PoWeBrowser could stand for "a modern web-browser in the hands of power-users" (feel the force Luke!).

The latter post about alchemy-point was really inspiring and for the past two weeks my mind kept buzzing and buzzing whenever I'd go in iddle mode, thinking about that alchemy-point "mockup" demonstration.

However, once I discovered the address bar shortcuts feature of Opera, I realized that even a lame-user like myself with little knowledge of javascripting and a lot of scrapping could produce some pretty powerful command lines for the web.

But let me remind you first the technological breakthroughs:

First came the bookmarklet, a fine tool where you could write a little javascript one-liner that could be activated to perform on the current document at a click away. Popular web2.0 services like del.icio.us, blogger, google reader and many more, provide users with "buttons" to enhance their service. 
Technically, their buttons are none other than bookmarklets.

Now, Opera features shortcuts from the address bar. They're like bookmartlets on steroids!

Let's suppose I want to google "bookmarklet". Traditionally I would type "http://www.google.com", and then I would fill the Googlorm with "bookmarklet" and submit.

If I used a bookmarklet instead, things could be a little faster as I could click on the bookmarklet and then a javascript escape form would pop-up, where I would fill in "bookmarklet" followed by the enter key.

Nowadays, most web-browsers already feature a search form in the menu.

However, Opera goes one step further as it allows a user to type straight from the address bar "g bookmarklet" and press enter. Neat! (If you happen to use Opera, try it now, google something, type "g ..." in the address bar!) So what happened?

Well, the "g" word is a built-in shortcut in Opera that stands for something like "http://www.google.com/?q=%s" where "q" is the query variable whenever calling "http://www.google.com". Thus, Opera's parser interpreted the adress bar's "bookmarklet" as a generic input variable string labeled "%s" and evaluated the shortcut with it.

Hence, now you can perform a one-to-one mapping between bookmarklets and shortcuts. This alone is a nice feature, because I could only put like ten bookmarklets on my favorites bar. Now, I can have as many as I can remember; accessible straight from the command line!

But what's really cool is that you can add a string input argument (%s) to the shortcut. Of course you could always generate a javascripted input box from the bookmarklet if the bookmarklet required some extra input. Something like

javascript:void(str=prompt("Search for:#,##));if(str){location.href='http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q='+escape(str).split(" ").join("+")+'&btnG=Google+Search';}

Go ahead and try it!

Below I reproduce a few of my favorite bookmarklets (that I'll soon convert to shortcuts). Some are mine, others were found on the net. Just drag-n-drop'em on your favorites bar. Enjoy!

• MP3 google search engine
• LocalDomain google search engine
• del.icio.us mp3 player

Ok, so maybe these shortcuts aren't new in Opera and maybe they don't seem to be the next best thing, but I only realized today how powerful they are!
For example, imagine that Opera would go one step further and built-in the address the vertical bar "|" (aka the pipe). Then one could manipulate a web-page by consecutive javascript operations. For example, it could go something like this:

"grep tag:a | grep mp3 | sort | deliciousplayer"

meaning that I would strip the html from everything but the links, then that I would keep only the links to mp3 files, then that I would sort them alphabetically, and then that I would add them the delicious player button. The "grep" and the "sort" shortcuts can be easily programmed (I don't have the proof though) with simple xsl manipulations encapsulated in a javascript one-liner (or two). The "deliciousplayer" shortcut could be adapted from the shown above.

It is also worth noting that OpenDNS is now providing a web-based service for keeping shortcuts of registered users (and that is something relatively fresh!). Although I prefer to store mine with a custom-made browser and a wiki on-a-stick!

Like Tim O'Reilly said the other day (probably relaying somebody else's sayings):

"The Future is already out there, probably as somebody else's Present (tipically an Alpha-geek). It's just that it hasn't reached the rest of the world yet!"