in. The website itself appears to be relatively old since it lists Netscape as one of the browsers and not Google Chrome or Safari. Chance is however high that the scripts will work in all modern web browsers.

The bookmarklets need to be dragged and dropped to the browser’s bookmark’s toolbar or a folder of the bookmarks.

Probably the most interesting from today’s point of view are the following bookmarklets:

• zap images – replaces all images on the website with its alternate text.
• printer friendly – tries to find and load a printer friendly version of the page
• restore context menu – re-enables the context menu if a page has blocked access to it
• zap cookies – removes cookies that have been added by the website

I have tested several of the bookmarklets and they all worked flawlessly. Interested users find all 20 over at Squarefree.

Radbox offers a different solution for this, and several other related, situations. The online service basically collects, or saves, information about videos that you want to watch at a later time, with options to do watch those saved videos at any time at their website, or a compatible RSS reader.

That’s helpful for users who get video links regularly that they cannot watch immediately, but also for users who like to visit multiple video portals to find new interesting videos (the type that collects first and watches later).

The main way of saving online videos to your Radbox account is with the help of a bookmarklet. Just click on the bookmarklet whenever you are on a page with videos. But the bookmarklet is not the only way of adding videos to the account.

Users can add videos by email. The Extras page of their account lists a secret email address that they can use to save videos to their account. They can for instance forward an email with a video link to their Radbox email address. Video links of supported services are automatically parsed and the videos added to the video list of the account.

Another option is the integration of Radbox in Google Reader. The configuration adds a link to Radbox to Google Reader which, when clicked, saves the videos on the page to the Radbox account. The service supports way over one hundred video services, from Youtube over Gametrailers and Justin.tv to The Guardian, Bravo TV and Fox Sports.

Lets talk about accounts for a second. New users can create a Radbox account by entering an email address and password. No verification or additional details are required.

All videos that have been saved to the account are listed on the main account page first, from where they can be moved to the favorites or archives later on.

A click on a video opens the embedded video on a new page. Video controls are taken from the hosting video portal, and additional options added by Radbox. It is for instance possible to visit the video source, share it with friends at Twitter, Facebook or per email, display the video description or add it to the favorites, trash or archives.

The other videos that are currently saved on the user’s frontpage are displayed below the playing video. A click on any of them loads them directly on the same page.

Radbox offers a rich media RSS feed for videos that can be added to compatible RSS readers such as Google Reader or Boxee so that it is theoretically not necessary to visit the Radbox page again after the account has been setup and the RSS feed url copied.

Especially the extra features, like RSS integration, make Radbox more than just an online tool to save and watch videos from multiple video sources. Is it enough to use the service regularly? That depends largely on the amount of videos and video links a user receives and discovers throughout the day. If the count is high enough it may be worth it.

A lot of add-ons that have been created for the purpose of downloading videos from Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook or Dailymotion stop working, because of the missing Flash plugin.

The solution? Either hunt for an add-on that works despite the lack of Flash, or use a bookmarklet like that offered on Deturl for all video downloading needs.

A bookmarklet has two major advantages over add-ons and extensions: First, It does not need to run in the background. That usually saves some memory, disk space and maybe even some cpu cycles depending on how the add-on functions. Second, it is browser independent and compatible with all modern web browsers.

The Deturl bookmarklet supports many of the most popular portals including Youtube, Dailymotion, Facebook, Vimeo or Gametrailers, and yes, even a few adult video sites are supported by it.

To start, users need to drag and drop the bookmarklet offered on the Deturl website to their bookmarks, or one of the browser toolbars. It is usable from that moment on. Now it is possible to click on the bookmarklet whenever a video page is visited. The bookmarklet tries to recognize the video on the page. For some video portals like Youtube or Vimeo, download links are displayed on the same page in a small stripe on top of the screen. Depending on the video site, one or multiple formats are displayed for download. Videos are linked as direct downloads, and users need to right-click the videos and select save from the context menu to save the videos to the local hard drive.

For some video sites, the stripe is not available. It will instead redirect the request to a page on the developer website. The page containing the video is analyzed thoroughly, and download links are displayed if videos are found. This is the case for Gametrailers for instance.

It can also happen that the video is not supported by the service. In this case no download links are displayed.

