What can you do with a single, consolidated bookmarklet that you cannot do by simply placing your bookmarklets in a folder? For one thing, you can easily share or publish collections of bookmarklets. Moreover, the popup window of bookmarklets (see top right screenshot) can be set to be displayed on various parts of the screen. It is also a simply unique way to go about organizing (and using) your bookmarklets.

If you are interested in some cool, value added bookmarklets: check out my list of “Twelve must have bookmarklets“. A combined version of all of these can be found here (drag and drop to your browser toolbar). See screenshot to the right for a preview.

Some notes on this service:

• How to create a consolidated bookmarklet: simply type in the name and paste in the javascript code on the bookmarklet combiner site. Choose from a number of options, such as whether the end result should run them all in batch or display in a popup. (See top left screenshot).
• Editing a consolidated bookmarklet: unfortunately, there does not seem to be an option to load it back up again once a consolidated bookmarklet is created. You’ll have to re-do the whole thing.
• Creating a consolidated bookmarklet for “normal” URLs: is possible, should you want to do that for whatever reason.

The verdict: a very interesting and unique service. You could say that there is a bit of a question mark over the utility that it provides, but that depends somewhat on the user and what you might want to use it for.

One thing I would wish for the ability to re-load a bookmarklet in order to change or edit it.

Visit the Bookmarklet Combiner page.

These days most people (myself included) prefer to install browser plugin or extensions that can potentially add more complex functionality than a bookmarklet and provide much more integration with your browser experience. But the fact remains: a short snippet of code in a bookmarklet is a much more elegant and portable solution than an extension or plugin that needs to be installed and may be constantly taking up memory. An added bonus: bookmarklets will almost always work on any browser.

I recently switched to Chrome after Google’s browser added support for extensions in earnest (and in fact wrote an article about the must-have extensions for Google Chrome). I did, however, find myself transferring over to Chrome some indispensable bookmarklets that I was using on my previous browser; hence the idea for this posting was born.

This posting will present my favorite 12 useful bookmarklets that I use: Email This from Clickability, ClipNabber, Readability, PrintWhatYouLike, PageZipper, BitLet bookmarklet, FirebugLite, View Passwords, BugMeNot, Bit.ly, Map This, and Design.

1. Email This from Clickability

(You can register for an account with Email This if you would like address book integration and the like, but that is totally optional).

The bookmarklet itself: Email This. (drag and drop onto your bookmarks toolbar)
Click here to view my previous full review of this service.
Go here to visit the Email This home page.

2. ClipNabber

All you need to do is click the bookmarklet while on the page of the video you want to download. Note, however, that you need to be browsing videos on the video sharing sites themselves and not watching them embedded in blogs and the like, in order for the bookmarklet to work. (In almost all cases, clicking on the video itself no matter where it is located will transport you to the video page on the video sharing service).

The bookmarklet itself: Nab It! (drag and drop onto your bookmarks toolbar)
Click here to view my previous full review of this service.
Go here to visit the Clipnabber home page.

3. Readability

This can come in handy if the page is extremely busy and/or confusing, or if you want a single-click printable version of the page.

The bookmarklet itself: Readability (drag and drop onto your bookmarks toolbar)
Go here to visit the Readability home page.

4. PrintWhatYouLike

PrintWhatYouLike is amazingly versatile; simply click on any element on the page and you could isolate, remove, resize or save it, to name a few options. It also offers the option to remove all images from a page in one fell sweep.Simply a great bookmarklet to have.

The bookmarklet itself: PrintWhatYouLike (drag and drop onto your bookmarks toolbar)
Go here to visit the PrintWhatYouLike home page.

5. Bitlet bookmarklet

The Bitlet bookmarklet works on a wide range of Torrent sites and will transform the torrent links to Bitlet links that open and download via Bitlet (see screenshot).

The bookmarklet itself: BitLet (drag and drop onto your bookmarks toolbar)
Go here to visit the BitLet home page.

6. View Passwords

I had a bookmarklet that does this in my browser for an exremely long time, but when I searched the internet to find the source I came upon the one mentioned here, which is even better than the one I had originally.

The bookmarklet itself: View Passwords (drag and drop onto your bookmarks toolbar)
Go here to visit the original View Passwords page.

7. PageZipper

I like PageZipper because it works with sites that have “previous/next” links at the bottom as well as sites, like this one, that have page numbered navigation. Some browser extensions that offer the same functionality will offer the former but not the latter.

PageZipper will display browsing arrows in the upper right corner that can be really handy for navigation (see screenshot).

The bookmarklet itself: PageZipper. (drag and drop onto your bookmarks toolbar)
Click here to view my previous full review of this service.
Go here to visit the PageZipper home page.

8. Firebug Lite

Unfortunately, Firebug is not available for other, non-Firefox browsers, but Firebug Lite is. It doesn’t provide the breadth of functionality that Firebug does, but for quick inspections of pages or page elements it will work just fine in a pinch, without requiring you to switch to Firefox.

The bookmarklet itself: Firebug Lite (drag and drop onto your bookmarks toolbar)
Go here to visit the Firebug Lite home page.

9. BugMeNot

But don’t expect the logins to work every time. BugMeNot will actually give you a percentage of times the password worked, based on user votes.

The bookmarklet itself: BugMeNot. (drag and drop onto your bookmarks toolbar)
Click here to view my previous full review of this service.
Go here to visit the BugMeNot home page.

10. Bit.ly

The bookmarklet itself: Bit.ly. (drag and drop onto your bookmarks toolbar)
Go here to visit the Bit.ly home page.

11. Map This

The bookmarklet itself: Map This. (drag and drop onto your bookmarks toolbar)
I actually have no idea where I got this, but here’s a page that has some good Google maps bookmarklets info.

