Bookmarklet authors have it tough. On top of the usual challenges of cross-browser Javascript testing, we’ve traditionally also had to workaround IE’s character limit and jump through hoops to embed code inside of javascript: links.

Bookmarklet Server (source) eases testing and deployment by allowing you to keep code where it should be—in .js files. A single SCRIPT element dynamically loads the bookmarklet code and creates the javascript: link for you.

Features

• Works around IE’s restrictive character limit (an external loader bookmarklet is given to IE users)
• Any valid JS quote characters can be used!
• invalid/problematic HTML characters/tokens can be used!

Tests

• Loading… (You must enable Javascript)
• Loading… (in IE this will load the BM in a SCRIPT element)
• Loading… (your JS console can now report accurate line numbers!)

Setup

1. Create a public* directory to hold all your bookmarklets. (*within your
   web root; this will work on private testing servers)
2. Configure and place the script in
   your new directory.
3. For each bookmarklet, include an element with a unique id in which the link
   will be embedded and a script element:

   <div id='myBM'></div>
   <script type="text/javascript"src="/bookmarklets/bm.php?action=getScript&file=myCompressedBM.js&name=My%20Bookmarklet&container=myBM"></script>

Bookmarklet creation & testing

1. Best practice is to start with a template
   that uses a closure to
   hide all inner variables and functions. I also have a template
   for affecting all frames in a frameset.
2. While testing the script, append &test=1 to the
   end of the src attribute of the script element described above. This
   forces the script to load as an external script for easier debugging.
3. Aggressively comment your source!
4. Test…
5. When you’re done, create a compressed source version using
   something like Dean
   Edwards’ Packer . Don’t lose your uncompressed source!
6. If you wish to comment your compressed source, use only /* multi-line
comments */ at the very top of the file.
7. Remove &test=1 from the script src attribute to embed
   the full compressed source into the link’s href attribute.