I have written about a few bookmarking sites here on Make Tech Easier. Bookmarking sites like 43marks, myHomepage and Symbaloo. All of them have their pros and cons. Skloog has a list of features that others didn’t have at the time of writing those articles.

Sign up

You will need to set up an account. This is allows you to personalize your bookmarks and gives you a Skloog email address, more on that later. Setting up an account only takes a minute. Name, email address and password are all that’s required. You will need to activate your account by clicking on the link they email you.

Emailing a link

Being able to email a link into a bookmarking site is not a feature many sites offer. When you sign up for an account, they will issue you an email address. This email address is a direct path to creating a new bookmark without going to the site and logging in.

The process is what you would think it would be. Compose and email with 1 or more links and send it to your assigned email address. I like this option because you can send in a bunch of links at one time.

Importing to Skloog

Skloog lets you import the bookmarks you already have. This was a feature some of the others sites left out. In my opinion, it makes switching much more difficult if you need to start from scratch.

You have your choice of a few browsers and sites to import from. I like how they chose to include importing from Xmarks. For all of people who are using this soon to be extinct Firefox plug-in, this is a great way to capture all of your bookmarks.

Currently you cannot export your bookmarks from Skloog, however the feature is coming. It says so on the bottom of the bookmark importing page.

Finding your bookmarks

Once you have all of your bookmarks imported into Skloog, you have a couple of ways to track them down. You can use the search bar off to the left side of the page. The other way is to search using the category drop down.

Organizing your bookmarks

Organizing your bookmarks is pretty easy. You have the choice to use categories, tags or both. If you are adding a new bookmark manually, you can add all this information into the fields after you click Add A Bookmark in the left sidebar of the main screen.

If you import bookmarks from a browser or email a link to Skloog, you sill need to click on the My Bookmarks tab and add tags or categories manually. You can bulk add categories by clicking the box to the left of the bookmark, then clicking where is says Move to and selecting the category from the drop down.

Other notable features

I like bookmarklets. they make life easier for quick things like adding a bookmark. Skloog offers 2 different bookmarklets; one for adding a bookmark and the other takes you to your Skloog homepage.

The bookmarks displayed on the main page can be personalized to your favorite sites. You can then set Skloog to be your homepage.

The tabs just above the visual bookmarking window can be personalized giving you layers of organized bookmarks. If you use Skloog as your homepage, this will help the page seem less cluttered.

What would you add to make this your ideal bookmarking service?

Another great thing about browser bookmarklets is that they don’t hog down your system’s memory because they are invoked only when you use them. Else, they sleep silently in your bookmarks toolbar.

While it is easy to add multiple bookmarklets to your browser, managing them can be an painful task. You have to search the desired bookmarklet from the bookmarks toolbar and repetedly click the folder containing the bookmarklets. Not to mention the valuable screen real estate taken up by the bookmarklets.

In this tutorial, we will learn how you can combine and concatenate multiple browser bookmarklets into one and use all of them without having to clutter your bookmarks toolbar. Moreover, you can share the bookmarklet collection with anyone and can use it from any computer you want.

How to Combine Multiple Browser Bookmarklets

1. First backup your existing bookmarks and bookmarklets as an HTML file. This will be handy if you want to revert to the older settings.

2. Go to the Bookmarklet Combiner website. You will see the following interface:

3. Now you have to copy the address property of a bookmarklet and paste it in the URL field in the Bookmarklet combiner website. To find the address property of a bookmarklet, right click it and select properties

4. This will open a small pop up window containing the location and other properties of the bookmarklet, as shown below:

Copy the entire code shown in the “Location” field of the boomarklet.

5. Paste the code in the Bookmarklet Combiner website’s URL field. I have combined three bookmarklets in the following example, you can simply click the “Add Another” button to add a row and then enter the address of a new bookmarklet.

Make sure you enter a relevant title for the bookmarklet because this will be required to identify a bookmarklet from a crowd of many.

6. Now you have to select an action which will be triggered once you hit the combined bookmarklet button. You have two choices here:

• Run all the bookmarklets at once. This may be required when you want to perform multiple actions on a webpage by clicking a single button. For example – you can combine Tweet this, Digg This, Stumble it bookmarklets into one and click the combined bookmarklet to share a webpage instantly on these social bookmarking sites. Hitting this bookmarklet will automatically open three new browser tabs and all you have to do is sign in and take the required action.
• The second option is however much better – it allows you to select individual bookmarklets from the drop down list. Thus you have to click the drop down list each time you want to invoke a bookmarklet.