12. Design

I just kind of piled up some of the tools on the page simultaneously for the screenshot to the right, in order to show off some of the functionality, so it looking very busy. In real life situations each one of the tools would be used separately of course.

The bookmarklet itself: Design. (drag and drop onto your bookmarks toolbar)
Go here to visit the Design home page.

PageZipper is a free Firefox extension and IE Bookmarklet that can merge articles or listings spanning multiple pages into a single browser page. It is useful in situations where you are interested in grabbing a web-clipping or exporting the entire article or listing to another application in one fell swoop, or simply if you would prefer not to have to keep pressing the “next” button to get through the article.

I’ve known about this browser extension for a while, but I am writing about it now after using it recently and finding it to be an invaluable tool.

I recently needed to download some 450 or so entries into Excel from a browser-based workflow and ticketing system that we use at work . There is no “export” function and I simply intended to copy and paste the rows of text into my spreadsheet. The only problem was that there were 40 listings per each displayed page in the browser, and that number was not customizible. I would have had to manually browse through a dozen or so pages and copy and paste a whole bunch of times in order to complete what I thought should have been a fairly straightforward process. This is when I remembered the PageZipper bookmarklet on my browsers; a single click loaded all listings pages instantly into the same browser page, and a single copy/paste transferred all the data into my spreadsheet all at once.

Here are more notes on this program:

• It works well: in articles or listings that employ “next” links to move to the next page, including most search-style results.
• It does not work well: in articles or pages that do not use “next” links or use a custom navigation scheme such as javascript (it does not work well with this site).
• Headers and footers: from all pages are loaded into your consolidated page. This means that if you want to grab the information on the page and are concerned about esthetics you will have to go in later on and clean up your web clipping manually.
• Be careful how you use: using PageZipper on search results that may span dozens or hundreds of pages means that your browser will be downloading and appending pages forever, and you will have to abort.
• How to install: for Firefox you simply install a plugin. For IE you will need to place a Javascript bookmarklet on your favorites toolbar (or in your favorites folder). Instructions on how to do this are on the PageZipper site.

Wish list (or how this program can be even better)

• The option to specify a specific number of “next” links to load. For example, if I am looking at a set of results that span 100 pages I might want to, say, consolidate and clip the first 5 pages only. It would be great if I could specify this, although I realize that it may be tough to embed too much interactive functionality into a javascript bookmarklet.

The verdict: a brilliant and original idea. This little service will be extremely valuable to anyone who does a lot of research on the internet (and/or a lot of clipping of web content). It will also be very valuable to anyone who might work with browser-based reporting systems where they might want to grab/clip or quickly copy information that spans many pages wholesale into the clipboard.

Compatibility: Requires Internet Explorer or Firefox browser.

Go to the PageZipper page to get the latest version.

You likely have a reason for having multiple browsers installed on your PC (assuming that you do!). I use IE7 at work, for example, because most of the people who browse our work sites use that browser and I prefer to have their same browsing experience. But I also have Firefox installed because of the many interesting extensions and plugins that it has, etc.

Whatever your reasons for having multiple browsers, BrowserMaster is a small app that becomes, in effect, your default browser, and once it detects a request to open an internet link it briefly flashes browser icons on screen and allows you to quickly select the browser that you want to use. More notes below:

• Applies to links clicked outside a browser: for example shortcuts on your desktop, in a notes program, in an email notifier app, in an Office or PDF document or an email client, etc. Links clicked inside a browser behave as normal.
• Links: works for HTTP:\ or HTTPS:\ links.
• Default wait time: it gives you 2 seconds to choose your browser before going with the default. This can be changed in the settings file, but has to be done manually using a text editor. The settings file is in “C:Documents and SettingsyourusernameApplication DataBrowserMasterBrowserMaster.xml”; find the “delayin seconds” tag and change the value from 2 to something else.
• Other settings: from the settings file mentioned above, you could also enable/disable specific browsers. Find and change (Enabled=”true”) to (Enabled=”false”) for each listed browser.

Wish list (or how to make this program even better)

• Force a choice: I wish that BrowserMaster could be set to force the user to make a choice rather than the few seconds that this version waits for a decision.
• Set a default browser: it does not seem possible to set a default browser choice. It will default to whatever browser is open, but if no browser is open it defaulted to something and I couldn’t figure out how it made its decision (or whether that can be changed).
• Present a choice when opening local links: for pages that were stored on my hard drive, it didn’t give a choice, which I thought was strange.
• GUI interface: to quickly change the settings. Would be great.

The verdict: an original, clever little app that has a lot of potential. As it is it can be very useful, but they can really push this one and make it a lot better in my opinion. Check it out for yourself.

[Via: Umair from Crispytech tipped me off about this one; check out his BrowserMaster writeup here]

Version Tested: 1.1.0 Beta (note: I STRONGLY recommend installing this one over 1.0)

Compatibility: WinAll

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 376K).

Printee is a free Internet Explorer extension designed to remove elements of a webpage to create a perfectly printable page without ads or extra information (e.g sidebars, unrelated images, other stories on the page) that you might not want to waste ink and paper printing. Provides a single-click wizard when pressing CTRL+G that can provide a printer-ready page on-demand, instantly eliminating extraneous page elements.

Imagine the situation: you just found a nice article online that you want to print (or save to a mobile device to read later while on-the-go). And while a lot of sites offer a “printable version of this article” option, many others, such as Freewaregenius for example, do not. In this case (and if you are using Internet Explorer) you can use Printee to quickly strip the page of all text and images that you do not want. You can do this manually or press CTRL+G for an automated cleanup, and then print the page or save or clip it for later use. You will also have much more control over what to include and exclude than a “printable version” could ever provide.

