IMPORTANT: By default, the EDIT bookmarklet looks for editor.js in "c:/windows/desktop". If you put the script in a different directory then you must change the pathname in EDIT's source to that directory's (full) pathname. The correct form is:

      '<script src=\'c:/some/path/editor.js\'>'

EDIT and SAVE are examples of JavaScript Bookmarklets. EDIT invokes the in-situ editor when clicked and applies it to the web page currently being viewed. Once the page has been debauched to your satisfaction, click the SAVE link to pop open a new window containing the doctored doc. From here save the page via the browser's drop-down file menu, just like you'd use "Save As" to copy any other web page to your files.

Here's the JavaScript source for editor.js. Copy it, paste into your preferred text editor, and save the file as "editor.js". And make sure the EDIT bookmarklet knows the file's whereabouts.

The original motive for cobbling up the editor was my frustration at having to tediously edit the HTML of downloaded web pages by hand in a text editor just to render them humanly readable - expunging ads, menus, broken image links, ugly fonts and colors and general clutter. Yes, I realize that Netscape has its Composer, and Microsoft its Front Page, but the HTML they produce is godawful. So no, I wouldn't even consider using them. And please don't get me going about Word 2000! The stuff bears virtually no resemblance to any HTML I've seen, living or dead.

Understand that this is a work in progress, and that I'm no kind of programmer. But I like to solve problems - if possible, deviantly. JavaScript appeals to me for the same reason that awk and Perl do; it's very much tied to a particular problem domain, i.e. the browser. Of course, it's a tissue of version- and browser-specific quirks and gotchas; despite the relative simplicity of the language (as against C++, say) the divergent object models of the big two browsers make for a pretty steep learning curve. No doubt this is why WYSIWYG rich-content editors written in JavaScript have been conspicuous mostly by their absence.

Microsoft came out with a DHTML Editing Control for IE 4 and 5, to be used in what was termed 'design mode'. This is replaced in IE 5.5 by an 'editor mode' and a revised DHTML Edit Control included with the browser's MSHTML component. It seems that very little use has been made of these MS editing controls, probably on two counts: (1) a lack of documentation and examples of their use; and (2) Microsoft's bad habit of introducing cool new technologies that (2a) demand a big investment of your time to learn how to use, and (2b) stand a good chance of being dropped, radically altered or superceded a year or two hence ... exactly what happened to the DHTML Edit Control. In contrast, my in-situ editor uses only the IE DOM's innerHTML and TextRange. Mozilla's latest milestones include an innerHTML method, appeasing the many web designers who found CreateNode and its ilk clumsy and verbose. As for TextRange, the W3C's DOM-2 standard includes a DOM Range object for manipulating document selections, which will enable (at this time, still hypothetical) W3C-compliant browsers to accomplish most of what MSIE's TextRange does.

Some 85 per cent of us have Internet Explorer as our primary means of surfing the web. There's some incredibly smart technology buried in IE that for various reasons remains under-exploited. This page is my small effort to advertise some lesser-known features of the IE DOM, and to help the similarly inclined hack the browser, blow up the desktop, and, in general, contribute to this planet's portion of fun.

(Stay tuned, more soon ...)