User Selection Postcode Bookmarklets

Although the use of <link /> elements can be readily exploited using bookmarklets, as the postcode <link /> shows, there are very few that are consistently used and as such even fewer that reach the critical density required to become self-sustaining in even tightly knit communities, let alone across the web as whole.

It therefore makes sense to provide bookmarklets that can feed of user highlighted text. This requires neither any commmitment on the part of the original page designer (no need to ensure the presence of the correct <link /> tag for example), nor sophisticated screen scraping routines to automatically identify information that is not necessarily explicitly marked up.

As an example, consider this description of a Postcode bookmarklet which straightforwardly opens a Multimap map depicting a postcode (such as MK7 6AA) highlghted in an arbitrary web page.

To borrow from that post, here's the
bookmarklet and

javascript:
  location.href='http://uk.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?pc='+
  encodeURIComponent(window.getSelection())

As before, it's easy enough to provide a wealth of related bookmarklets, like this
UpMyStreet bookmarklet or this
UK Postcode to Grid Co-ordinates Bookmarklet.

To use any of these bookmarklets, just drag them onto your browser toolbar, highlight a UK postcode on any webpage, and fire off the bookmarklet...

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