Here are more notes on this software:

• How it works: once installed, you can add the “Printee” icon to your IE toolbar (see below for how to do that). Once you are ready to start editing a page for printing you can do one of 3 things (a) right click and drag the mouse over the page elements to start selecting; (b) double click CTRL, then left click on page elements to start selecting them, or (c) click on the Printee button in the IE toolbar, the left click elements to select. Once you have something (anything) selected simply right click and you will get a useful little context menu that can help you refine your selection.
• One click wizard: pressing CTRL+G is instant magic that will produce a printable version of your page instantly. Try it.
• More on how to use: if selecting manually, remember that you don’t have to select the elements you want all at once. Start off by selecting those elements inside your text that you don’t want and remove those first. If your text is a dark font on a dark background make sure to use the “remove background” function.
• Styles: you can quickly flip through several interesting pre-defined styles (sort of like “skins” for your printout).
• Fonts and margins: are easily editable. Change font or font size for your entire document or sections of it. Manipulating the desired margins (width) of your document is also a breeze.
• Other functions: you can print or email the edited page (using your system’s default email client)

Wish list (or how this software can be even better)

• Allow exiting out of Printee selection mode by pressing Esc. Currently, if you want to abort selecting you need to display the Printee toolbar and click on the “x” in the right corner [update: implemented in v.1.5.3.1].
• The ability to disable right click+drag, as I found that the selection mode is frequently accidentally launched when right clicking stuff on the page.  [update: implemented in v.1.5.3.1].
• A Firefox version. For those of us (like me) who use both browsers.

The verdict: the real strength of this software and what makes it much better than, say, web-based services that do the same thing (such as PrintWhatYouLike) is the automated CTRL+G instant-printable-page function.

If you use IE and find yourself printing a lot of web content for whatever reason you will find this an invaluable addition to your browser (I am planning a Top-10 IE extensions post and I think this one will make it to the list). My only criticism is that the manual element selection process could have been more user friendly as it is it takes a little bit of getting used to.

Version Tested: 1.5.2

Compatibility: Windows 2000, 2003, XP, Vista. Requires Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8.

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 0.43 megs).

[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Jason H. Check out his tech blog: 404techsupport.com].

Canaware NetNotes offers the solution to the problem of organizing all the information that we come across every day on the Internet. If you’re an organized person, you might bookmark/favorite a website if it holds valuable information or even funny material. If you’re like me, though, you’ll go through your bookmarks at some point and either (A) have no idea why you bookmarked a particular webpage or (B) find that the site no longer exists. Both of these scenarios are discouraging and puzzling, but they’re still better than the unorganized approach of hoping to find the information again with a web search later. Fortunately, NetNotes is an improvement on both cases and makes it easy to organize the information you come upon into a handy knowledge base.

NetNotes creates a Library for you to collect all of this information. It holds static copies of websites, so you never have to worry about a server going down, but it’s also versatile enough where you can create a new article of your own and type in any information in a fully functional word processor. The small 2MB installer belies the functionality that really lies beneath with this program. Similar to a few commercial applications, like WebWhacker to name one, NetNotes gives you all the functionality for free. Integrating smoothly with Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, this app should find itself right at home for most users. If you find yourself on a webpage that you deem worth keeping, you can just right-click and select the ’Export to Canaware NetNotes’ option in the context menu. You can also highlight a portion of the page and then right-click on that selection and choose to export that portion to NetNotes.

After selecting to export from IE, you’ll get a little pop-up requesting access to the Clipboard. The NetNotes website contains information about modifying your settings to get rid of this annoyance.

The IE context menu entry appears automatically with installation, but to get the same in Firefox you’ll need to install a little add-on at the bottom of the Canaware NetNotes download page.

Now that you’re all set up, just browse the web like normal. When you find something you want to archive, export it from your browser to NetNotes with the context menu option. You don’t have to have NetNotes running at the time. It will launch NetNotes to import the page you’re viewing and close again after it finishes that task. When the Import Article window pops up, it will be populated with the Article name, the web address, and the page content. You can edit any of these fields if you need to, enter keywords, and specify which library and folder the article will get filed under. At the bottom, you can also choose to include any attachments you want; the attachments you can select stem from the other pages that are linked to from the original page. Just click the Save button when the information is all filled out.

At any point, if you want to get back to the live web-version of an archived article, you can just right-click on the entry and choose Navigate. This will launch the URL on file in your default browser. You can also trim down articles to reduce their size and make the information more relevant or add your own notes. Just switch to Edit Mode instead of the default View Mode using the icons in the toolbar.

After you’re in Edit Mode, you can add notes or delete components from the article. Just single click on an object and then hit the Delete key on your keyboard to get rid of it. You can also change the styling on the document to make words bold, italicized, etc.

You can right-click the Libraries pane on the left-side and create the directory structure you want. You can also create a new article on demand so you can type out your own info or paste in from another application, you aren’t limited to just importing from websites. The best thing about NetNotes, and the essential functionality for any knowledge base, is its ability to search the articles you archive. Choose your library and then click on the magnifying glass from the toolbar or select the Search bar in the left-pane to initiate the search. You can specify many criteria to make your search more comprehensive. You can search within the content, title, your comments or keywords, and select other options to narrow down your search results.

From my experience, the application uses about 27 MB on opening with the last open Library and climbed up around 40 MB of memory usage while I was flipping through articles. You can specify the location of each library when they are created. The files are stored much like a browser would save it. For each article, you will have an html page, a folder for any related images, and an .SXML file to list various properties of the article.

Wish list: (or how this program can be even better).

