Note: This post contains custom html and JavaScript code. So if the bottom part looks messed up in an RSS reader, that’s why.
Would you like to open a website in a separate popup window when you click a bookmark from your browsers’ bookmark tab? I do!
I have one of those for a direct link to a Google Docs document which has all kinds of quick notes and stuff I want to scribble down fast before I forget them. I used to use a short-cut to a text file on my PC somewhere but that didn’t cut it when I wanted to access notes I made at work at home and visa versa. A Google document was the solution, but I wanted a clean window instead of it just opening another tab in Firefox…
To get there I wrote a bit of JavaScript code that generates a bookmarklet that does just that. You could use it for any site really, so here’s a form to make your own auto-popup bookmarklets!
How it works in 3 easy steps:
- Enter the URL of the web site to open and the bookmarklet’s description you want. Optionally you can change the size of the window if the defaults don’t suit you. The popup window can still be resized but it’s always nice if it opens exactly as big as you want it to.
- Hit the button to generate the bookmarklet code.
- Now drag that freshly generated bookmarklet to your Firefox or Chrome toolbar and you’re done.
Your very own custom popup web-app. Awesome!
For Internet Explorer users (I’ve been told they are still out there) you need to right-click the link and choose “Add to favourites”. Then choose the links toolbar. The link should appear on your toolbar shortly after getting a security warning due to the JavaScript in the link.
Document URL Bookmarklet description Window width Window height Window left position Window top position Your bookmarklet will appear right here after you click the button.
Likes, dislikes, problems? That’s what the comments are for!
6 replies on “open any site in a popup window”
Thank you so much!
Fixed again.
Man, putting JS code inside a WP post is not a good idea apparently. For some reason the code got mangled by WP causing it to break. I offloaded it to a separate file now, so this hopefully won’t happen again in the future.
This broke today! Please fix
[…] this bookmarklet creation tool I posted a while ago I noticed that it was actually quite hard to get some custom written […]
Thanks for reporting that issue! Turns out I was reusing the same values for both height and width, but that’s fixed now. You should be able to set the dimensions correctly now for the bookmarklet.
Hi, Thanks for this utility. Only problem I have is the height property doesn’t work for the number I type in. I tested it a few times. I also notice that when I look at the link properties on my tool bar and inspect the javascript, there is only a number specified for the width of the button, not the height.