Guide to Netscape Bookmarks

image of netscape toolbars
Figure 1: The Five Netscape Toolbars

This information on bookmarks was moved from the main Netscape Tips and Tricks Handout due to size. Be sure to check out the main handout for other useful information such as printing, capturing graphics, FTP, viewing HTML source code, navigation, telnet and other functions.

The Bookmarks button is on row 4 in Figure 1, above. Click on the Bookmarks button to see the options displayed below.

image of the netscape bookmark button options
Figure 2: Opening the Bookmarks Button


In Figure 2 there are three options, Add, File, Edit, followed by actual bookmarks and folders containing bookmarks. The folders are identified by the folder icon. The bookmarks are flagged with a blue-green ribbon icon.

You can organize your bookmarks into folders and upload your bookmark file to have constant access to it. I only wish there was a bookmark program I could run from my web server so I could omit the uploading step!

Working with Bookmarks
In the Bookmark Window you can create, edit and delete bookmarks and folders. You can search your collection of bookmarks.
Bookmarks/Edit Bookmarks opens the Bookmarks window. You can edit the entry for a bookmark, changing the name, URL and adding a descriptive annotation to the mark. These bits of information are called the bookmark properties.

Default Bookmarks
Browsers arrive with pre-set bookmarks in place, usually to a selection of commercial sites. I recommend you delete these bookmarks or create a folder, named commercial and drag all those bookmarks into it.To delete a bookmark just click once on the entry, to highlight it, then press the Delete key.

Editing Bookmark Entries: the Properties
Often it's useful to change the name of a bookmark or to update the URL when the owner changes the location of the page, or to add or edit notes and annotations.

Editing the label of the bookmark can be useful. The text label in the bookmark comes from a special command embedded into the HTML code of a web page. This is called the title tag and its function is to assign a formal, bibliographic title to the web page. You may not want to use that text as your label in the bookmarks, or you may want to add text to it (this can often be useful later when you're searching for a sppecific entry).

  1. Open the bookmarks: Bookmarks/Edit Bookmarks
  2. Click to highlight the entry you want to edit and select Edit/Bookmark Properties. OR Right (opposite)-click the entry and select Bookmark Properties from the pop-up menu.
  3. Enter the changes and click the OK button to close the edit window.
Notice when editing the bookmark properties the field Description which allows you to enter notes about the bookmarked page. This Description field is searchable.

Searching the Bookmarks
You can jump right to a bookmark using the search option: Edit/Find in Bookmarks or just press Control-F. Once you've searched for a given term, you can continue the search with control-G (think of the G in aGain).

Organizing Bookmarks with Folders
You can create, edit,delete folders. You can drag bookmarks in and out of folders. When you add a page to the bookmarks, you can choose which folder to place the bookmark in. You can use drag and drop to arrange the list of folders and to add and move marks to and from folders.
  • Create folders: In the Bookmarks Window File/New Folder or Right (opposite)-click / select New Folder from the pop-up menu.
  • Edit folders: Click to highlight the folder and then select the menu option Edit/Bookmark properties (yes, oddly, it's NOT "folder" properties ;-) OR Right (opposite)-click / select Bookmark properties from the pop-up menu.

Adding bookmarks Directly to a Folder
(not available on Macintosh versions of netscape)
While you are on the web page you want to add to the bookmarks,
  1. Click on the Bookmarks button
  2. Slide to File
  3. Slide over to click on (or actually release the mouse button once you're on the folder) the folder in which you want to place the page.
As far as I can tell, there's no way to quickly create a folder (on the fly) to place a bookmark into. You have to go through Bookmarks/Edit Bookmarks to create the folder.

The Personal Toolbar This is a special button bar on the Netscape main window, the lowermost band of buttons. It can be convenient to place commonly used pages on this button bar. You can add individual bookmarks to this Personal Toolbar folder, or add folders of marks.