Firefox and Bookmarks

| Minerva | BSU Gmail | WMS | Liquid Office | Portals: Student / Staff / Training | The Hub | Phone Book | 

Using Firefox 'Bookmarks' to index pages you visit

You can save 'Bookmarks' for web pages you value. If you're converting from Internet Explorer you'll have called these 'Favorites'. 'Firefox' will import 'Internet Explorer' favorites when it's installed, so you'll have your previous bookmarks available to you via the 'Bookmarks/Manage bookmarks' Menu.

'Firefox' has an additional bookmarks feature called 'Live Bookmarks' - you can bookmark certain news-rich web pages and your bookmark will link to the individual news stories carried by the web site using the site's RSS feed. Here's more on Live Bookmarks.

Managing your bookmarks

You've probably realised that the 'Bookmarks folder' can be a very political animal - and it's in the interests of commercial web sites to reduce you to a 'Supermarket' state of mind, in which you shamble around buying chocolate biscuits and pre-wrapped bacon.

With 'Firefox', try a fresh approach to bookmarks, the layout behind its bookmark tools are simple and useable.

Before you start, think about a folder structure in which to keep your bookmarks. After that, to save a page's address, you can use the menu item 'Bookmarks/Add to bookmarks' - but make sure you use the dialogue to store the bookmark in a folder of your choice. Build folders to hold related bookmarks using the bookmark manager. More on this? Read on.

Give yourself an 'Industry strength' bookmarks management session - use the menu 'Bookmarks/Manage bookmarks'. This allows you to create, rename and delete folders, or move existing bookmarks around by dragging and dropping - very like managing files in folders. You might like to do this to sort your imported Internet Explorer favourites - using Firefox's bookmarks manager to create an orderly set of folders in which to put them. Also, do learn about the 'Bookmarks toolbar': storing bookmarks in an associated folder, the 'Bookmarks toolbar folder' so that they are visible on the bookmarks toolbar, say.

The Firefox 'Bookmarks Toolbar'.

Firefox provides a 'Bookmarks Toolbar' at the top of its window. If it's not visible, check under the menu 'View/Toolbars' to reveal it. This toolbar allows you to use bookmarks with the minimum of fuss.

Here's how to use Firefox's bookmarks folder to manage web pages you visit. When you need to store related web pages:

Create a folder in the 'Bookmarks toolbar'

Make sure you can identify the 'Bookmarks Toolbar', right-mouse-click within it, and choose 'New folder'. Right-mouse-click the new folder, choose 'Properties' and rename the folder.

Creating a bookmark in the 'Bookmarks Toolbar'

Display the web page you need to save to the folder and select the small icon that sits in the address bar to the left of the address - drag this to your folder on the 'Bookmarks Toolbar'.

Rearrange existing bookmarks on the toolbar

You'll find you can drag and drop bookmarks between folders, or drop individual bookmarks straight onto the toolbar

Open all bookmarks in a folder

Select the folder to open it and you'll see a menu item 'Open in tabs' - this will open all bookmarks within that folder, each in its own tab.

Firefox and 'Live Bookmarks'

What 'Live Bookmarks' Are

'Live Bookmarks' allow you to bookmark frequently updated web sites, in a way that your bookmark becomes a set of links to the site's contents. This allows you to find information quickly. As the content of the web site changes, your bookmark will 'update itself'.

How to set up a 'Live bookmark' to a site.

You'll need:

• The 'Firefox' web browser
• A site that provides an RSS feed - many news sites do this, one to familiarise yourself with might be the BBC news site.

You don't need to know what an RSS feed is or how it works, but here's an explanation from the BBC

Getting going with Live Bookmarks

• Start 'Firefox'
• Visit a site which provides an RSS feed
• Look to Firefox's status bar, at the bottom of its window, you'll see something similar to this: an 'RSS flag': 
• Select the 'RSS flag' and add the Live Bookmark by choosing 'Subscribe to RSS'. It's a good idea to know how your Bookmarks Toolbar folder works, and put the live bookmark in a folder within that. It's then available from your personal toolbar.

Back up Firefox bookmarks

Firefox stores your bookmarks in a file called 'bookmarks.html'. Where it keeps this depends on the operating system you're using - in a worst case scenario, you should be able to search for the file by name, find it, and take a copy to save in a different place - that's your backup done.

| 'Firefox' Index | Top | Bath Spa University |