Using Bookmarks

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Internet I: Internet Browsing and Searching >>
Using Bookmarks

Bookmarks is the common term for putting a place marker in a book. This saves the location so you can visit the same page again later. In Netscape, you can set a number of bookmarks to record the location of websites you want to revisit. In Internet Explorer, these bookmarks are called "favorites."

Netscape bookmarks will be used for this module. Internet Explorer has the same basic features. If you need any assistance translating these instructions for that program, please post to the listserv or contact the coordinator at compined@uvic.ca

Add a bookmark

When you are viewing a website you want to bookmark,

Click on the Bookmark button
Select "Add bookmark" (or "Bookmark This Page). Your new bookmark will then appear at the bottom of the menu when you next click on the Bookmark button.
In Internet Explorer, go to the "Favorites" menu and choose "Add to Favorites"

Edit a bookmark

You may notice that the name of the webpage is too long to display or you may want to change the name displayed for your new bookmark. To do so,

Click on the Bookmark button again
Select "Edit Bookmarks" (or "Manage Bookmarks")
In Internet Explorer, it would be "Organize Favorites" under the "Favorites" menu.
A new window will appear that displays your current bookmarks.
Find the bookmark you wish to edit and select it by clicking on it
In Internet Explorer, select a bookmark and click "Rename."
Go to the Edit menu and click on "Bookmark Properties." You can also right-click on top of the bookmark and select "properties." You will see the following window:

You could shorten the name of the bookmark to "UVic," making it short and sweet when you view your bookmark menu. The URL could also be updated here if the website address has changed. Newer versions of Netscape can also notify you when changes are made to a website that is bookmarked.

In the Edit Bookmark window, you may create folders for your bookmarks much in the same way you created folders for your email management. This could be helpful if you wish to store all of your course websites in one folder, or your search engines, or your computing resource websites, etc. To create a folder,

Go to the "File" menu
Click on "New Folder."
Type in a name for the folder and click OK.

You may then drag and drop bookmarks into this folder. When you next view your bookmarks, you may see something like this, where UVIC would be a folder in which all UVIC-related bookmarks are stored:

To assist with the visual layout of bookmarks and folder, there is also the option to create separators, which are simply lines to divide groups of emails. In the following image, you can see a separator between the "UVIC" bookmark and the remaining three bookmarks.

File a Bookmark

In Netscape, you can add a bookmark and place that bookmark in a selected folder at the same time. To do this,

Click on the Bookmark button
Select "File bookmark"
Click on the folder where you want to place the new bookmark
The next time you go to view the bookmarks in that folder, the new bookmark will appear.

Multiple Bookmark Files

More than one bookmark file can be used with your browser program; however, only one of these files may be used at one time. Bookmark files are saved as webpages. That is, they are saved as HTML files (i.e., bookmark.html). This can allow you to store your bookmarks on your server space on the Internet, so that you can access them from any computer in the world. Putting information up on the Internet will be covered in a later module

To save a bookmark file:

Click Bookmarks and choose Edit Bookmarks. (On Mac OS, open the Communicator menu and choose Bookmarks).
Open the File menu *in the bookmark window* (and not the Netscape File menu), click on Save As, then choose the folder where you want to store this file.

In Internet Explorer, to create an HTML file of your bookmarks, you will need to export your favourites.

Go to the "File" menu and select "Import and Export." You will then be guided through this process by an Import/Export Wizard.
Choose to "Export Favourites" and you can then select to export all or a few of your bookmarks.
Select "Export to a file or address" and click the Browse button to select a folder where you would like to save your bookmarks.

For your assignment, you are asked to send your bookmark file as an attachment. If you prefer not to send your personal bookmarks, choose the "Save As" option as described above, edit the bookmarks, and name the new bookmark file starting with the three initials from your name followed by "book." For example, Valerie Margit Irvine would name her new bookmark file: VMIbook.html

If you keep multiple bookmarks, it is important that you give your different bookmark files their individual file names. This may prevent you from saving and thus replacing a file if each one is named "bookmark.html." If more than one person is using the same web browser on your home computer, then you might save two bookmark files, each named after a user.

To open and use a bookmark list:

Click Bookmarks and choose Edit Bookmarks. (On Mac OS, open the Communicator menu and choose Bookmarks).
Open the File menu and choose "Open Bookmarks File." The file you open determines what you see in the Bookmarks menu.

Back up your bookmark file

Email and bookmarks are often forgotten about when computer files are backed-up. To prevent losing your bookmark file, it is important that you save it to a floppy disk, zip disk, etc. You can find your bookmark files by performing a search of your computer files. For Netscape users, the bookmarks are often found in the User folder within the Netscape Folder. Internet Explorer users can export their bookmarks using the procedure described earlier on this page.

Please continue to the following section on Searching the World Wide Web.

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