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Tips for Managing Your Navigator Bookmarks

Trying to make sense of your Netscape Navigator bookmarks is a bear. To make Web life a little easier, check out our helpful hints.

By TipWorld Staff, edited by Lisa Moskowitz   

So many pages, so little time. Adding your favorite Web sites to Netscape Navigator%squots bookmarks in version 3.02 or higher is... a good start. But if you%squotre online a lot--and you know you are--that hefty list of URLs is probably getting out of hand. What exactly is that %dquotPenny%squots Puppy Page%dquot anyway? Do you remember why you saved it? Here are a few tips for sorting out that unwieldy bookmark list once and for all.

Favorite Bookmarks
Want to get your Netscape Navigator bookmarks and Microsoft Internet Explorer favorites to live in peace and harmony? Take a gander at NavEx 2.0.1, a free program that copies your Explorer favorites into your Navigator bookmarks, and vice versa. To download a copy, click the NavEx link to your right.

Home Sweet (Bookmark) Home
If you want your bookmarks page to be the first thing you see when you launch the browser, just make it into your default home page. To do this, first open Bookmarks in the browser. Select File, then Open File in Browser. Locate and select the file named %squotbookmark.htm.%squot If you%squotre not sure where it is, run the Find utility in Windows 95; if there are several bookmark.htm files on your system, look for the most recent one. A simplified HTML version of your bookmark file appears, complete with its own URL. Now select Options, then General Preferences to open the Preferences box. Under the Appearances tab, click %dquotBrowser starts with: Home Page Location:%dquot and enter the full path to your bookmark.htm file. Click OK to close the box and save your setting. The next time you open Navigator, your bookmarks page is the first thing you%squotll see.

Now, Where Was I?
Want to know when you last visited a bookmarked site? Pull down the Bookmarks menu and choose Go To Bookmarks. When the Bookmarks window pops up, right-click the bookmark you want to check and choose Properties. The Bookmark Properties box tells you not only when the site was last visited but also when the bookmark was created.

All the New Sites That Are Fit to Bookmark
When you%squotre working on a project, it helps to keep all the latest Web site addresses you%squotve visited in one convenient place. To do this, select Bookmarks, Go to Bookmarks, Item, Insert Folder. Name the folder something relevant. Right-click the new folder to bring up a floating menu. Choose Use For New Bookmarks and you%squotre in business. Any new bookmarks you add will automatically go into this folder, which will appear at the top of the Bookmarks menu.

Create Keyboard Shortcuts
To avoid too much clicking, you can create keyboard shortcuts for your bookmarks. Here%squots how: Select Bookmarks, Go to Bookmarks from the Navigator menu. Right-click a bookmark and select Properties. Edit the bookmark name by inserting an ampersand (%dquot&%dquot) before the letter (in the bookmark name) that you want to turn into a shortcut. For instance, if you wanted to give TipWorld the keyboard shortcut %dquotT,%dquot you%squotd type &TipWorld. Click OK to close the Properties box. Now select Bookmarks from the Navigator menu. The letter in the bookmark item that you preceded with the ampersand is underlined. Press this letter with the Bookmarks menu active, and the link activates. From now on, press Alt-B-T at any time to call up TipWorld. Note: This tip doesn%squott work in Navigator 4 (Communicator).

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