I keep flip flopping back and forth between safari and firefox, but one feature on safari that keeps pulling me back is the hotkeyed bookmarklets.
Safari and other browsers have two kinds of bookmarks... traditional bookmark folders (which I don't use anymore, more on that in a later post) and what is called the bookmarks menu. In safari, these bookmarks can be accessed by pressing CMD + [number key], where [number key] is the number in order. So in my toolbar, above, CMD + 1 is "Share on FriendFeed," and CMD + 2 is "Read Later."
The real power of bookmarklets is that they can store little javascript programs, not just websites. In fact, that's what all of my bookmarklets do, and they are real handy. I'll focus on just one of them today. It's the one labeled "Read Later". It hooks up to www.instapaper.com.
Instapaper is a great service, that can be best summed up as a place to store temperorary bookmarks. So when I encounter a long blog post, or a youtube video, or a shop item I want for later, but I don't want to log it in a text file or create a bookmark, I simply press CMD + 2, and it's logged away until I come for it. Very handy for all those little things you come across at work that you want to save till later.
So that's it. Bookmarklets can be used on any browser, even stinky old IE, but I wanted to highlight the power of them on Safari. Other bookmarklets I use constantly include Subscribe in Google Reader, Add to Wishlist, and Bookmark on Delicious. I'll talk more about bookmarking and delicious later.
