File this add-on under awesome. The Places’ Tooltip add-on for Firefox adds more detailed information about the bookmarks and links you have saved to your browser.
Tag Archives | Bookmark Help
Do You Still Use Bookmarks? (Open Thread)
How often do you still use bookmarks?
Generally speaking, I find there are two types of browsing people. You have those who still bookmark everything they find interesting, and then those who only bookmark what they need, and Google everything else. A lot of the time, typing something into the search box might be a faster way to launch a web page, rather than searching through a bucket-full of saved links.
Take a stand, and leave you thoughts in the comments. Are you pro-bookmark, anti-bookmark, or somewhere in between the two?
Firefox 3.7 – Interface Redesign (take two!)
Mozilla has released a few new screenshots of their latest Firefox 3.7 theme and interface revisions. I’m happy to see the bookmark toolbar is back, and the loading bar on top of the tabs is a very interesting idea.
Here is the old Revision 01 version of Firefox 3.7’s interface:
Here is the brand new Revision 02 of the Firefox 3.7 interface:
In comparison, I do have to say I like the direction they are going with this. Here are some of the features included and mentioned when discussing the Vista/Windows 7 version of the interface:
- Embracing Glass: Toolbar and Tabs using Glass. Buttons translucent and slightly glossy to meld with the toolbar. Raised 3D look to achieve tactile "feel".
- Page and Tools Buttons: Page and Tools on the Navigation Bar.
- Bookmark Bar: Bookmarks bar on by default. New Bookmarks "widget" containing the bookmarks menu contents.
- Home Tab: Home tab containing your homepage to start. Expanded functionality planned for 4.0.
To get more information and amazing screenshots, be sure to check out the Windows 3.7 theme mockups page on the Mozilla.org wiki.
Hide Bookmarks from the Awesome Bar
The Awesome Bar (or address bar, as those “normal” browsers might call it) does a great job at matching a web site saved in your bookmarks or history when you start typing in the Awesome Bar. By default, Firefox doesn’t give you a way of saying, “Don’t show these bookmarks there” so now somebody has written up an add-on to give you that ability.
The NotAwesome add-on for Firefox will help you hide any bookmarks tagged with “notawesome” from awesome bar searches. This way you can totally flag bookmarks you don’t want showing up in the Awesome Bar results.
You can pick up this great add-on via the Firefox Add-ons web site. (credit for this find goes to Lifehacker, when in turn goes to gHacks too!)
Most Downloaded Bookmark Add-ons for Firefox
So which bookmark add-ons for Firefox are downloaded most often? Here are the top ten most downloaded bookmark extensions for the browser.
- SmarterFox – Browse faster by speeding up common tasks – faster downloading, searching, visiting favorites, copy & paste, and more.
- Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) – Xmarks is the #1 bookmarking add-on. Install it on all your computers to keep your bookmarks and (optionally) passwords backed up and synchronized.
- Delicious Bookmarks – Delicious Bookmarks is the official Firefox add-on for Delicious, the world’s leading social bookmarking service.
- StumbleUpon- StumbleUpon discovers web sites based on your interests, learns what you like and brings you more.
- Speed Dial – Quicker direct access to your most visited web sites and saved links.
- Google Toolbar – Not sure why people are still using this, however it did make it on my list of non-evil toolbars, so go figure.
- Brief - Brief makes reading RSS feeds as easy and intuitive as it gets. Designed to have exactly the right set of features, it is powerful and simple at the same time.
- Fast Dial – Much like Speed Dial, this add-on gives you a quick visual way to access a number of web sites all from one page; showing thumbnails for each.
- iMacros – Automate Firefox. Record and replay repetitious work. If you love the Firefox web browser, but are tired of repetitive tasks like visiting the same sites every days, filling out forms, and remembering passwords, then iMacros for Firefox is the solution you’ve been dreaming of!
- Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar – This add-on does exactly what you would expect, it gives you multiple bookmark rows. Yes, I like it when they name add-ons about what they do.
There you have it, these add-ons have been downloaded more times than any other, and all will help you in one way, shape, or form with your bookmarks. Have another favorite that you think deserves to be on the list? Leave a comment, and tell me why.