The bookmarklet detects videos on third party sites as well. Even multiple videos on third party sites are supported. In this case, a selection of all supported and detected videos is displayed on the website of the service, giving the user the choice to select one or multiple for download.

The bookmarklet is compatible with a lot of sites, and most users should find it sufficient for all their video downloading needs. Only users who want to download videos from unsupported sites need to use a different software to download videos from those sites as well. (via Caschy)

A pdf document on the other hand includes everything, which makes it easier to transfer it to other devices or send it to work colleagues or friends.

But how do you turn a web page into a pdf document? One of the easiest options is the Joliprint bookmarklet, which is available for all modern web browsers that support bookmarklets.

Bookmarklets, what’s that again? A bookmarklet is basically a bookmark. But instead of pointing to a website, it contains JavaScript code that interacts with the active website on activation.

This bookmarklet turns a web page automatically into a pdf document. The best part about it is that it will do everything automatically. All that you need to do is to click on the bookmarklet and watch the magic happen.

Even better is the fact that it strips the page of unnecessary elements like advertisements or menus so that you end up with the bare article only.

The pdf document keeps the formatting, links and pictures of the article, but turns the article itself into a two column article.

The bookmarklet requires an active Internet connection, as it queries the Joliprint server which handles the converting. The web page is automatically downloaded to the default download location set in the web browser.

The Joliprint bookmarklet requires no installation. Just drag and drop the icon from the Joliprint website to a bookmarks toolbar or folder. (via Lifehacker)

The problems boil down to the large number of privacy related settings and the ever changing nature of the network which intentionally or unintentionally makes privacy a complicated matter for users of all experience levels.

Reclaim Privacy have created a bookmarklet that can scan a Facebook account to evaluate the privacy settings. The bookmarklet is easy to use which is a big advantage these days.

All that Facebook users need to do is to drag the bookmarklet to their bookmarks to have it at hand when needed. They then need to visit Facebook and log in as usual.

Once they are in their account they can click the bookmarklet to initiate the privacy scan.

The scan will perform six different checks:

• If the Facebook user opted out of the Instant Personalization feature
• If the personal information are restricted to friends or closer
• If the contact information are restricted to friends or closer
• If all friends, tags and connections information are restricted to friends or closer
• Friends are protected from accidentally sharing personal information
• That all applications that could leak personal information are blocked.

A results listing is displayed on top of the Facebook page indicating the privacy level of the six checks.

If you want to check your Facebook Privacy settings visit Reclaim Privacy for the bookmarklet.

This ranges from basic commands like performing searches in various search engines and sites like Google, Wikipedia, IMDB or Flickr, social commands that bookmark the page at Delicious, share the page at Facebook or tweet the current page to Twitter, Seo related commands that perform specific searches that are relevant to search engine optimizers, url shortening commands or webmaster related commands like validating a website, registering a domain name or displaying a ruler on the page to measure elements.

These options alone would be very nice but Quix has another feature that makes it even more useful: The ability to extend the command set. The syntax that can be used to extend Quix is described on the Extend Quix page. Each Quix command consists of three blocks, the command, the executable and the description. The command is basically the command that is issued by the user in the Quix prompt. The executable is either

1. a URL (this doesn’t have to be a http:// URL, it can be any URL, like mailto:, or even tweetie:)
2. a single line of javascript code, prefixed with javascript:
3. a link to a javascript file, prefixed with script:
4. a link to a stylesheet, prefixed with style:

The available replacement tokens are:

%s
Replaced by any search terms that were entered after the command and / or any text that was selected when the command was issued.
%r
Replaced by the URL you were on when the command was issued.
%rs
Replaced by a bit.ly shortened version of the URL you were on when the command was issued.
%d
Replaced by the domain you were on when the command was issued.
%t
Replaced by the title of the page you were on when the command was issued.

Quix offers several benefits over running a plugin or add-on that offers a similar functionality. It is browser independent, does not take up memory or processing power when it is not running and will not cause stability, performance or security issues that add-ons or plugins can cause. Quix is available from the the project’s website.

The Printliminator bookmarklet offers an easy way of removing elements from a website before printing it. The bookmarklet needs to be executed while the website is active. It will display some controls in the upper right corner of the screen. The main controls on the other hand are available with the mouse. Elements on the page will be marked with a red rectangle by moving the mouse around.