• Addressing layout and exporting problems: on some pages you will notice a lot of overlap of different elements from the menu (on one site I grabbed it failed to grab the background image). However, when grabbing an article from my own site, it worked fine and looked identical to how it appears in a browser. My guess is that it all depends on how complicated the website and CSS is. Floating elements seem to give it trouble. This layout problem might also be related to another thing I forgot to mention: the security feature of stripping out scripts to prevent any malicious code from being stored locally. If Javascript is used to render a website’s layout, it might cause it to look like a mess in the exported version. As any webmaster can tell you, this is just another product of the nightmare of the Browser Wars and getting code to look perfect across multiple browsers with multiple versions. The removal of scripts, however, also means exporting YouTube and many other streaming videos is out of the question.
• Portability: let me take the app and my libraries on a jump drive with me. (The interactions with IE and Firefox might be problematic, but I’d be able to refer to the info I’ve already gathered. Also, a portable Firefox might be able to solve that problem.)
• Stability: although listed for Vista and Server 2008, NetNotes crashes for me in both operating systems. It works just fine in XP and Server 2003, which is where these screenshots are from.

The verdict: the best thing that makes NetNotes stand apart from other comparable programs is the editor functionality. This allows you to modify your page, remove all extraneous information, and clean up any elements that may be making a mess of the display. You can also add any comments or additional info in-line with the article, all of which other programs like Local Website Archive Lite and the Firefox add-on, Scrapbook, cannot do. I also prefer its interface over the others, but that’s just personal preference.

Version Tested: 5.1

Compatibility: Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003, Server 2008. Also requires Internet Explorer 5.5 or later or Firefox 1.0 or later.

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 2.05 megs).

Ever wanted to build a big start page using your favorites? "The Favorite Start Page" does exactly that. What is interesting about this program is that it syncs with your existing bookmarks, and any changes you perform on it can then be synced back. This means that any work that you put into refining and/or improving your favorites can be instantly implemented on your browser’s bookmark list. More notes on this program below:

• Portable: consists of a single HTML file, which means that it is easily moved across machines or on a flash drive, backed up, shared with others, or synced on different machines. If you put it on the internet you can easily access your bookmarks from anywhere in any browser. Note that you can download an installable or zipped version.
• Supported browsers: can only build/sync the page from Internet Explorer favorites, unfortunately, but you can access that page from any browser. The author’s to do list includes the option to sync with Firefox and
• Expandable boxes: to cut down on clutter, "Favorite Start Page" creates a window or box for each one of the folders in your favorites list. The box displays only three entries, although hovering over it with the mouse will cause it to expand and display all of the favorites contained within it. Subfolders are highlighted or bolded and expand when you hover over them.
• Drag and drop: to move favorites from one folder to another. To delete, dragging outside the boxed areas will produce a favorites "recycle bin".
• Favorites search: find favorites quickly using the search box. Keep pressing ’Enter’ to scroll through different
• Can be accessed as a start page or run as an application: you can double click a shortcut to access your "Favorite Start Page" in its own window, independent of your browser.
• Favicons: will use any loaded favicons for sites when building your page. If you care to have a complete set, you might want to refresh all of your favicons first (I use the freeware AM-Deadlink to do this).
• Exclusions: you can exclude some folders from being included in the start page if you want to. By default the "Links" folder is excluded, although you can change that if you want.
• Skins: yes there are some. Access these from the help menu.
• Search engines: buttons to quickly search Google and a number of other resources are also available on the page.

Wish list:

• Firefox integration: already on the developer’s to do list, but really essential.
• The ability to drag and drop to reorder the boxes.

The verdict: there are bookmark managers with more bells and whistles (a good free one is Tidy Favorites), however I like this program for its simplicity, its ability to reduce clutter on the page, and for integrating with the browser’s built-in folder structure.

I also like that I can upload my "Favorites Start Page" on the net into my site and access it from anywhere (although note that re-syncing requires downloading to the hard drive and re-uploading to the site).

Version Tested: 1.77

Compatibility: WinAll. Requires Internet Explorer 5.5 and higher or compatible browsers. Runs on other browsers, but currently can synchronize only in IE.

Go to the program home page to download the latest version (approx 116K).

The Evri toolbar introduces two different (albeit related) functionalities into your browser experience. I will discuss each in turn below:

Evri Search: if you’re wondering why you would need Evri search in your toolbar when you’ve already got Google, I can report that Evri is a slightly different kind of search. Without going into the technology of it (which I’d written about here), you can think of Evri as search for the long term, a place where you would go if you’re following something on a periodic basis (say your favorite band, a book you’ve read, your favorite politician, etc) in order to keep abreast of the latest buzz (news/videos/relationships) that is developing around your topic of interest. For example, I have found Evri Search to be a great way to keep informed about developments relating to a couple of companies that I’ve invested in, whereby Evri search brings most of what is published about these to a single page.

Evri Term Highlighting: Imagine reading a news article with a section or paragraph about something that you’re interested in. Now imagine hovering over the keyword for that subject in the text that you’re reading to instantly bring up related news articles, images and videos, (and a definition from Wikipedia). This is exactly what the Evri toolbar sets out to do, and it does it for a wide range of general interest topics/entities that you may encounter

If you’re a developer and you think you could utilize this type of information in your own application, you should take a look at Evri’s new developer API. Everything needed to make this toolbar application, as well as the Evri topic pages, and many of their widgets is all in this simple REST based API. Its free to use for 10,000 requests per day, and it sounds like with some nice link back love, they’ll probably let you go a lot higher in volume.

