Bookmarklets for testing your website

I’m at day two of Indie Web Camp Brighton.

Day one was excellent. It was really hard to choose which sessions to go to because they all sounded interesting. That’s a good problem to have.

I ended up participating in:

  • a session on POSSE,
  • a session on NFC tags,
  • a session on writing, and
  • a session on testing your website that was hosted by Ros

In that testing session I shared some of the bookmarklets I use regularly.

Bookmarklets? They’re bookmarks that sit in the toolbar of your desktop browser. Just like any other bookmark, they’re links. The difference is that these links begin with javascript: rather than http. That means you can put programmatic instructions inside the link. Click the bookmark and the JavaScript gets executed.

In my mind, there are two different approaches to making a bookmarklet. One kind of bookmarklet contains lots of clever JavaScript—that’s where the smart stuff happens. The other kind of bookmarklet is deliberately dumb. All they do is take the URL of the current page and pass it to another service—that’s where the smart stuff happens.

I like that second kind of bookmarklet.

Here are some bookmarklets I’ve made. You can drag any of them up to the toolbar of your browser. Or you could create a folder called, say, “bookmarklets”, and drag these links up there.

Validation: This bookmarklet will validate the HTML of whatever page you’re on.

Validate HTML

Carbon: This bookmarklet will run the domain through the website carbon calculator.

Calculate carbon

Accessibility: This bookmarklet will run the current page through the Website Accessibility Evaluation Tools.

WAVE

Performance: This bookmarklet will take the current page and it run it through PageSpeed Insights, which includes a Lighthouse test.

PageSpeed

HTTPS: This bookmarklet will run your site through the SSL checker from SSL Labs.

SSL Report

Headers: This bookmarklet will test the security headers on your website.

Security Headers

Drag any of those links to your browser’s toolbar to “install” them. If you don’t like one, you can delete it the same way you can delete any other bookmark.

Responses

Juhis

@adactio Bookmarklets are great, I use a variety of them all the time! Thanks for sharing yours.

# Posted by Juhis on Sunday, March 10th, 2024 at 11:33am

alex.kirk.at

Jeremy Keith posted about bookmarklets that he uses for testing websites where he specifically likes those that just pass on the current URL to a service. Those bookmarklets typically have a structure like:

javascript:location.href='https://example.com?s='+escape(location.href)

I use those for my Friends WordPress plugin, too. That’s the one where you can follow people via RSS or ActivityPub and see the feed in a private section of your blog or even in Mastodon apps.

A screenshot of my WordPress tools section.

So, to follow the current website, you’d click on a bookmarklet like this:

javascript:location.href='https://example.com?add-friend='+escape(location.href)

I have another WordPress plugin called Post Collection, where you can save articles to your blog. Both to be able to search them later, or, with my Send to E-Reader plugin, to send them to your favorite reading device as a compiled e-book with chapters. Although the bookmarklet that you’d typically install has some logic to post the whole current page body so that it also works on non-public posts, there is also a version that looks like this:

javascript:location.href='https://example.com?user=123&collect-post='+escape(location.href)

One particularly nice thing about these style of bookmarklets, is that while unfortunately they don’t (or didn’t?) work on Firefox Mobile, you can use an Android app called URL Forwarder to share a URL from any other app which comes in quite handy when you use other apps to discover interesting content (such as awesome the Glider app for Hacker News).

I have only added my two bookmarklets here, but most of the ones Jeremy mentioned could also be added.

By the way, I have some history with bookmarklets. In 2005, I created a bookmarklet manager called Blummy. It’s still alive but dormant (ping me if you want to try it, signups have been spammed to death).

Bookmarklets have come out of fashion but were very important back then. I wished browsers would support them better and make installing them a little less awkward. They are always like a little swiss army knife to me.

