What's a favelet?
A favelet (also known as a bookmarklet) is a browser bookmark that is saved in your web browser and contains code that can add new features to your browser. They are saved in your browser as a bookmark URL.
Some of the earliest favelets appeared as early as 2002 which predates browser plugins. Favelets began to fall out of favor around 2013 with the widespread adoption of an enhanced Content Security Policy by all web browsers. The new policy reduced some functionality of favelets and made them less favorable to browser plugins. However, favelets are still usable today.
What can a favelet do?
Currently favelets are mainly used for one of two purposes:
- Modifying a web page (for example: removing paywalls, etc).
- Extracting data from a web page (for example: extracting highlighted text and looking it up on Wikipedia).
Interestingly, favelets work on all major browsers (including mobile browsers). This is useful even today as browser plugins are becoming more and more restricted. In addition to being more restricted, browser plugins need to be installed on each browser through a web store and not all browsers support plugins.
A favelet for Nymeria.
We have created a favelet you can use today, on any browser. The favelet makes finding email addresses, phone numbers and social links on LinkedIn and GitHub a breeze. You can simply click the favelet and then enrich the URL with contact details.
To try it out, bookmark this Nymeria Favelet link. You can probably drag it to your bookmarks or long press to bookmark it. If you're not sure how, you might have to search the web for information on how to create a bookmark from a link in your particular browser.
Favelets can be handy tools in a number of situations. In particular, if your company's IT policy forbids browser plugins you can always leverage a favelet for similar functionality.
Additionally, you can use favelets on browsers that don't support standard browser extensions (like on iOS and Android). Favelets are a great tool to add to your tool belt and shouldn't be overlooked.
We hope this post has shed some light on favelets. If you have any questions about any of this please reach out anytime!