Share External Links on Facebook More Easily

One of the most common uses of Facebook is to share content that you find interesting with your friends, which is probably why there are so many different ways to do it.

If you're sharing information about yourself—what you're doing or how you're feeling—you simply write it in the box at the top of your home or profile page and click Enter. And if you want to share something that another friend has posted on Facebook, you simply click the Share link underneath it.

If you want to share something outside of the Facebook environment—an interesting news article or hilarious YouTube video— you can always copy the URL from your browser and come back to Facebook to paste it into your Publisher using the Link function.

But if you don't want to have to keep returning to Facebook each time you find something you want to share elsewhere, there's an even easier way to do so.

Go to www.facebook.com/posted.php#/share_options.php. You'll see the Share on Facebook "bookmarklet".
In Firefox, you can simply click and drag the button up to your Bookmarks toolbar at the top of your browser. If you don't have that toolbar showing, go to View > Toolbars > Bookmarks Toolbar.
In Internet Explorer, you can't drag the button. Instead, right-click on it and select Add to Favorites. Then, when the list of places to save it pops up, select Links and click Add.
Note: When you select Add to Favorites, a warning will pop up that the button may not be safe. That's because it's written in JavaScript. I've never had a problem with it. Also, if you don't have the Links toolbar showing, go to View > Toolbars > Links. It may appear at the right-hand side of your toolbars so you may need to drag the whole bar so it's under the other toolbar.

Note that Facebook recognizes which browser you're using so gives you the appropriate instructions. I assume this is the same if you use another browser, like Safari or Opera, as well, but I haven't tested it.

Now, whenever you're on a web page that you want to share with your friends on Facebook, simply click that button and the Share window will appear so you can pick a thumbnail and add any comments to the link before posting it.