Firefox Bookmark Tricks

Topic: Firefox|Level: Beginner|Type: Tips & Tricks

Bookmarks (a.k.a. Favorites in some other browsers) in Firefox have some really nice features and tricks you can do with them. Obviously Bookmarks are saved links to pages you're likely to want to revisit.

Types of Bookmarks
In the latest version of Firefox (Firefox 3 at the time of writing this), Bookmarks can be in one of 3 main groups or folders; "Bookmarks", "Unsorted Bookmarks", and "Bookmarks Toolbar Folder".
"Bookmarks" is the main library collection of all your bookmarks. These are the ones that show up in the lower part of the Bookmarks menu.
"Unsorted Bookmarks" are ones you've created but haven't specified a particular location in the full "Bookmarks" collection for the item to be in. Typically these are the ones created with the "Bookmark this page" address bar button (more on this next).
"Bookmarks Toolbar Folder" are ones that show up on a special menu bar you can optionally turn on or off (more on this later too).

Creating Bookmarks
The easiest way to create a bookmark is while on the page you want to bookmark click the white star image button at the right end of your address bar. That's it! This will create a bookmark in the "Unsorted Bookmarks" group with a single click. If the page is already bookmarked the star image button will already be colored in.

Or you can create a bookmark by clicking the "Bookmarks" menu then "Bookmark this page" (or press Ctrl+D) or click the star image button once to bookmark the page in Unsorted Bookmarks and then a second time to bring up a window with additional options for creating the bookmark. From this window you can specify a custom Name for the bookmark, a folder to create it in, or some Tags for the bookmark (more on Tags later).

You can even create bookmarks by drag-and-dropping about any obvious page-specific thing (the page Tab, the address bar, the item listed in your History, etc.) to about anywhere you can see your bookmarks listed (the Bookmarks Toolbar, the Bookmarks Library, etc.)

Using Bookmarks
Bookmarks on the Bookmarks Toolbar are the easiest to use (if you chose to have the Bookmarks Toolbar on) as you can just click the item on the toolbar to go to the page (or middle-click to have it opened in a new tab). You can toggle the Bookmarks Toolbar on and off by clicking the "View" menu -> "Toolbars" -> "Bookmarks Toolbar".
The rest of your bookmarks in the regular "Bookmarks" group can be accessed by clicking the "Bookmarks" menu and locating the bookmark in the lower part of the menu.

However, an even easier way to get to any of your bookmarks is to simply start typing the part of the name or address in your address bar. Firefox has a really great feature that as you start typing in the address bar it will automatically search your bookmarks' names and addresses (and even your browser history) and provide you with suggestions in a drop-down menu that you can then click (or again middle-click) to access the page. Also, from this drop-down menu of items you can easily tell which items are coming from bookmarks and which are from your browsing history because the bookmarks will show the yellow star icon listed with the item.

Organizing & Customizing Bookmarks
Firefox allows you to create Folders for organizing, reordering and grouping your bookmarks. Organizing bookmarks is very easy in Firefox. You simply click the "Bookmarks" menu then "Organize Bookmarks" (or press Ctrl+Shift+B). This opens the Bookmarks Library window. From here it's pretty intuitive and simple for creating Folders and reordering, organizing (by drag-and-dropping), deleting and creating new items.
You can also change the properties of the bookmark (Name, Location, Descriptions, Tags, Keywords... more on Keywords and Tags next) by selecting them here and changing the options in the lower-right pane of the window.
This window also has an option on the left for History. You can create bookmarks by drag-and-dropping items from this History item to your bookmark folders.

Using Tags
Tags allow you to provide additional quick one-word notes to bookmarks. These tags can be specified when creating the Bookmark. Firefox will automatically provide Suggested Tags when creating the bookmark that you can simply click, or you can type a comma-delimited list of your own tags.
These tags can be used to locate your bookmarks from the Bookmarks Library window under the Tabs item in the left tree, or by simply typing the Tag in the address bar and selecting the item from the automatic search suggestions.

Keywords
Keywords are a feature of Firefox I just recently discovered and love! Keywords allow you to type a particular keyword in the address bar (i.e. dict), hit Enter and be immediately taken to the indicated page (http://www.dictionary.com).
Additionally, you can make Smart Keywords that take whatever you type after the keyword and provide it as part of the page address. That is you can type "dict schadenfreude" and be immediately taken to a dictionary.com look-up on the word Schadenfreude, or "wiki firefox" and be taken to a Wikipedia search results page for Firefox, or about any other searchable website.

To set up a Keyword on a bookmark go to the Bookmarks Library ("Bookmarks" -> "Organize Bookmarks"), locate the bookmark you want to put the keyword on, click the "More" button if you see it and you'll then see the "Keyword" field. Type whatever keyword you want to use for the bookmark here and that's it. You can now type that keyword in the address bar, hit Enter and be taken to that page.

To set up a Smart Keyword first go to a search results page on the website you want to use, for example, try doing a search for "Decatur" at http://maps.google.com/ (this is easiest to set up if you only use a single word for your initial search). Now bookmark the page, then go to the Bookmarks Library and locate the bookmark you just created. Again click the "More" button if you see it, and provide a keyword in the Keyword field (i.e. "map"). Now, in the "Location" field you should see a portion of the address that contains the text you searched for. Change your search word here to " %s " (that's percent sign and lower-case 's', without the quotation marks). So based on the example you'd see "http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Decatur&output=html" and you'd want to change "Decatur" to "%s" so your Location property is now "http://maps.google.com/maps?q=%s&output=html". Now you could type in your address bar something like "map Orlando, FL" and you'll be immediately taken to a Google Maps search results for Orlando, FL.

Here's a page that has 15 Smart Keyword bookmarks you can download and instructions how to import them in to Firefox: http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/geek-to-live-fifteen-firefox-quick-searches-129658.php

Xmarks
http://www.xmarks.com/
I've mentioned Xmarks (previously known as "Foxmarks") before but it's worth bringing up again here and giving some more detail on it.
Xmarks is a Firefox add-on that you create an account with and it automatically synchronizes all your bookmarks (including all the properties, Keywords, Tags, etc), and if you chose even your Firefox saved website passwords, to their server database. This way you can have Firefox and Xmarks on multiple computers (home, work, laptops) and you have the same bookmarks available from them all. It also servers as a back-up of your bookmarks, this alone makes it worth the download.
Also, Xmarks uses the large collection of bookmarked page data to help rank and provide similar page data. This information is available from Google search results page (which adds an Xmarks icon to the right of the search results that you can mouse-over for more information), or it's available by clicking the Xmarks icon it adds to to the right end of your address bar.