If you are a power user, go for the first option and combine groups of bookmarklets that solve similar purpose. If you are no geek and want an easy option to merge multiple bookmarklets and declutter your bookmarks toolbar, go for the second option.

7.  In the next step, specify a location where you would want to save the bookmarklet in your bookmarks toolbar.

You can also name your bookmarklet, this will be useful when you are dealing with different sets of bookmarklets as mentioned earlier.

8. You are all done. Hit “Save” and the combined bookmarklet will be saved in your bookmarks toolbar. You will also be given a Unique URL containing all the address of the combined bookmarklet ( see example)

Here is how it works when you hit the combined bookmarklet:

You can share the bookmarklet combination with anyone by sending them the URL. This is also useful in the sense that you don’t have to backup or export anything, a copy is stored in the Bookmarklet combiner website. When you are working over a friend’s house or on an internet cafe, simply open that URL and drag the bookmarklet combination in your bookmarks toolbar. Neat !

Also check out some useful Greasemonkey scripts which you can use to enhance your browsing environment.

What are the browser bookmarklets you use or recommend ? Please share your ideas in the comments section.

For those of you who don’t use bookmarklets or arent quite sure what they are, here is a brief description.

What are Bookmarklets?

Bookkmarklets are a tiny java script application designed to add one click functionality to your web browser. There are hundreds of different uses, many of which save the need to run a desktop program.

A few programs with bookmarklets that have been mentioned on Make Tech Easier before are:

• Webnotes
• Hootsuite
• Zementa
• Evom
• Posterous

Why Use a Bookmarklet?

The main reason to use them is to save time. As an example:

To email a copy of the Webnotes post to someone, use the “Gmail This!” bookmarklet. A window will pop up just like when the compose button in Gmail is clicked. The link and email subject are automatically added. If you want to add more to the body of the email you can explain what the link is before you email it.

Other reasons to use bookmarklets are:

• Sharing things quickly on a social media site
• Spell check
• SEO
• URL shortening
• Adding the site to a social bookmarking site (ie Delicious, Digg, Reddit)
• Subscribing to a RSS reader
• Eliminating the ads and bloat for printing

20 other useful bookmarklets

1. Share on Facebook

Share sites on your Facebook wall or send as a message

2. Share on Friendfeed

Share links on both Friendfeed and Twitter with this one bookmarklet

3. Gmail This!

If you are going to pick one from this list to try, pick this one. It will save immense amounts of time and keep distractions at a minimum.

4. Evernote

Great for the avid Evernote user. send a link with tags, web clip, and notes to the notebook of your choice. This is a very quick way to add things without keeping the page or desktop app open all the time.

5. Serendipity (Reddit)

Randomly displays a site. A lot like Stumbleupon

6. Add to RTM

Quickly add a reminder or to-do

7. Vox This!

Add content to your Vox Blog

8. Readability

If you do a lot of reading on the web, this customizable bookmarklet will rock your world. It removes the bloat and formats the text in a way that is easier for YOU to read.

9. Spell Check

Checks spelling of any page, even published pages. Any word spelled wrong or not in Firefox’s dictionary will be highlighted.

10. Subscribe in Google Reader

Fast way to add a RSS feed to your Google Reader

11. Xray

Great for web designers. Click the bookmarklet then on any item on a page. Information like dimensions, position and border is displayed.

12. Share on Tumblr

Easily share a link on Tumblr

13. BugMeNot

Use BugMeNot database of usernames and passwords to sign in to “registered users only” websites, like news sites.

14. Boxqueue

Add videos to your Boxee Queue for viewing later. You need both a Google account and Boxee account to make this bookmarklet work.

15. DiggThis!

Quickly add sites to Digg.

16. Password Generator

If you have trouble coming up with secure passwords all the time, save some time and energy by installing this bookmarklet.

17. Google Translate

Super handy for those times when you end up on a site written in a language other than your native tongue.

18. TweetBurner

You know there had to be at least one Twitter something or other in the list.

19. Pagezipper

Features like continuous scrolling and auto resizing of images for your browser window make viewing sites less work.

20. Printliminator

Eliminate items on the page you DO NOT want to print. Great for pages or blogs without a printer friendly version of the page or post.

Including the one we have previously mentioned at MakeTechEasier, here are 25 of the useful bookmarklets that you can place in your browser. These are only a small portion of what is available. All of them are made to save time or make your browsing experience more personalized or enjoyable.

What bookmarklets do you use?

Image credit suchitra prints