It's News to Me

I don't expect this post to be a complete description of Firefox. I'm too lazy to write that at this time. However, as I've used it over the last few days, I've found more and more features that I like about it. And this morning, I found one that I think will prove really valuable to me. It's the Bookmark Manager feature.

Like most people, when I began browsing the Internet «way back when,» I wanted to be able to remember sites that I thought were valuable so I bookmarked them (or as Internet Explorer calls it I saved them as «favorites»), but I did so as one continuous list. After the bookmarks accumulated, I realized that one long, unorganized list made finding anything difficult. So I started using the «Create in» feature in Internet Explorer, and I started categorizing the bookmarks under different headings -- folders if you will within my bookmark list. That helped a lot.

As time went on and as my list of bookmarks grew and my list of categories grew, I found that even within the categories it became increasingly difficult to find and/or remember what the content of the site was. So I would go back occasionally and use Internet Explorer's «Organize Favorites» feature to move things around and sometimes even rename the link so that it had a more menaningful title to me. That practice was better than what I had been doing before, but still, using the Organize Favorites feature was somewhat cumbersome.

Once I started using Firefox the other day, I discovered that the Bookmark Manager feature (Firefox's variation of the Organize Favorites facility in IE) offered something that IE didn't. In Firefox, you can add a description of the link in your own words that will display to the right of the link in the list of bookmarks, once you open up the Manage Bookmarks dialog. I think it would be a significant improvement if you had the option to cause the description to appear when you click on Bookmarks, but that is a feature that seems yet to be developed.

I've placed a screenshot of this feature at my Photo Gallery on Pbase to illustrate what I'm referring to. If you are considering getting Firefox, I think you too will find this Bookmark Manager feature one of its endearing qualities.