Bookmarklets are small software programs, usually written in JavaScript, that are stored as the URL of a bookmark. The word is a blending of bookmark and applet. Bookmarklets can be placed on a browser's bookmark bar and act like one-click buttons for quick access to certain functions, such as saving a file to a specific location, extracting data from a file, or performing a search and rendering results. This convenience is why they are growing in popularity.

Bookmarklets work with most browsers and operating systems, so you can use them on smart phones as well as desktop and laptop computers. EnhancED has featured a few services that use bookmarklets, including the Read Later bookmarklets used with Instapaper and ReadIt Later, that allow you to save journal articles and other pages from the web to you account, and Arc90's Readability bookmarklet that allows you to view web pages without clutter.

As with bookmarks, some companies offer products for exploring and managing bookmarklets. See Marklets.com.