Chrome Tip: Add a Keyboard Shortcut to a Bookmarklet

I use Google Chrome for a lot of browsing, and I’ve been getting into Delicious for archiving content that I know I might want to find again but don’t want hanging out in my Google Reader. It’s sort of a take on Scott Hanselman’s workflow for reading and archiving.

The other day I thought: it would be nice if I had a keyboard shortcut while browsing to save to delicious, instead of navigating through the bookmarks bar to click it? And a short google search later, up popped a great process (Ed. note: unfortunately this link has been lost to time.) from the Switched Download Squad.

The abbreviated steps are:

• Copy the text of your delicious bookmarklet (edit the bookmark and then copy the location – it’s a bit of javascript that you’ll be copying)
• Right-click on Chrome’s address/Search bar and select Edit Search Engines..
• Scroll to the bottom of your search engines and add a new one. I chose Add to Delicious for the title.
• Give the search engine a keyword – preferably a short one. I chose d for delicious.
• Paste in the javascript.

Now, to use it:

• Navigate to a page that you want to save
• Type CTRL + L (this activates the search bar), then your keyword (d in my case), then enter.

This effectively opens the search bar, chooses your “search engine”, and navigates to it (which opens the bookmarklet javascript code).

Use for any bookmarklet you need.