I’m working on a few tools to do semantic web stuff in Safari. Since I’m just at the prototype phase, I’m handling this stuff with javascript. I just want to make some useful bookmarklets and be done with it. The trouble is I normally can’t depend on Prototype or jQuery to make my life easier.

Fortunately, Mr. David Hochman whipped together a little Protoype bookmarklet that pulls down Protoype wherever you need it. It’s pretty spiffy, but a bit special purpose. It depending on a script link to use an id of "prototype.js", which won’t always be true. Instead, you should check the value of Prototype.Version, which has the added benefit of letting your stuff be version dependent. Also, doesn’t everyone DRY out their code to the point that Huffman coding fails to improve anything?

(function() {
  var d = document;
  try { Prototype.Version }
  catch(e) {
    var s = d.createElement('script');
    s.type = 'text/javascript';
    s.src = 'http://scripts.example/prototype.js';
    d.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(s);
  }
})();void(0)

To install this bookmarklet, just drag it to your bookmark bar or right-click and save. If you haven’t noticed, you’ll still need to point your script at a copy of Prototype. Version checking is left as an exercise for the reader.

But let’s not forget I hacked this up so I could use Prototype to a real end. Sadly it’s not RDF or microformats or HTML5. In fact, it’s just for a feature from HTML3.2, rel="next". I’m far too attached to Safari’s minimalism to suffer Firefox just for the plugins, and Opera just feels funny. Don’t get me wrong, it’s quite a nice sort of funny. I do enjoy using substances that make me feel pleasantly funny; I just gave up my habit of doing that all the time. Now it’s more of an occasional celebration. Say, in honor of passing acid. No really, the other Acid.

But I digress. I just want a simple tool to go back and forward. I know it’s in vogue to have little text hanging about the page that does that. But it’s also in vogue to say that the web will never supplant books. And that journalism is dying. Probably fnords as well. But I’m not that kind of gas-guzzeling, coke-drinking, twitter-checking sheep. No, I’m the other kind. Really, I’m glad they finally took the next- and previous-page buttons out of books. But they’re turning around that sort of innovation and putting them back into newspapersites. Come on!

So I proudly present to you—in this original, exclusive, and one-time event—my next and previous buttons. Once you’re done, lock up and turn the lights out.