Nov 252011
Pinterest is an image based link sharing website that’s become fairly popular lately. It has a “Pin It” button that can normally be dragged to the bookmark bar and added as a link in your browser to make it easy to “pin” things. Of course, you can’t drag a link on the iPad! There is an iPad App for Pinterest, and from what I’ve heard it leaves something to be desired. So here’s how to get a Pin It button on the iPad, iPad2, or anything else that supports running JavaScript in a bookmark but doesn’t allow you to drag and drop a link.
The “Pin It” button is just a link with some JavaScript in it, so we will create a custom bookmark on the iPad with the correct JavaScript and it will work as expected.
- Find the custom JavaScript.
- You can try copying and pasting the JavaScript from here, but it may change in the future. If it doesn’t work, then continue on to the next step in this section. Do include the “javascript:” at the beginning – it’s absolutely necessary.
-
javascript:void((function(){var%20e=document.createElement('script');e.setAttribute('type','text/javascript');e.setAttribute('charset','UTF-8');e.setAttribute('src','http://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinmarklet.js?r='+Math.random()*99999999);document.body.appendChild(e)})()); - Open Safari on an actual computer (you may need to install it on Windows). Or just install one of those User Agent Switchers and tell Pinterest that you’re using Safari, if you know what you’re doing…
- Log in to Pinterest and get the “Pin It” button from the “About” menu, and drag it to your bookmarks.
- Edit the bookmark and copy the address of the bookmark, which should start with “javascript:”
- Get the bookmark text on to your iPad. Probably the easiest way to do this is by emailing it somewhere and setting up that email on the iPad.
- Copy the entire text of the bookmark, including the “javascript:”
- Create a bookmark on the iPad (for anything, it is changed in the next step).
- Edit the bookmark you created, name it “Pin It!”, paste the javascript:… text into the location/address part of the bookmark.
- Click the “Pin It!” bookmark on any page with an image to get the popup window where you choose which photo to use. This look slightly different on the iPad but has the same functionality.
- Rejoice in Pinterest goodness.
I’ve got all of the instruction done, bookmark with code pasted and all. So, after all of this is said and done, how to you actually pin a photo on the iPad? I can’t figure this part out for the life of me. Thank so much!
Kayla, I added another step: Click the “Pin It!” bookmark on any page with an image to get the popup window where you choose which photo to use. This look slightly different on the iPad but has the same functionality.
Let me know if it still doesn’t work and maybe I’ll try to figure out how to post a video of the whole process. Good luck!
Aaron, thanks so much for the extra step, however it is still not working for me. That is what I was trying before and I’ve even gone through the steps again, but it just does nothing when I click on my Pin It bookmark. I did turn on the debug console and did discover that when the bookmark is clicked on, the following error:
JavaScript: Error on Line 1
undefined
Syntax Error: Parse Error
Not sure if this helps any, but thanks again for looking into this. -Kayla
Kayla,
Thanks for the feedback! It prompted me to notice that the link that was listed on the post was wrong – I got the same error you did when copying directly from the post. I updated it, however, and tested it on the iPad and it seems to work fine now. Oops!
Yay, thanks so much, it works now!!! Cudos to you!
I have followed your steps. I am told my pin is successful however when I go to my board, there is only a live link to what I wanted to pin -noy the image itself. Any advice? Thank you!
I’m not sure how you can end up with a pin without a photo. I would try making sure the iPad software is up to date and then try starting over from the beginning.
I got the pin it button,unit as soon as I hit it I keep getting the error that the page was invalid, but on some sites it still works to select and post the image. Others it just does nothing after the error message appears and no image :( iPad 2 user, kinda bummed.
Thanks for this info – it works perfectly and I’m grateful :)
Hello, I keep getting error that safari cannot open we page as it contains an invalid address. I get the pic pinned but then I lose the web page I was on. Any thoughts? Thanks.
Me too…did you get it to work?
This worked perfectly. Thank you!
Thank you SO much! Works perfect. My life is now complete. Lol
thank you! yours were the clearest instructions I found