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AskYC: Bookmarklet or Toolbar

4 points by topcoder8 ↗ HN
I'm starting a new stealth project and this project will have social-sharing features where users can bookmark a site/page and indicate they like a site, much like stumbleupon/delicious. But I'm not sure if a bookmarklet script is good enough or a FF extensions would work out better. Any advice?

6 comments

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bostonbiz
At work we have locked down computers / browsers (IE6), so a I always prefer bookmarklets over toolbars.
raju
I guess it depends on

a. What kind of functionality are you trying to expose? b. End user constraints, much like bostonbiz raised

Tumblr has a bookmarklet, but its limited because it does not let you tag your tumblrs. I find that limiting, but I guess thats what they have settled for. On the other hand, delicious offers a toolbar with a buttload of functionality built in.

This may sound silly, but I guess you could start off with a bookmarklet, and let the users decide. Just a thought...

tlrobinson
Bookmarklet if you can, since it will instantly be compatible with most browsers (as long as you're careful).

If it only needs to act when the user clicks it then bookmarklet should be sufficient. If it needs to automatically do things in the background without user interaction then you'll need to do toolbars.

pius
I don't install toolbars unless there's something extremely compelling there. I detest them, probably because deep down I still associate them with malware.

Bookmarklets, on the other hand, are lightweight and portable across browsers.

topcoder8
Wow.. thanks everyone for the valuable advice..

After reading through all the comments, I do feel Bookmarklet is the way to go. However my only concern with Bookmarklets is there's no way on updating an user's bookmarklet automatically, so if you need to change something, you pretty much have to email all your users to remove their current bookmarklets and setup the new one. correct?