Dashler is a bookmarklet. When clicked, it opens up a toolbar on top of the webpage you viewing.
This powerful and customizable toolbar offers 3 main things:
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Shortcuts:
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Shortcuts allow you to access other websites either on-screen or in a new tab.
Very often, a shortcut will use information from the page you are viewing, such as the URL, domain, or
highlighted content.
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Tools:
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Also known as "bookmarklets," tools run snippets of Javascript. They often
modify the page you are viewing in a beneficial and specific way.
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Bookmarking:
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You can add your own bookmarks or bookmarklets by drag and drop. Then you
can search for things you've bookmarked, by title, URL, or a custom description.
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Dashler's goal is to make browsing the web as easy and convenient as possible. We like to think of it
as a swiss army knife for the internet. It allows you to easily do tasks that
might otherwise require you to open new tabs, wait for pages to load, type in a lot of stuff,
or just not do the task at all. It also let's you manage bookmarks and bookmarklets quite well.
Dashler is not a browser plug-in. It's just a really incredible bookmarklet.
Dashler is not a search engine, encyclopedia, dictionary, social network, URL shortener, video website,
news aggregator, website analytics provider, blogging service, stock analysis tool, e-mail provider, etc.
However, it makes access to these things more convenient than ever.
Dashler is a bootstrapped start-up created by Sam Mati. Some animals that I ate were harmed in the making of Dashler.
A special thanks goes to family and friends that have supported me during the on-again off-again development of Dashler
and
moreofit.com during the past two years. Non-special but significant thanks goes to
the creators and participants of the following: Apache, Linux, Linode, PHP, Firefox, FireBug, Hacker News,
and the internet.
Dashler has aggressive plans for growth and expansion in the bookmarking and search market, and is
seeking investment to accelerate this, both in the form of capital and developers' time. If you feel
like you'd be able to contribute to Dashler's inevitable success, please let us know.
Dashler's sole purpose is to make your browsing experience more productive, fun, convenient, and valuable.
Very few things give us more pleasure than to hear about how much you love or hate Dashler, how you believe it
could be made better, how you're telling all your friends about it, and how you're linking to it from your blog.
If there's a shortcut, tool, or feature that you believe Dashler should offer, please do let us know! It's
quite easy for us to make the items available for use, and quite easy for you to add them to your Dashler.
Please don't hesistate to send us feedback by clicking here, or opening up Dashler and selecting "feedback" from
its main menu.
Dashler should work on all major web browsers. It's been tested on IE, FireFox, Chrome, and Safari.
Give it a shot in your browser and let us know how it goes.
If you experience any bugs, please tell us and we'll do our best to fix them.
To get started using Dashler, please go to
our homepage and follow the
three simple steps.
Drag and drop any item in Dashler by clicking on its icon, holding down the mouse button, and moving the item.
If you drag this item over an allowable drop zone, two things will happen. The area that the item will be dropped
to will turn green, and the item itself will turn blue and show a + icon. To drop the item, simply release the mouse button.
To cancel the drag and drop, just drop the item anywhere else on the page.
If you drag an item over a folder or subfolder, it will turn green. Dropping the item there will place the item
at the end of that folder or subfolder's menu. If you hold the dragged item above the folder or subfolder for a
moment, it will open up and allow you to specifically place the dragged item.
To add new items to your Dashler Dock, go to the "Quick Find" folder on the right. Search for the shortcut
or tool you are looking for (or click "find related" to find shortcuts and tools useful for the page you're viewing), and
drag and drop any results that appear.
To delete any item from your Dashler Dock, start dragging it and drop it into the Trash (the trash icon will appear
all the way to the right once you start dragging). You cannot undo deleting, but you can always add the item again
by searching for it in Quick Find, or if it was a personal bookmark of yours, My Bin.
You can also drag any link on the page you are viewing, as long as you've first opened up Dashler. You are free
to drag and drop the link directly to any folder/subfolder in Dashler, or you can drop it into "My Bin" to bookmark it.
