How-To: Edit USA.gov, Google.com, and even WhiteHouse.gov

Yes, that’s right folks…you too can edit these websites right now, live, and change the page however you see fit! Has the Government wikied out? Wait, you don’t see what I see (click the image to the right)

I actually DID edit the WhiteHouse.gov site. No, I didn’t hack it either. I used a simple, yet often overlooked tool, called a bookmarklet. This “Edit Page” (if the link doesn’t work, get it from this site) bookmarklet allows you to edit any page that you’re looking at. Just click and drag the link to your browser’s link bar. When you’re ready to edit a page just click the link. You change text, resize tables, delete content, move images around, and more. Think about the last time you wanted to make changes to a web page and send them to your web developer, but didn’t know how to articulate exactly what you wanted? Or maybe you wanted to bring a quick printout of what the page might look like to your staff meeting. Well, with this bookmarklet you can do just that. Don’t worry, your edits aren’t permanent…just refresh your page to clear them.

The bookmarklet works great in pretty much every browser. If you’re a non-code monkey then this is the simplest way to edit pages.

If you ARE a code monkey and would rather have more design control over the page you’re editing (like modifying the actual HTML code and CSS to see changes in real-time) then you can use the Web Developer extension that comes with Firefox. You can get even further control over the page using the Firebug extension as well.

Just a little tip for the peeps and the geeks.

Note: This post is of my own personal opinion and is not endorsed or supported by any local, state, or federal government agency.