Bookmarks

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Revision as of 01:52, 18 December 2006 by Alice Wyman (talk | contribs) (minor tweaks, organized into sections, added info on sharing bookmarks)
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Bookmarks (also called Favorites in some browsers) let you save a link to a page in the browser interface so you can easily revisit pages without having to remember the url, or search for them again.

In Mozilla browsers like Firefox, Mozilla Suite and SeaMonkey, you can save your bookmarks to, or view them from, the Bookmarks menu, the Bookmarks Toolbar or the Sidebar. You can organize or manage your bookmarks using the Bookmarks Manager, accessible from the Bookmarks menu. You can also import another set of bookmarks or export your current bookmarks to a backup location, using the "Import" and "Export" features of the Firefox or Mozilla Suite Bookmarks Manager.

Stored bookmarks and backups

All Mozilla-based browsers store your bookmarks in the file "bookmarks.html" located in the profile folder. (There is also a file called "bookmarks.html" in the program folder, but this one is a template, and does not hold your bookmarks.). In Firefox, there is a file called "bookmarks.bak" (intended to protect against certain file system bugs [1]) and, by default, Firefox versions 1.5 and higher also create five daily backup files called "bookmarks-(date).html" in the bookmarkbackups folder. Mozilla Suite and SeaMonkey don't create automatic bookmark backups but you may find backups created by third party applications, for example, "bookmarks.html.sbsd.bak" or "bookmarks.html_deadlink_bak" [2] (also applies to Firefox).

You can use your operating system’s file and folder search feature to locate your stored bookmarks, or you can open the profile folder and look through its contents. To find all bookmarks files anywhere on your computer, search for bookmarks* (be sure to include the asterisk, with no space).

Important: In Windows 2000 and Windows XP, the profile folder containing your bookmarks is located under the C:\Documents and Settings\<logged-in user>\Application Data folder, which is hidden by default. In Windows 2000/XP you need to enable viewing of hidden files and folders to see the Application Data folder and its subfolders and files. Read the information here for details, including a shortcut method for opening the Application Data folder and contents.

Opening the bookmarks file

You can open the "bookmarks.html" file or any bookmark backup file if you wish to review the contents, using "File -> Open File" in Firefox or Mozilla Suite. When you open a bookmarks file in the browser, the individual bookmarks will appear as a list of clickable links. You can also double-click the "bookmarks.html" file (or any other bookmarks file ending in ".htm" or .html") to open it with the program associated with HTML files, normally your default browser.

Sharing bookmarks

You can share the same bookmarks file among different Firefox or Mozilla Suite profiles by setting the preference browser.bookmarks.file to point to the file you wish to use.

See also