What I like about Evri term highlighting:

• The ability to browse related news items or media related to the topic I am interested in on the spot, simply by hovering over a term.
• The results: there are a number of services that attempt to deliver contextual related content, but Evri’s related results seem to be generally of higher quality than others that attempt to do the same thing. (Which is not to say there isn’t room for improvement still).
• The related news and video tabs are my two favorites. Note that videos play without leaving the page, straight in the popup window.
• Can be quickly enabled/disabled by simply clicking a button on the toolbar. In case you did not feel like seeing any highlighted terms.
• Does not display highlighted results on secure sites. Which means your webmail and online transactions will be free of keyword highlighting.
• Only loads content once you click on the highlighted term. And then after that loads the content for each tab you click when you actually click it, preserving bandwidth.
• Works on IE and Firefox both (which is refreshing, since this sort of service is frequently limited to Firefox users).

What I do not like so much:

• Highlighted terms can glut your page with information. This, of course, is why they made it so easy to switch them off. But the question remains whether the value added outweighs the cost in sheer informational overload.
• Provides a good number of highlighted words for most news, entertainment, and general interest topics, and most keywords that have a Wikipedia entry. When surfing other sites or topics, however (such as Freewaregenius), the highlights will be few and far between and limited to entities that are fairly well known.
• Too many tabs? Currently, there are five (Overview, News/web, Connections, Images, Videos), with Overview always pre-selected. I’ve found that I mostly care for two, News and Videos.
• Performance: on slow connections it can take a bit of time for the highlighted terms to populate.

Wish list: or how this software can be made even better

• The ability to select a default tab rather than the current "overview". I’d prefer the "News/Web" link to open as default personally.
• The ability for the user to set some sort of intelligent filtering. For example, if a user is on a page that contains 20 links, the software might present, say, only the ten that it rates as being the most value added. The rating can be as simple as opting for the specific or niche rather than the general and/or well known.
• The ability to choose from different styles of text highlighting; such as a little star next to the words rather than the aggressive yellow-marker style of highlighting, or even highlighting that only shows up when the mouse cursor is within a certain distance from it.
• Sticking to the main article: currently the text highlighting includes the text of the article itself as well as the navigation, sidebar(s), header, footer, and even some of the ads. It would look and feel better if it focused on the article in my opinion, as it is safe to assume that that’s where the user’s interest lies.
• Limiting duplicates: if an article mentions Barack Obama 10 times, highlighting each and every one of them will likely send users reaching for the "stop highlighting" button. Might be better to highlight just one or to limit the frequency to the two or three that are furthest apart.

The verdict: an interesting software that delivers fairly good results. If you haven’t tried Evri search then I suggest you check it out. What’s cool about Evri Toolbar’s keyword highlighting is that the related links and results are generally of very high quality, especially when compared to other similar services (e.g. Headup for Firefox).

My impression is that while this can contribute towards a richer browsing experience on some sites (e.g. news, entertainment, financial, and general news sites), for most other sites you might surf the keywords that light up on the screen will be general entities that are not very value added and may seem like added clutter alongside the in-text ads and links and whatever else may be inserted in the body of the text of an average article.

The Evri Toolbar is still in its beginning stages and has the potential to get a lot better. In the meanwhile check it out for yourself right now; you will find it quite interesting.

Version Tested: 1.2.0.2

Compatibility: Windows (XP/2000/Vista), Mac, Linux. Runs on Internet Explorer 6+ or Firefox 2/3.

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 1 meg).

[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Gaurav Paul with subsequent editing by the webmaster].

We all hail Firefox for it’s customizability, the many great add-ons that it supports, and for greasemonkey! For those who use Internet Explorer and may have been disappointed by the lack of good add-ons, IE7Pro promises (and delivers) on many items that are on your wish list and provides a much enriched web experience, all within a single, fast install. Some notes on this program below:

• The user interface: right-click the IE7Pro icon in the statusbar in order to access the various functions (many of these also support keyboard shortcuts as well).
• Mix and match what you like: if you’re concerned about adding too many features and options if you install IE7pro you need not fear. One of the coolest features about IE7Pro is that it has a plugin-architecture which enables you to activate the features that you want and disable those you don’t.

IE7Pro offers a great many features, so I will not list them all. Instead the ones I will mention here are (a) features that I absolutely love, and (b) features that I really, really, like but that should have been better implemented (and that I am wishing they would revisit).

Eleven Twelve IE7Pro features that I really like:

1. IEscripts: similar to Greasemonkey for Firefox.You can add user scripts to tweak how you view certain website(s) or to provide certain functions. Many scripts come with their own installers such as the GMail CSS skin,YouTube downloader, Myspace Notifier and many others. What this means to you is that you can create your own scripts or, if you’re not a coder, you can visit this site for many useful downloadible user scripts.
2. Tab History: maintains a list of your history of visited tabs that you can can use to quickly re-access any recently visited site (you can optionally add this to IE’s context menu).
3. Form filler: this is a full-fledged auto-password and form completion alternative to Keepass or Alpass. It is also local, in case you are uncomfortable using an online password manager such as Lastpass (which is actually my current favorite). It takes a bit of manual setting up at first as it does not auto-detect forms, but generally it works well. Also does not pre-fill forms but can be prompted to do so using a hotkey. It is the sheer simplicity and straightforward-ness of this one that I find attractive.
4. Clear privacy data: using a single click. Works well. An alternative to, say, Click&Clean or Cachepal. Cleans all areas that contain information on your internet activity such as your browsing history, cookies, forms, etc. Also included is an “AutoClear upon browser exit” option which can be very useful.
5. Proxy switcher: simple and works very well.
6. Show password on mouseover: a reader-created script that simply displays the password underneath the asterisks. This can be a lifesaver, and is the first one of its kind out of many that I tried that actually worked for me.
7. Mini Download Manager: allows you to pause/resume downloads, and to keep a record of your downloads and the URLs whence they originated. If you are not interested in a full-fledged download manager/accelerator such as Orbit Downloader or Flashget (which can be somewhat intrusive and may introduce P2P features that some people might want to avoid).
8. SpellChecker: quickly correct your typos within browser-based forms. Uses the open source Aspell. Works well.
9. Session Manager: allows you to save the currently opened configuration of sites/tabs as a session to be retrieved and resumed at a future point (similar to say, IESessions, but I kind of prefer this one).
10. Resize IE window: to 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1084, or user-defined. Perfect for webmasters, developers, and designers who want to quickly see what their sites look like under different resolution settings (1024×768 being the most widespread).
11. FasterIE: with this enabled you can expect some speed optimizations to Internet Explorer. I couldn’t measure this myself, but am putting this feature on the list anyway.
12. AdBlocker & FlashBlocker: similar to AdBlock Plus for Firefox. Blocks ads on all sites, but you can manually add filters to it to enable them on certain sites if you want to.

