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Comment by TekMol | Hacker News Reader

What is most important to me in a browser is that I can customize it. So I am very annoyed if that is restricted. As it happened with the latest update of FireFox:

Recently, my Firefox updated and now I can't run bookmarklets anymore right after starting the browser.

Say I have a bookmarklet like

    javascript:alert(123)

Then it works fine on every page, even on about:blank.

But not right after the browser started with what is called "blank page" in the settings.

This is a bit cumbersome, because I often use a bookmarklet as the first step of my browsing session. A bookmarklet, which goes like "If TekMol is not on page B and not on page C, then send him to page A". So I start with page A, then click the bookmarklet again, get to page B, click it again and get to page C.

But that workflow is broken now. Must be some regression in the latest version of Firefox.

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That is one of the oddest workflows I have yet encountered. It reminds me of something I read that was like "If your software supports something, explicitly or implicitly, someone will depend on it.". Using Javascripts in a bookmark to rotate through websites is unexpected. I hope it will be fixed for you though. Maybe open a ticket if you can't find one.

There's a relevant XKCD, of course

https://xkcd.com/1172/

A cute idea though. Going through a daily "rotation" of Web sites is probably pretty common and turning that into a formal process is pretty smart to avoid procrastination or having lots of tabs opening all at once. It would work better as an extension, I suspect.

The nice thing about a bookmarklet is that it works on all of my devices. Even on my tablet. And that editing it is possible by simply right clicking the bookmark and hitting "edit".

It seems very natural to me.

A button, which I click to get to the next task. It makes some checks if I accomplished the last task etc and then brings me to my next task.

It may be odd, but bookmarklets are the quickest way to 'mod' a browser session, and a welcome leftover from a simpler time (for now even working on some mobile browsers).

For instance, I have one setup that after activation, allows me to highlight text on a page, which is then automaticaaly dated, annotated with metadata and copied to my clipboard, saving a lot of keystrokes and touch movements. Another parses the .bib metadata found in Google Scholar results, and prettyfies it to a markdown suitable format.

I would dread losing these simple scripts that can be run across all my devices.

Bookmarklets are important for all kinds of web dev work, including accessibility where some bookmarklets are entire apps.

Js in bookmarks used to be somewhat common though.

https://xkcd.com/1172/

You should be able to work around this by changing the "Homepage and new windows" setting from "Blank Page" to "Custom URL" and setting it to "about:newtab", and then change "New tabs" to "Blank page".

That solved it!

Wonderful! Thank you!

I don't know if this helps in your specific case, but I also fell prey to that "no more javascript: in bookmarks" ... enhancement ... and I was able to work around it via a data: url <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Basics_of_...> wrapping the relevant JS in a <script> tag, e.g.

  data:text/html,%3Cscript%3Ealert(123)%3C%2Fscript%3E

The only reason I'm on Firefox is more multi-row tabs -- a workflow I got used to many years ago when that was a Firefox plugin. Now you can accomplish it by customizing the browser with CSS.

But every 10 or so versions of Firefox breaks this and I have to seek out a fix.

Ever thought about trying out NYXT?

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