Today I have a cool Web browser hack for you, it's called the Bitty Browser (see editorial links below) and what it does is place a miniature Web browser in a Web page.
Why would you want to do this? Well, there are several reasons. For example, you might want to show another site's content but embedding that content in a frame could be a copyright violation, or you want to ensure that the content shown in Bitty is isolated from your content - a sort of browser version of picture-within-picture.
As the author points out: "Bitty is ideal with content designed for a small space. ... Bitty Browser helps bridge the gap between the 'regular' Web and the 'handheld' Web. Content originally prepared for Bitty can also be used on handhelds, and content prepared for handhelds can now be added to any regular Web page."
Bitty can display a variety of content including Web sites, along with RSS feeds and podcasts from the likes of Flickr and del.icio.us.
The Bitty Browser window offers a simple interface with a limited set of control buttons: back, forward, menu, open URL, launch (create the current Bitty browser in a separate window) controls, and a Google search bar.
The menu button offers Directory which takes you to a directory of "miniature" sites, "New" to build a Bitty Browser from scratch, "Save" to add the active browser to your Web site, "Settings" to display your browser settings, "Log In" to administer advanced account settings, "Help" and "Home" to launch your default browser with the full-size Bitty Web site.
Creating a Bitty browser is simply a matter of filling out a form and the Bitty site provides all of the code for you to paste into your Web site.
Bitty is definitely in the "cool hack" category and potentially very useful. And free!