Note: If you drag and drop a link directly to a folder or subfolder, it is still added to "My Bin"
To create a new folder, go to the main menu (the folder with the Dashler icon all the way to the right), and select "New Folder...".
Once created, the new folder will appear in your Dock. You can drag and drop a folder into another folder, creating a subfolder, or
you can drag a subfolder onto the Dock to create a folder.
If you click on a folder, the menu will lock into place. This allows you to highlight text on the page (which will auto-fill
any text boxes) or to easily drag and drop an item into the menu. To unlock the menu, you can click on the folder icon again.
To close the menu, you can hit the Escape key, or click the red square.
Shortcuts and tools are the power behind Dashler. You can hover over any shortcut or tool in Dashler
to view a description of it. There are several different types:
Shortcuts:
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Shortcuts quickly take you to search results or other pages that require some input.
Textboxes in shortcuts will be populated with any text you highlight on the page.
Shortcuts
will be launched (by hitting Enter or clicking Go) in an on-screen floating box. Clicking on the
new window icon will open them in a new tab or window.
Some shortcuts use the URL or domain of the page you are at.
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Bookmarklets / Javascript:
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Bookmarklets and Javascript run code that usually alters (or allows you to alter) the
page you are viewing. They generally do not open up any new windows or tabs.
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Bookmarks:
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Bookmarks open up web pages. To launch the bookmark in an on-screen floating box,
click on anywhere on the bookmark. To launch the bookmark in a new tab, click the
window icon on the right of it.
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Note: Use the icons of these items to drag and drop them.
To find shortcuts and tools that might be useful to you, use Quick Find to search for them.
Quick Find also contains a link that will search for shortcuts and tools relevant to the page
you are viewing. You can drag and drop any results directly into your Dashler Dock or any folder or subfolder.
Quick Find is the folder whose icon looks like this:
Dashler has several hundred shortcuts and tools, but might not contain the one you are looking for.
If you want a shortcut or tool added, please let us know! We generally added requested shortcuts
and tools within 24 hours.
Currently, there's no easy way for you to create a shortcut or tool. We're working on
an interface that will make this possible. For now, just shoot us a request and we'll
do our best to add the shortcut right away.
"My Bin" is the place where all of your personal bookmarks live.
To add a bookmark to "My Bin", simply open up Dashler, then drag and drop any link on the page
into "My Bin" or a specific place on your Dashler Dock. You can also drag and drop highlighted
text that is a valid URL. For example, you can highlight and drag the follow: http://www.dashler.com/
When you add a bookmark, you have the option to fill in a searchable description. It's recommended
you fill in a brief description or a list of tags here, as this will you find the bookmark later on.
Note: To easily bookmark the current page, go to the Main Menu for a draggable link of the current page
Any bookmark you add to your Dashler Dock, or to "My Bin" is searchable. Simple go to "My Bin"
and type a part of the URL, Name, or Description.
Some shortcuts, for example, "Find pages similar to this one", can have a URL dragged and dropped onto them.
This results in the shortcut being launched using the URL you were dragging. To launch
the shortcut in a new tab, you can drop the URL onto the "new window/tab" icon. Shortcuts that
support this will glow green while you drag a URL.
The Quick Find folder contains a link called "find related shortcuts and tools". Clicking on
this will display shortcuts and tools relevant to this site. You can drag and drop any
results right into your Dashler Dock. If there are no results available,
simple request what you had in mind and we'll create it as soon as possible.
Highlighting text on the page will fill in any shortcuts that have a textbox.
Floating boxes save you the time and hassle of dealing with new tabs. They are particularly
convenient when you want to briefly view a page and move on. All shortcuts and bookmarks open
up in floating boxes by default. If you want to view the content of a floating box in a new browser
tab, you can click on the icon (in the upper left of the floating box) and select "Open in new tab".