Other available functions: a good number of these; URL Aliases, Findbar (enhanced on-page text search), capture screenshot of whole site, navigate by mouse gestures, custom page autoscroll , auto-refresh at set interval(s), scroll by grab and drag, a (fairly good) user created module for downloading from video sharing sites, etc. etc.

Wish list: Three IE7Pro features that can be better implemented

• Crash Recovery: automatically opens a tab with a list of the tabs/sites that were open when IE last crashed, similar to Firefox. In theory a terrific function; in practice “crash recovery” seems to produce a list of the last visited URLs whether there was a crash or not (and sometimes you do not want this on a shared computer). After a while I found this annoying and had to switch it off. I also found myself wishing I could access these recovered URLs somewhere private rather than first thing I see when I launch IE.
• Online bookmark sync: a bookmarking service that connects to the IE7Pro developer’s website and stores your favorites remotely; useful for syncing your bookmarks across multiple computers.(You have to register an online account first, obviously). My wish list for this one would be the release of a Firefox add-on that enables sharing bookmarks across browsers as well.
• Easy Homepage: optionally replaces your home page with a thumbnail grid of your favorite URLs. Sounded good to me, except the thumbnails were inexplicably lo-res and did not maintain their aspect ratio when the IE window was resized (which looked jarring). Also “Easy Homepage” seemed to be rather slow when launched, which I didn’t like.

The verdict: I am a Firefox user and will admit that I usually do not use IE unless I have to. One of the main reasons for this is that I find it very hard to have great add-ons like the ones I use in Firefox. But this IE add-on delivers a much improved IE experience and has completely changed the way I perceive IE.

The only criticism I have of this software are (a) some of the modules could have been better implemented (as mentioned above), and (b) documentation for individual modules is at times sparse: you might enable a plugin or module and find yourself doing a lot of fiddling around and experimenting to figure out how to get it to work. Most of the tasks being performed are simple translations from various Firefox add-ons and functions, and they’re very good/useful to have. The addition of user scripts make it highly customizable.

If you use IE this app promises to increase your productivity and enhance your experience; a must have install for IE users. Recommended!

Version Tested: 2.4.5

Compatibility: this software was tested on IE7 but the developer’s website confirms compatibility with both IE6 and IE8 RC1.

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 2.36 megs).

Email This from Clickability is a free bookmarklet that resides on your browser toolbar and can quickly email any web page that you are browsing to yourself or friends. It supports most browsers, including IE, Firefox, Opera, and AOL.

Have you ever read a really good posting or news story that you wanted to share with a friend or friends? I remember many a time that I would copy a URL, open my Gmail account, and paste into a new email message in order to do this. More recently we have had the proliferation of "Email This Article" links on blogs and websites that make it easy to email a story in a single click straight from the website, although many of these still rely on opening your default local email client to do this, which can be a hassle (especially if you use webmail and do not use a local client).

"Email This" lets you email the URL of any site that you are surfing (to yourself or to others) in a single click. Here are more notes on this service:

• Uses it’s own browser-based form: clicking on the "Email This" bookmarklet will instantly display an email form. It is self contained and does not need a local client or webmail client to send.
• Keeping an address book: registering for the "Email This" service will allow you to maintain an address book that collects and maintains all the email addresses you send to for future re-use. Note that you do not need to register to use the service.
• Installing: involves right clicking on the bookmarklet and adding it to your "Links" folder in IE or "Bookmarks Toolbar" in Firefox. For more info on installing click here.
• Other bookmarklets: in addition to "Email This", the site offers a "Save This" and "Organize & Share" bookmarklets which provide a fairly advanced online bookmarking service. You can use your "Email This" account for these as well.

The verdict: so simply and yet (potentially) so useful. You will never need to search high on low on a website again looking for that elusive "Email this article" link which many or may not be there. You can now spam email interesting articles to yourself and to friends with ease.

Compatibility: IE, Firefox, Opera, AOL, MSN; most likely other browsers as well.

Go to the Email This page.

If you look at the screenshot for Open++ at first glance you might think that it is yet another utility that installs a handful of functions that we’ve seen many times before in the context menu. In fact Open++ is much more versatile in that it gives you the ability to add any executable or command line program into the context menu very easily (see screenshot).