# Monday, March 11th, 2024 at 4:04pm

25 Shares

# Shared by i.j on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:08am

# Shared by Simon Lucy on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:08am

# Shared by ian on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:08am

# Shared by katherine on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:09am

# Shared by Nanode on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:09am

# Shared by Andy Linton ✅ on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:09am

# Shared by Camille Bouvat on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:09am

# Shared by Inácio Medeiros on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:10am

# Shared by Luke Dorny on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:10am

# Shared by :wordpress: Jack on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:10am

# Shared by Giles on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:10am

# Shared by Tyler Sticka on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:11am

# Shared by David Bisset on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:11am

# Shared by Terence Eden on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:11am

# Shared by Ana Rodrigues on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:11am

# Shared by fosstodon.org on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:12am

# Shared by Ross Wintle on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:12am

# Shared by Lea Rosema on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:12am

# Shared by Kai Klostermann on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:13am

# Shared by Morgan Sans Guidon on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:13am

# Shared by Juhis on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:13am

# Shared by Sara Joy :happy_pepper: on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:13am

# Shared by David O'Brien on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:14am

# Shared by Simon R Jones on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:14am

# Shared by ℵancym on Wednesday, March 13th, 2024 at 4:21pm

44 Likes

# Liked by Zachary Dunn on Monday, March 11th, 2024 at 11:47am

# Liked by Nicole Parsons on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 12:57am

# Liked by Larry Yudelson on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 12:57am

# Liked by capjamesg on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 12:57am

# Liked by Anthony Sorace on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 12:58am

# Liked by i.j on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 12:58am

# Liked by Simon Lucy on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 12:58am

# Liked by ian on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 12:58am

# Liked by Torsten Landsiedel on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 12:59am

# Liked by Paul Watson on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 12:59am

# Liked by Evil Jim O’Donnell on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 12:59am

# Liked by theAdhocracy on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 12:59am

# Liked by Stephen Coles on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:00am

# Liked by Eat This Podcast on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:00am

# Liked by Inácio Medeiros on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:00am

# Liked by Luke Dorny on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:00am

# Liked by David F. Sandberg on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:01am

# Liked by Giles on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:01am

# Liked by Tyler Sticka on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:01am

# Liked by petes_bread_eqn_xls on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:02am

# Liked by Mike Gifford on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:02am

# Liked by Cam Pegg on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:02am

# Liked by Ana Rodrigues on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:02am

# Liked by Fernando Mateus on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:03am

# Liked by Víctor on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:03am

# Liked by ericarnal on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:03am

# Liked by Johan Vervloet on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:04am

# Liked by Geffrey van der Bos on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:04am

# Liked by nk on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:04am

# Liked by Donncha Ó Caoimh on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:04am

# Liked by nrk on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:05am

# Liked by Ross Wintle on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:05am

# Liked by Jordan Earle on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:05am

# Liked by Nick F on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:05am

# Liked by DrCake on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:06am

# Liked by Craig Lee on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:06am

# Liked by Peter Rushforth 🇨🇦🇺🇦 on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:06am

# Liked by Dennis Frank on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:07am

# Liked by bkim on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:07am

# Liked by Matthias Ernst Ring on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:07am

# Liked by Kai Klostermann on Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 at 1:07am

# Liked by Chuck Grimmett on Wednesday, March 13th, 2024 at 2:55pm

# Liked by ℵancym on Wednesday, March 13th, 2024 at 4:21pm

# Liked by Aaron Davis on Wednesday, March 20th, 2024 at 11:21am

1 Bookmark

# Bookmarked by Nick Simson on Monday, March 11th, 2024 at 3:30pm

Related posts

Indie Web Camp UK 2014

A productive weekend.

Related links

Enabling https SSL on your site | Surf the Dream

Justin is at Indie Web Camp Germany with me and he’s been converting Am I Responsive? to https—here’s his write-up.

Tagged with

An opinionated guide to accessibility testing /// Iain Bean

  1. First impressions
  2. The Tab key
  3. Automated testing tools
  4. Screen reader testing
  5. Next steps

Tagged with

We need more inclusive web performance metrics | Filament Group, Inc.

Good point. When we talk about perceived performance, the perception in question is almost always visual. We should think more inclusively than that.

Tagged with

Prioritizing users in a crisis: Building the California COVID-19 response site

This is a great case study of the excellent California COVID-19 response site. Accessibility and performance are the watchwords here.

Want to know their secret weapon?

A $20 device running Android 9, with no contract commitment has been one of the most useful and effective tools in our effort to be accessible.

Leaner, faster sites benefit everybody, but making sure your applications run smoothly on low-end hardware makes a massive difference for those users.

Tagged with

Beyond automatic accessibility testing: 6 things I check on every website I build - Manuel Matuzović

Six steps that everyone can do to catch accessibility gotchas:

  1. Check image descriptions
  2. Disable all styles
  3. Validate HTML
  4. Check the document outline
  5. Grayscale mode
  6. Use the keyboard

Tagged with

Previously on this day

3 years ago I wrote Diversity and inclusion on the Clearleft podcast

Farai Madzima, Margaret Lee, Elaine dela Cruz and Rifa Thorpe-Tracey tell their stories.

4 years ago I wrote Lighthouse bookmarklet

You don’t need Chrome to run Lighthouse.

9 years ago I wrote Inlining critical CSS for first-time visits

Using Grunt, Apache, and PHP with Twig templates.

11 years ago I wrote Slow glass

Other days, other eyes.

14 years ago I wrote South by Twenty Ten

It’s that time of year again.

22 years ago I wrote Fame at last

Welcome visitors from Kottke.org - have a look ‘round, make yourselves at home.

22 years ago I wrote Creationists in Gateshead

It looks the Bible Belt now extends to England.