Get a Chrome-ish Tab Page with JumpStart
You can always tell when a new way of navigating through pages becomes popular, because you end up with three or four extensions for Firefox that do the same thing. With that said, I have one more add-on for Firefox that tries to copy what Google Chrome does with its page you get on a new tab or browser window. New Tab JumpStart does a great job at bringing Chrome’s thumbnailed pages you have seen before. One nice feature that I haven’t seen others follow up on is the ability to permanently “pin” page so it never goes away. You can pickup New Tab JumpStart from the Mozilla Add-ons web site.
Add Another Bookmarks Toolbar to Firefox
Have more than a few bookmarks you want to keep handy on the bookmarks toolbar in Firefox but don’t have the room? Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar, an extension for Firefox, will help you solve that issue by letting you add as many bookmark toolbars as you need.
Once installed, the options here are simple. You can enable or disable the multiple bookmark rows, and you can also set the max number rows to display. If it doesn’t exactly match up with your current theme or you want to tweak it some, check out this post from the mozillazine.org forums.
If you need more bookmark room in the browser, this add-on will do the trick. You can pick it up on the Firefox Add-ons site.
Foxmarks is Dropping the Fox (Xmarks Review)
Foxmarks, one of my favorite Firefox add-on suggestions for bookmark syncing and backup, is changing names today. Foxmarks is becoming Xmarks. (Waits for the “X marks the spot jokes) The new Xmarks service looks to be more geared towards sharing links, ala Stumble Upon and Digg.
Why make the move? Well, one would guess that sharing links might be a more profitable business model, more so than bookmark syncing alone. Via the Xmarks blog, here are some FAQs for those of you who might have questions about the change:
- Xmarks is a superset of Foxmarks – it adds web discovery features to our world-class bookmark sync.
- If you choose to upgrade to Xmarks, it will work seamlessly with your existing Foxmarks account and will sync with your other computers running Foxmarks.
- Foxmarks.com and our existing Foxmarks add-ons won’t change overnight. We expect to have upgrades to all three Foxmarks versions available by the end of March and we’ll provide you with more detailed info once we return from the DEMO conference.
- We’re still hard at work finding better, faster ways to sync more things in your browser.
So what new features will be brought on with the new business model?
Smarter Search – In your Google search results, Xmarks will highlight the top three sites based on bookmarking history. Put your mouse over the special icon to the side of the search results to learn more information such as reviews, and rankings.
Site Info Lookup – Clicking on the Xmarks logo in your location bar will bring up a detailed box letting you know more information about the site you are on, and help you discover other sites just like it.
Then of course, you have the bookmark and password backup and syncing capabilities that Foxmarks already brought to the table. The Xmarks browser add-on is Firefox only right now, but they promise to have Internet Explorer and Safari versions running soon. Firefox fans can grab the Xmarks add-on here to try it out. It is worth pointing out that you can install Xmarks even if you have the Foxmarks add-on installed on your computer. Xmarks will upgrade your current Foxmarks add-on and continue to sync and back up your bookmarks (and optionally passwords).
So what do you think about the change? Excited about the new features, or disappointed that an old Firefox friend is changing its ways?
Foxmarks Introduces Password Sync
One of my favorite features of the old Google Browser Sync was the ability to sync my passwords between my laptop and desktop computers. Till now, no other program has gotten that right. That was the case till Foxmarks decided to roll out this new feature.
Password Synchronization is an optional feature for the newest version of Foxmarks that allows you to simply and securely synchronize your saved passwords.
Since this feature is turned off by default, how do you activate it?
- Open the Foxmarks Settings dialog (located in Tools > Foxmarks > Settings…).
- Click on the “Sync” tab.
- Select the checkbox labeled “Passwords”. You will be guided through a quick and easy password synchronization setup flow.
Big congrats goes out to Foxmarks for making a damn good add-on even better.
Google Browser Sync = Back from the Dead
Told you last week about Google’s plans to kill off the semi-popular Google Browser Sync extension. According to Ars Technica, while they were tossing the dirt in the hole – somebody decided to do this:
Google is distributing the Browser Sync source code under the BSD license and is making it available through a Subversion source control repository on the Google Code website.
Good news for those of us who really liked this add-on. The reason for its popularity is that it didn’t just sync up your bookmarks. It also would transfer your passwords, history and cookies.
Personally, I am looking forward to giving Weave a shot (Mozilla’s version of the same service) due to the fact that Mozilla would know how to do it best. Right now from what I have seen, it looks like it is still kind of buggy.
Not much is up on the Google Code page for BrowserSync but will be worth keeping an eye on in the next few weeks and months ahead.