Note: if you are interested in the functions that I am using that you see in the screenshot, most are provided courtesy of NirSoft’s wonderful freeware NirCmd which I highly recommend. Here are more notes on Open++:

• Built-in functions: you can pick and choose from the following: Command Prompt, Copy Path, Run with parameters, Register/Unregister DLLs, Open/Close CD drive, and Set File Time.
• Configuring new functions: you can add functions very easily, provided you have a command line executable that you want to use in the context menu. You can tell Open++ (a) if you want this executable to appear when right-clicking folders, certain types of file(s), or both; (b) what arguments to use (provides a handy set of variables for use in arguments, see below); (c) the working directory, and (d) you can (optionally) point to an icon file that you want it to use in the context menu.
• Variables for use in arguments: for items that are being right-clicked, the program can grab the directory, filename, extension, or entire path and that can be used in your command line arguments. It also provides variables that can deliver the same info for the program/executable as well (see screenshot to the right). You can use these variables add anything extra to them that you need, such as quotes before and after for example (see screenshot to the right).
• Typing ad-hoc arguments: one nice feature that the program provides is the ability to type in the arguments you want in an ad-hoc fashion. Simply check the “prompt for arguments” box in the settings.

Practical uses for this program:

• Customizing “open with” in the context menu: for example, you can place a number of text editors in the Open++ menu and use any of them at will whenever you click on a text file.
• Adding frequently used functions to the context menu: you can do this as long as you have the command line executable. Check out NirCmd for a very good collection.
• Using the context menu as an app launcher: see first screenshot above for an example. You will need to set up duplicate entries for a program if you want it to appear in a launcher-style list in addition to wanting it to kick in when right clicking on certain files.

The verdict: this program is reminiscent of FileMenu Tools, another freeware title that does something similar. And while FileMenu Tools offers more built in functions and may be a bit more versatile in what you can do with it, Open++ just might the easier one of the two to use and configure (and also from a purely subjective perspective feels like it may have a lighter footprint). I’m guessing that those of us who get excited at the prospect of adding all sorts of stuff to the context menu will be very happy about this program.

Version Tested: 1.1

Compatibility: WinAll; no info on Vista.

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 168K) – or download Open++ from Tucows.

If you are familiar with the music sharing sites mentioned above you’re probably thinking that Freezer is very good news indeed. This program was apparently written to prove a point; to quote their site “[it] was built as a proof-of-concept to demonstrate that whatever effort is made to prevent songs downloading, those sites are still very unsecure concerning the way musics are diffused”. It continues …”the [proof of concept]will probably be extended to more sites, as it is based upon an inherent flaw they all have in their streaming scheme.” More notes on this program:

• How to use: you need to (1) start the program and keep it open, (2) change your browser proxy to the one specified by the program (more on this here and below), and (3) to surf over to any of the supported sites and launch a song. A “save file” dialog will appear whenever a song is about to be played, allowing you to save (or not). More info on how to use here.
• Portable: no installation. Just unzip and run.
• Managing proxies: if changing your browser proxy manually doesn’t seem very practical, you might want to take a look at IE proxy changer or Advanced Proxy Manager (for Internet Explorer) or QuickProxy for Firefox.
• Supported sites: Imeem, Deezer, and Jiva.fm are documented; however, the instructions in the program dialog itself read “surf on your favorite HD radio site … the program will do the rest”. Not sure which other sites Freezer will work with, but I did try it with Last.FM and Pandora and it did NOT work; moreover it does not work with non-encrypted sites that do not use anti-leeching protection such as MixTurtle, Songza, etc (I guess since the program wanted top prove a point, there was no point to prove there ).

Wish list:

• Flashing the save song dialog on screen while the song played, or adding it to a list that can be downloaded afterwards. Currently, you will not hear the song until you have selected whether or not to save it to your hard drive, which can be a problem if you are unsure whether you want to download or not.
• Adding sites such as Last.Fm and Pandora
• Incorporating some sort of automated proxy management in the program itself.

The verdict: a very nice little program; I especially like that it is a small 70K download that can be unzipped and run without installation. Switching proxies can be a bit annoying to deal with unless you are using a proxy manager that will make proxy switching quick and easy. If you want more downloading options on more sites you might want to take a look at Orbit Downloader, which will download from these sties mentioned above plus many others.

Version Tested: 1.4

Compatibility: Windows XP, Vista.

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 70K).

Internet Explorer may not have the breadth of plugins that exist for Firefox, but it does have many extensions that enhance its functionality and that can greatly increase your productivity. IE extensions, it seems, always have much less .. visibility .. than those for Firefox; in this posting I present to you five must-have Internet Explorer extensions which you never knew existed (but will be very happy to learn about):

1. RCGoogle: the name is misleading, as it suggests that this is yet another right-click-on-a-word-to-search-Google extension. In fact RCGoogle does offer this functionality, but what makes it cool is it’s other function: “Open selected URL”.

Occasionally you might come across URLs (such as hxxp://www.yahoo.com) that have been purposefully (or unpurposefully) distorted or changed that normally would require fixing and copy/pasting into the address box. RCGoogle allows you to simply right click on the URL (or what looks like one ) and choose “open selected URL” in the context menu to open it. It is quite powerful as it can handle a wide range of URL problems. Check out the following examples, all of which it can handle without a hitch: (http) hxxp://www.yahoo.com; (www) w*w.yahoo.com; (typos) htp://yahoo.com; (whitespaces) http://www. yahoo.com; (or a combination of the above) h**p:’/***.yahoo .com. Of course you can use RCGoogle to open non-maligned URLs as well. Works for http and ftp URLs both.

I like this program so much that I am awarding it the very sought after Freewaregenius Pick award. More info on this program here; you can download the version I tested here.

2. IECopySelectedLinks: this little extension allows you to select a bunch of text that contains links to multiple URLs, then right-click “copy selected links” to copy all links to the clipboard (the text itself will not be copied). Very cool!

Visit this page to download (286K). This software from the same developers that brought you previously reviewed IESessions.

3. Find as you type: installs a search box on the IE toolbar that will interactively find and highlight the first instance of the search string as you type it. It also makes it easy to scroll through instances of the search string in the page, and adds the ability to highlight all instances of your search string that occur in the page. (The screenshot illustrates this very well).

