Cross-browser ‘bookmark this site’ script

I always thought that only Microsoft Internet Explorer supported a ‘bookmark this site’ functionality. By doing some research on the web I found a few code snippets that did the trick for other browsers as well. I compiled these scripts together in the following bookmarkthis(title, url) function. It’s completely cross-browser (compatible with IE4+, Firefox 1.x+ and Opera7+). Have fun with it!


function bookmarkthis(title,url) {
  if (window.sidebar) { // firefox
     window.sidebar.addPanel(title, url, "");
  } else if (document.all) { // IE
     window.external.AddFavorite(url, title);
  } else if (window.opera && window.print) { // opera
     var elem = document.createElement('a');
     elem.setAttribute('href',url);
     elem.setAttribute('title',title);
     elem.setAttribute('rel','sidebar');
     elem.click();
  }
}

10 thoughts on “Cross-browser ‘bookmark this site’ script”

Niels says:

March 26, 2007 at 6:35 pm

Thanks! It works indeed!

Btw, I always advise my visitors to press ctrl-D when they like my site. That’s a quick way to add the url to your bookmarks as well.

C L says:

March 26, 2007 at 7:15 pm

Netscape (8.1.2) seems to want to add it to Sidebar instead of bookmarks.
Opera (9.10) doesn’t seem to do anything.

jochem says:

March 26, 2007 at 10:07 pm

@C L,
Thanks, in turns out that Firefox opens the bookmarks in the sidebar as well. I didn’t check that… Too bad.
I’ll keep my eyes open for any other possibilities.