In Firefox you can combine JS bookmarklets, keywords and params to do something like this:

javascript:(function(){
    var args = '%s'.split(' ');
    alert(args);
})();

Useful example:

javascript:(function(){
    var args = '%s'.split(' ');
    var subreddit = args[0];
    var search = args[1];
    document.location.href = "https://www.reddit.com/r/" + subreddit + "/search/?q=" + search + "&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on&t=all&sort=new";
})();

Bookmarklet format:

javascript:(function() {var args = '%s'.split(' ');var subreddit = args[0];var search = args[1];document.location.href = "https://www.reddit.com/r/" + subreddit + "/search/?q=" + search + "&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on&t=all&sort=new";})();

If you assign the keyword redditsearch to that bookmarklet, you can type redditsearch PixelArt zelda on the firefox navbar and you will be reditected to the Reddit search for ‘zelda’ on r/PixelArt.

In general this makes the navbar a very powerful command line in which you can add any command with multiple params.

It seems Mozilla has plans to get rid of this feature, see the ticket Migrate keyword bookmarks into about:preferences managed Search Engines. The good news is that the last comment, besides mine asking them not to remove this functionality, is from some years ago. I hope they change their mind, or forget about it…

TIP: If you don’t want to remember the param order, you can also ask for them with a prompt if no arguments are specified:

javascript:(function(){
    var args = '%s'.split(' ');
    var subreddit = args[0] != "" ? args[0] : prompt("Enter the subbreddit:");
    if (!subreddit) return;
    var search = args.length > 1 ? args[1] : prompt("Enter the text to search:");
    if (!search) return;
    document.location.href = "https://www.reddit.com/r/" + subreddit + "/search/?q=" + search + "&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on&t=all&sort=new";
})();

Bookmarklet format:

javascript:(function(){ var args = '%s'.split(' '); var subreddit = args[0] != "" ? args[0] : prompt("Enter the subbreddit:"); if (!subreddit) return; var search = args.length > 1 ? args[1] : prompt("Enter the text to search:"); if (!search) return; document.location.href = "https://www.reddit.com/r/" + subreddit + "/search/?q=" + search + "&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on&t=all&sort=new"; })();

Sorry for the reddit examples, this was posted originally on r/firefox some time ago and adapting them to lemmy seemed a bit too much work :P.

  • deergon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Great post! Do you know if there’s any official documentation on the bookmarklets? I’ve been trying to Google it without much luck.

    • Crul@lemm.eeOP
      3·
      1 year ago

      Not that I’m aware of. I think they are so simple that there isn’t very much to say about them. They are just plain javascript that works as if you typed it on the console. Although, there a couple of tricky things.

      EDIT: I’m not saying javascript is simple. Bookmarklets can be very complex, but that’s just javascript. If you know how to do it on the browser console, you just need to write it in a one-liner and it will work as a bookmark (with the caveats that I talk about later).

      For the basics, see this article: What are Bookmarklets? How to Use JavaScript to Make a Bookmarklet in Chromium and Firefox

      If you follow that post, there will be no problem. But you will have issues if you don’t use the “auto-executed anonymous function” wrapper.

      And, as the post says, you need to write all semicolons and brackets { } to avoid funny things when removing line breaks.

      EDIT-2: I forgot to mention the %s part, I think that’s not its intended use. I know it from keyworded regular-non-js bookmarks used for searches. See Using keyword searches - MozillaZine Knowledge Base. The great part is that it also works with bookmarklets :).

      The other tricky part is the inconvenience of editing them after some time if you don’t have a pretty-formatted version. I’ve been able to hack a script to read bookmarklets from Firefox places DB, pretty-format, open in VIM and re-convert them to one-liners after the edition. I wasn’t able to save them automatically to Firefox because some secure-hash stauff, so I still need to copy-paste them manuall at the end.

      See this post: Script for easy bookmarklet edition [Windows] : firefox

      • deergon@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        Thanks a million, great info once again! I didn’t realize that the %s was simply replaced (because that seems a little dirty), but it makes sense in the bookmark context.

        Yeah, the development flow is a little tricky :) Ideally it would be nice to re-apply/import them automatically without user interaction and/or run automated testing. I fiddled a little with the command-line (for testing), ie. firefox -url “javascript:…”, but it doesn’t seem to work. Accessing the places database directly would be great of course. I’ve been thinking about using the enterprise policies, but haven’t gotten around to testing it.

        • Crul@lemm.eeOP
          2·
          1 year ago

          Accessing the places database directly would be great of course

          The problem is not accessing the DB (I manage to make that work, see the previous link). I was even able to execute the UPDATE… but there is a hash to prevent unwanted modifications. I found some python code that should calculate the hash, but Firefox did not like it… or I missed some detail (encoding maybe?). Personally, the workflow I achieved with that script is good-enough for me, but it’s far from ideal.

          The other usual approach to scripting in the browser is ViolentMonkey (or TamperMonkey, or others), much better for big scripts. The downside is that (AFAIK) you need to inject in every page all the scripts you want to be able to execute and (again, AFAIK) there is no way to run them as easy as “Control+L” (focus navbar) > Type keyword… which I have now so ingrained in my brain :D.

          • deergon@lemmy.world
            2·
            1 year ago

            I tried the python code out and it actually does work for me, ie. I’m able to update an existing bookmark.

            # hashing code from link inserted here
def update_place(id, new_url):
    new_url_hash = url_hash(new_url)
    conn = sqlite3.connect('places.sqlite')
    cur = conn.cursor()
    cur.execute('UPDATE moz_places SET url = ?, url_hash = ? WHERE id = ?', (new_url, new_url_hash, id))
    conn.commit()
    cur.close()
    conn.close()

update_place(16299, "javascript:alert('Testing bookmarklet update ...');alert('Great success!');")

            Only annoying thing is that Firefox needs to be closed while updating. Anyway, I haven’t tried with bigger scripts though, so there might be some gotchas there.

            Agreed, keywords are really nice for keyboard navigation!

            • Crul@lemm.eeOP
              2·
              1 year ago

              Thanks for the testing! I’m happy it works :D.

              I think I only tried to execute the UPDTE directly from the batch file instead of doing it from python. Good idea!

              Only annoying thing is that Firefox needs to be closed while updating.

              I don’t remember if I tried that. It kinda makes sense… I don’t think it’s expected to hot edit those links :P.