ISBN bookmarklets! Er... Why?

I buy a lot of books, while a few of them are purchased on the strength of the authors name alone or through idle browsing i stumble upon a growing number of them via webblogs. Unlike the reviews on sites like Amazon with a blogged review i have a basis on which to decide if the authors views are going to mesh with my own. But, like everything else, there’s a downside.

Most of the blogs i read are written by Americans who are inconsiderate enough to use the American version of sites such as Amazon rather than the UK ones that i prefer. How dare they?! After this happened a couple of times i decided to do something about it. Below are my short solutions, they’ve been useful to me so i thought i’d put them online.

The how

Each of the links below are bookmarklets, A bookmarklet is a snippet of code that adds or enhances a web browsers functionality. They live in the same place as your bookmarks and allow easy access to tasks ranging from the trivial (resizing the browser window or turning images off) through to the more complex (running searches with whichever text you have highlighted as the search term or validating the html and links on the current page.)

These bookmarklets look for something resembling an ISBN in the URL of the current page and then attempt to take you to the same book but on the site the bookmarklet is designed for.

The examples below are for the sites i use most when it comes to spending my woefully under stocked pay packet. The Javascript isn’t exactly complex (its a first draft and works for me) so with a little modding they should be portable to which ever site you want, including your own regional version of Amazon.

OK already! Hand them over!

This bookmarklet changes the current window to show the matched ISBN at Amazon UK. This has been tested in Mozilla, IE and Firefox.

ISBN2AmazonUK

This bookmarklet changes the current window to show the matched ISBN at CompMan a rather good UK bookseller that i’ve only had positive experiences dealing with. This has been tested in Mozilla, IE and Firefox.

ISBN2Computer Manuals UK