If you use IE’s internal CTRL+F function you simply MUST check this one out; it will make your life so much easier. Note that this function is available as part of other IE addons such as the famous IE7Pro and ALToolbar.

To download visit the program page (817K; 32 and 64 bit versions available). Or go here for a full review of this one on Freewaregenius.

4. Favorites Search: as the name implies, this IE extension provides you with the ability to search your favorites. This program will look inside both the names as well as the URLs of your stored favorites when looking for matches, and works really well.

The “Favorites Search” plugin can provide a substitute for organizing your favorites in folders it enables you to retrieve a bookmark that you are looking for in your collection of favorites simply by searching for it (but then again you could always search Google).

Make sure to add the “Favorites Search” button to your IE toolbar, as that is the easiest and most user friendly way to access this plugin. To do this run the installer then launch IE; right click the command bar, select “Customize command bar” then “add and remove commands”, then add the “Favorites Search” button from the left pane to the list of
available commands (on the right pane) in the placement you like.

To download visit the program page (approx 750K).

5. Web Archives Viewer: adds an entry to IE’s context menu that allows you right click on a zip archive without downloading it in order to peer inside and examine its contents (you are not able to drag and drop into your desktop though!).

To download visit the developer’s page (approx 554K); scroll all the way down the page.

For more cool IE extensions look at the following:

• CoolIris (formerly Piclens).
• Tidy Favorites
• IESessions
• Local Website Archive
• ALToolbar
• IE Open Last Closed Tab
• IE Alias
• IESpell
• ALPass

If you are looking for a better way to manage favorites than the default bookmarking process that Internet Explorer and Firefox provide, check out Tidy Favorites. This program combines four concepts that make it much easier and more practical to work with your saved URLs, as follows:

1. Thumbnails: a bookmark is added as a visible thumbnail of the website, making it much more intuitive to work with (and much more pleasant) than the standard text link. Thumbnails can be resized manually at will and placed in the location that makes sense to the user.
2. Organize into tabs or folders or both: Tidy favorites provides a customizable workspace that can accomodate both tabs and folders, in effect providing a “3D” organizational structure where each tab can contain it’s own set of folders. This is much more flexible than the default 2D hierarchical structure that the browsers use.
3. Drop stack: this is an area to the right of the screen where URLs first appear (in thumbnail form) when you bookmark them. You can either drag and drop your new thumbnails into the proper tab or folder or simply use the drop stack as a temporary area for web pages that you want to look at at some convenient point in time but not add to your bookmarks collection.
4. Centralized bookmarking across browsers: Tidy Favorites works interchangeably in IE and Firefox both: if you use both browser your URLs that are saved in one browser will also instantly appear on the other.

More notes on this program as follows:

• The Tidy Favorites page: you can access this from the browser toolbar by clicking on the “Tidy Favorites” button or otherwise use it as your home page (or one of your home pages). It makes for quite a good looking home page, if I may say so, and provides a quick search box that can be used to search Google, Google images, or Wikipedia. It does not seem to give the option to change search providers, although I am not at all complaining about their pre-set search choices.
• Thumbnails: can be static (where the image does not update itself) or dynamic (where the thumbnail image is updated to reflect changes). Thumbnails can both be resized at will as well as “zoomed into” using the mouse wheel. You can thus zoom into a certain section or area of a website that displays updated information (e.g. a stock ticker, a latest comments section, etc) and if the thumbnail is set to update automatically you will end up with a kind of improvised information widget within Tidy Favorites.
• Portable: you can install a portable version of Tidy Favorites to carry your favorites around on a flash drive (when you first run the installer it will ask you if you want to do this). I did not try this myself.
• Controls: two buttons are provided (“display Tidy Favorites”, and “add a URL to Tidy Favorites”). For both browsers you will most probably need to add these to the command bar manually (click here for more info). The Tidy Favorites buttons seem to magically appear on the Google Toolbar if you are using it which I personally found helpful. Tidy Favorites can also optionally run with Windows and appear as an icon in the system tray (which I was not too keen on).
• Importing favorites: you can drag and drop your browser favorites onto the Tidy Favorites page to add them to it (although unfortunately you cannot drag entire folders).
• Memory consumption: the process “TidyFavorites.exe”, which consumes approx 24 megs of memory has to be running in memory in order for Tiny Favorites to work. This is not a lot of memory but certainly not lightweight.
• Differences between free and paid versions: aside from being skinnable and the developers offering personalized tech support/automatic updates for the paid version, there does not seem to be any substantiative differences. It seems that the makers of this want to make the paid version attractive for people to buy but haven’t figured it out yet (kudos to them for not turning the free version of Tidy Favorites into crippleware). How about online bookmarks synchronization across machines guys?; How about synchronizing with, say, Del.icio.us? That might be worth paying for.

Wish list (or how this program can be even better)

• The ability to select multiple thumbnails and simultaneously set them all to the same size, resize them collectively, or move them together to a tab or folder. At the moment each thumbnail has to be managed on its own.
• Applying “magnetic thumbnails” where two thumbnails snap together if they are within a certain distance of each other.
• The ability to move the Tidy Favorites data file from “application data” to a user-defined folder.

The verdict: an innovative bookmark manager that takes a few simple concepts and puts them together in an intuitive way that makes sense. If you have been searching for a bookmark management program that is both practical and provides a good user experience, by all means check this one out. Tidy Favorites is strictly for local favorites management, though, which may be a strike against it when most bookmark management programs seem to be clamoring to sync online; but be that as it may this program is definitely a winner and I recommend it wholeheartedly!

Version Tested: 3.53

Compatibility: Windows XP, Vista.

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 3.9 megs).