Website before optimization for print:

Website after optimization to save printer ink:

A click with the left mouse button will remove the active red rectangle from the website. This includes all elements that are contained in the rectangle at that time. The rectangle will be removed and if that clears a row in the page the remaining content will be moved up. It usually takes a few seconds to remove all elements on the website that are not needed for the print out. This can save a lot of printer ink especially if print outs are generated on a regular basis.

The controls in the upper right corner can be used to instantly remove all graphics from the page, to undo the last action, send the website to the printer or apply a printing stylesheet which will remove some elements and maximize the text to the web browser window. Printliminator should work in all web browsers that support bookmarklets.

The Firefox add-on and bookmarklet PageZipper provides a solution to Internet users who are fed up with those websites. It’s most basic function is to append the next page to the existing one once the PageZipper button has been pressed once while the tab of the website is active in the web browser. The next page will then be automatically appended from then on until the tab is closed or the user navigates away from the starting url (e.g. by clicking on a link).

PageZipper displays an icon in the upper right corner of the screen that can be used to navigate the different pages that have been loaded. A more comfortable solution is to use the Ctrl [down or up] Arrow key to navigate the pages. The same keyboard shortcut can also be used to quickly navigate between images on a website again with the added benefit that the next page is automatically added to the end of the current one. This makes it much easier to navigate in image galleries. PageZipper can also automatically resize images so that they fit the browser window.

The bookmarklet works basically the same way as the Firefox add-on. This actually means that it does not make lots of sense to use the Firefox add-on as it does not offer any kind of benefit over the bookmarklet. Missing options that would make the Firefox add-on worth the install would be keyboard shortcuts to turn on and off the Pagezipper function on a page and a whitelist to automatically turn it on when visiting specific pages.These features are currently missing and it would be nice to see them added in a future update.

The Firefox add-on is available at the Mozilla website while the bookmarklet can be dragged and dropped in a web browser toolbar from the developer’s website.

Back in 2008 we reviewed a Firefox add-on called Text Area Resizer & Mover which did a great job of resizing textareas. Not only the ones that were to small but also the ones that were to big. It was even possible to move the textarea but this often caused problems with the site layout.

Textarea++ is a new experimental add-on for the Firefox web browser that offers a similar functionality except for moving textareas on the screen. It has a few aces up its sleeve though making it interesting enough to justify a review. Textareas can be resized by simply moving the mouse cursor to the lower right corner. The textarea can then be increased or decreased in size. The developer claims that it works with all textareas even those that are loaded dynamically and we have not found a textarea during our tests that would make that claim invalid.

Another interesting option is the addition of a scrollbar for textareas where more text than the visible limit can handle has been entered. This scrollbar is added even if scrollbar functionality has been locked by the webmaster.

Textarea++ is an interesting add-on for users who regularly post on websites that offer an improper textarea for that task. Users who prefer a bookmarklet find the Form Text Resizer bookmarklet at The Man In Blue page. And there are also quite a few userscripts, for example that by Julien Couvreur that provide a similar functionality.

Update: Textarea++ has been discontinued. Firefox users can instead install the Resizable Textarea add-on.

The features that are added are manifold for a userscript / bookmarklet. PBtweet will display conversations in chain balloons which makes it much easier to follow them on Twitter. It will also remove redundant tweets automatically, add more messages automatically once the end of the page has been reached, insert new messages automatically at the top, expand shortened urls, offer picture previews and indicators and provide access to actions like translating and replying to messages.

The developers have created a demonstration video that is showcasing the functionality of PBTweet which is embedded below. It gives a great visual overview of the features offered by the bookmarklet / userscript.

Interested users find installation instructions and downloads at the developer’s website.

The main problem with pagination is that it limits the amount of content on each page forcing the user to click on one of the buttons to be taken to the next or previous page of the website to access new content. Some extensions and scripts are available that automatically load the new content once the user reaches the end of the page.

Another alternative is provided by the SiteFlow bookmarklet. The bookmarklet recognizes the headlines of the active page (which would be the titles here at Ghacks for example) and displays them in an overlay on top. It offers previous and next buttons which will load previous or next pages of the website both in its interface but also on the screen.

A click on a headline will take the user right to the beginning of the article.

