Bookmarks

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In the Bookmarks, why is there so many closets: Bookmarks Toolbar, Recently Bookmarked, Recent Tags, Get Bookmark Add-ons? Why not just a simple Favorites? I can’t find where to modify this confusing setup. Please educate me.

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Hi Bob, try Ctr+Shift+B or go Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks. Exporting the current Bookmarks to a single html page may be useful; Delete comes in handy too.

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I agree that its somewhat verbose, but I think the object is flexibility in use as we all like different options. I use Recently Bookmarked as a sandbox for links I probably don’t want to keep for long, but want to have for whatever reason shortterm. I have no use for Tags and don’t know why the Add ons isn’t part of the find add ons.

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OK, first I slipped up on the Bookmarks Toolbar; I don’t want to get rid of that. Must have been asleep. Sorry.

Then, the Organize Bookmarks. When I go there, there is an Unsorted Bookmarks line. What do I do with that? And the Exporting; where and why? When you say “Delete comes in handy too” is that a hint for me to delete lots of Bookmarks? And “Exporting the current Bookmarks to a single html page”, why and where?

And the Recently Bookmarked, how do I do that? Your reason for that makes sense, but neither my wife nor I can see how to do it. I know that I must appear to be very stupid but I have fifteen years of Win95 and Win2K, and everything is stamped IE in this old brain. I don’t know what the tags are, but we can pass them. Same with the Add-ons. Can I delete either or both without messing something up?

I suppose I will eventually get the hang of it. I just hope I live that long.

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You can right-click and delete “Recent Bookmarks” and ignore “Unsorted Bookmarks” which takes you down the slippery hill to chaos. I just drag all my bookmarks into categorized folders and subfolders, the way I keep files on my computer. The main folders are alphabetized.

Exporting is for making the bookmark file, which has the json extension, into an html file, but I don’t do it for single bookmarks. If you need to carry your bookmarks to a computer that uses IE, you’ll need them in html format. They give you far too many options, and over a period of about 6 years, I’ve just developed my own system and ignored what I don’t need.

Add-ons are extensions that customize your browser, and also the plug-ins needed to play media files. Download them here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

The best help for Mozilla products is at http://www.mozillazine.org. “Add-ons” is far too great a topic to discuss along with Bookmarks.

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Firefox 3.0 introduced the concept of “frecency”. It is used to show users their recently visited sites and recently used bookmarks. On the one hand, the URL bar is now the “awesome bar” and it shows a drop-down list of suggested links, some inserted from recently visited sites. On the other hand, those “Recently Bookmarked” listings will regenerate themselves perpetually. All of this behavior is a royal pain for some of us, and ceertain edits to the Firefox “about:config” file have reduced these annoyances. But if you like the new features, you can keep them.

Organizing Firefox Bookmarks can be done by creating your own new folders, and naming them as you see fit. Move only those Bookmarks you really want to use into your new folders, and then you can ignore all the garbage which the Firefox “frecency ” features keep adding.

Dealing with the “awesome bar” drop-down list is another issue, and I would recommend trying some of the extensions listed in this thread before messing around inside the “about:config” file.

-- rc primak

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Thanks to RochelleP and bobprimak. I’m getting the hang of it. I’ve been using “bookmarks into categorized folders and subfolders” for years, and I see that I can continue that. The “frecency” seems a bit ridiculous; I like freedom better. I’ll keep studying.

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Thanks to RochelleP and bobprimak. I’m getting the hang of it. I’ve been using “bookmarks into categorized folders and subfolders” for years, and I see that I can continue that. The “frecency” seems a bit ridiculous; I like freedom better. I’ll keep studying.

“Frecencey” and its effects. including Recently Bookmarked items, can be controlled or nearly eliminated. I can post a couple of references about how to do this, but since it involves altering the Firefox “about:config” file, I will only post if someone asks for the info. There may also be Firefox Extensions which can cut down on “frecency” related Firefox annoyances.

I have made several alterations myself to my own Firefox “about:config” file, so as to limit what the “awesome bar” drop-down suggestions can show, but this may not be of interest to many Firefox users. Other modifications are also possible if the whole “frecency” thing gets too annoying.

-- rc primak

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Yes, Bob, I would like to get those references.

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Yes, Bob, I would like to get those references.

Fasten your seatbelts, folks, as I am going to post a flurry of web references:

First Reference: MozillaZine’s guide to tweaking all sorts of “frecency” related Firefox behaviors:

http://mozillalinks….s-location-bar/

Second Reference: LifeHacker’s guide to some useful Firefox Extensions which limit “frecency” related behaviors:

http://lifehacker.co…x-3s-awesomebar

Third Reference: CNet News story on limiting “frecency” related Firefox behaviors:

http://news.cnet.com…-9972852-2.html

Fourth Reference: LifeHacker explains (Item #4 here) how Smart Bookmarks normally behaves:

http://lifehacker.co…efox-3-features

Fifth Reference: This thread at the Firefox Support Forums gives the most complete instructions I have found for deleting the unwanted Recently Bookmarked folder (and its cousins) and restoring them if you want them later. The restoration involves editing the “about:config” file.

http://support.mozil…77559&forumId=1

Somewhere in here lies any answer you may seek on this subject. Happy hunting!

-- rc primak

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Well, this ought to keep me busy for a while. Thank you, Bob, and every one else. I’ll let you know how it works out.

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I just discovered something that might be of help in handling bookmarks. I had set out to houseclean my bookmarks, and I had often bookmarked sites under a heading “study” or “revisit”, and then not looked at them for ages. When I started to do this, I went to bookmarks, clicked on “from Int. Explorer”(because I had exported my bms form IE to Firefox), then the folder “to study”. then the bookmark to see whether to move it or delete it.
Having decided to delete or move, then I clicked bookmarks/organize, and the scanned the resulting list for the bm in question, and hit delete or move .
Ithen thought I had to go back the whole route bookmarks/to study/chosen bookmarks to decide what to do with it.

Then I found out that once I had chosen bm/organize, the list remained open, with the word library on the task bar, so I could continue to delete or move without having to reopen the bookmarks.

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