February 11, 2006

How To: Manage Your Internet Bookmarks

by Sarah Chung | www.everonit.com

If Internet Explorer Favorites is your primary method for accessing and keeping track of the websites you visit often or like to remember… today is a new day my friend.

The problem with IE Favorites is that it really requires you to go looking for the information and it is very restrictive in how and where you can access your links. More specifically, some of the drawbacks of IE Favorites include:

  1. It doesn’t conveniently display your most commonly used links – they are hidden behind a pull-down menu and subfolders. Out of sight, out of mind.
  2. It doesn’t allow you to share your bookmarks
  3. It only enables you access your bookmarks at your computer
  4. There is no back-up in case you lose your laptop or your desktop crashes
  5. It has limited features to help you organize and manage your bookmarks

The first step to making information come to you (not the other way around) is to set up your browser link bar – both IE and Firefox has this. It takes about 5 minutes to set them up and I promise you’ll be thanking me.

For IE:

  1. Move your mouse to the top of your browser where the navigation buttons are and right-mouse click
  2. Make sure that there “Lock the Toolbars” is unchecked and “Links” is checked.
  3. If your links bar is squished on the same line as your address bar, drag it down so that it runs the length of your browser screen.
  4. Go to the site that you visit often and then drag the URL from the address bar down to the links bar
  5. It will automatically create a name for the link but you can shorten it by right-mouse clicking over the link and select the “Rename” option
  6. You can also delete the links you don’t want by right-mouse clicking and selecting the “Delete” option

For FireFox:

Basically the same steps but you start at #4. Also, instead of “Rename” – you go to “Properties” to change the name of the link.

For both browsers, depending on the size of your monitor, you should be able to fit 10-16 links with abbreviated names.

It serves as almost a constant reminder that you should be visiting these sites.

For more information about this article please contact Sarah Chung.

*Reprinted with permission from Periscope Solutions – information experts providing research support for business planning, marketing, fundraising, and other small business initiatives www.periscopesolutions.com

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