Keyboard shortcuts are available to perform the following operations:

• Go to next page [right arrow key]
• Go to previous page [left arrow key]
• Return to first page [Shift Home]
• Skip to last page [Shift End]
• Jump to next headline [CTRL down arrow]
• Jump to previous headline [CTRL up arrow]

The keyboard shortcuts to flip pages come in handy in many occasions as it only takes one key to perform the action. SiteFlow is compatible with many modern web browsers including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari.

Readability is a bookmarklet that aids the Internet user in improving the online reading experience. We have discussed other options before like the Tidyread add-on for the Firefox web browser or Washer which turns colors into grayscale for better readability.

Readability is a little bit different as it offers some choices during the creation of the bookmarklet. The reader can select an individual style (newspaper, ebook, novel and terminal), size (small, medium, large and extra-large) and margin (narrow, medium, wide and extra-wide) to improve online reading. The bookmarklet will use the parameters that the user selects during configuration.

But Readability will not only change the text that is displayed on the website; It will also remove all the clutter – and by all we mean everything from advertisement, sidebars and comments – from the page so that only the title, images and text remains. Below is a screenshot of the original article HP Photosmart Premium All in one of Otakugadgets.com and the same article after having used the Readability bookmarklet with the ebook, medium, medium settings.

You can configure and bookmark the Readability bookmarklet (via Shellcity) to improve online reading at the developer’s website.

Toggle Em All is a solution that works in all tested web browsers (which were Firefox 3.x, Opera 9.x and Internet Explorer 8). The bookmarklet should work in most web browsers that have not been tested as well. Here is a short explanation of bookmarklets. They are small pieces of JavaScript code that can be added to the bookmarks of the web browser (or executed right in the address bar). Clicking on the bookmarklet will execute the code on the active website. In the case of the Toggle Em All bookmarklet it would mean that all check boxes would be ticked except for those that are already selected as those would be deselected.

To install it simply go to the Toggle Em All website. You have the option to drag and drop the bookmarklet to the bookmark’s toolbar or to right-click it and select to add the link to the bookmarks / favorites.

Once it has been added it is functional. A click on the new bookmark will reverse all check boxes on the active webpage. Users of the Firefox web browser can also take a look at the Check All add-on which offers better customizability as it allows to select the checkboxes that should be processed (in contrast to all or nothing offered by the bookmarklet).

If you head over to Twitter and log into your account you most likely will see links of shortening services. While they make links shorter so that you can save chars they also hide the real address of the link which in its extreme could be used to lure users to a website they do not want to visit. This can have serious consequences depending on the location or place the links are accessed: Think of following a link leading to an adult site at work.

Long URL Please is a experimental Firefox extension that turns urls of shortening services to their original one. It currently supports about 30 different services with more being added regularly.

The developers have created a bookmarklet as well which can be used if you work with other web browsers. Some users have claimed that the extension dropped the performance while surfing while others have not experienced it. It might depend on the speed of the computer and Internet connection.

If you want to download Youtube videos as mp4 files right now you can use one of two options. The first is provided by a bookmarklet that can be used in Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer. The Get Bookmarklet [via Google OS]has to be saved as a bookmark, best way would be to drag it into the bookmarks toolbar for fast access. While bookmarklets are nice they require action for every video that you want to download, not that great.

A better solution is to use a Greasemonkey script that adds the functionality to Firefox automatically. Download Youtube Videos as MP4 is a small Greasemonkey Script that adds a Download as MP4 link beneath the video information box on the right pane of the video page. You need to right-click that link and select Save As from the menu to download the video as mp4.

Once you click on the bookmark a small form opens waiting for user input. Just enter a search string and all file hosters mentioned in the Javascript will be searched for that string. The script uses advanced Google search parameters to find what you are looking for and you naturally could just use Google for the same results.

The advantage of the bookmarklet is that you just have to click a bookmark to perform the search which means less typing. Please add the following code in one line as a bookmark. Right-click the url and select bookmark this link. You can also copy and paste the code into the address bar to see how it works.

Free File Host Search

Every click on an element displays the CSS properties for that element right on the screen. The element itself displays its width, height and position on the screen while the Xray box displays additional information such as margin, padding, position and border values.

This is in no way as powerful as the Firebug extension for Firefox but it can give a good quick overview over certain important CSS properties. I’m mentioning it here mainly because I think that it is astonishing that a simply bookmarklet could display such a wealth of information.