wow – great tips and it all transferred to my iPhone, making it much easier to deal with.

Thanks. I had figured out much of what you wrote and implemented some of it. Your thinking was more complete than mine and I will implement most of your suggestions.

@Bob, thanks. You get the idea perfect, we are just trying to get people to start thinking in a certain way. Every user will have a unique case, and they can and are encouraged to modify to suit their needs. We are just trying to lay an idea framework, and see what everyone else comes up with.

Thank you, I really needed this. My bookmarks are a mess, even my folders need better organization.

I make HUGE use of the Bookmarks Bar.

I place folders there and then create sub-folders by relevancy in a hierarchical system which allows me access to hundreds of websites very quickly.

If a folder gets larger than what will appear on the screen without scrolling; I will create new sub-folders in that category so that I can quickly drill down to find the site I want.

I also use Auto-Click for opening in tabs, for example, my “Daily Read” which consists of 12 different IT related sites, of which “OS X Help” is one.

Safari is the best browser for me.

Cheers:
Bob

@WetcoastBob, thanks so much for your suggestions. That was the main point of this post. That while I have a certain method, everyone needs to develop their own that works for them.

You seem to have a solid solution that works great for you. Others can follow by my example, and also by WetcoastBob’s as well. Use bits and pieces until you get your browser working just how you want it.

http://www.sheepsystems.com/bookdog
‘Bookdog’ is the best.Alphabetizes, reviews,(on a schedule you determine) eliminates dups, also a friendly puppy you never have to feed or walk !

Help! How can I find out which folder I have stored certain bookmarks in? The find menu only takes me to the bookmark (and opens) it but doesn’t show me where it actually is. I have a lot of bookmarks I’ve placed somewhere and can only find them individually with this search. Spotlight does the same thing.
Thanks for any ideas.

@generosner, while you are in the search mode, there is a column called “parent”. This lists the name of the folder your bookmark is in.

I have a huge number of duplicates in my bookmarks. I believe these were caused by some flaw in sync services since the problem appeared after my fist attempt to sync Bookmarks using .mac. Any recommendation on how to resolve duplicated including multiple BookMarks Menu and BookMarks Bar folders? And now I have a Bookmarks Bar and a Bookmarks Menu Collection for more redundancy. What is that all about?

How do I delete Safari bookmarks?

@James, as far as I know, BookDog is the tool for you. I think you could use the demo to clean out what you need, and then not need it again. It does look like a pretty handy app though.

@Nathan, deleting bookmarks is covered in the post above. Just go to your bookmark manager, find the bookmark you want to delete, and press the delete key on your keyboard.

thanks,

The number 25 has appeared in my bookmark bar after the name of one of my folders – I have 143 bookmarks in the folder – the name on the bar reads- Design Blogs (25) – don’t know what its about – but its driving me crazy – any suggestions – by the by – does not appear in the name when I go to rename the folder in show all bookmarks – thanks

@maki, I believe you have added an RSS item to your bookmark bar, and that is showing you the unread count of new posts. I think if you look at this post on RSS in Safari, it may make some sense to you.

I can’t seem to nest folders (achieve a hierarchical structure). I highlight one folder, drag it to another, and nothing happens. What am I not doing? (I am able to change the folder order in the display.) Thanks for any help.

@Javier, perhaps try opening the folder, and putting it in the folder. I can only guess you are simply not being accurate enough when you drop the folder, so it ends up where you do not want, or ends up not moving.

If you could perhaps try to explain in as much detail as possible how you are trying this, and what the result is, I am sure someone here can help.

I added a bunch of bookmarks while doing an assignment. I finished and deleted all the bookmarks for the assignment. Now, my regular bookmarks are aligned to the left, no longer center. Is there any way to fix it? Thanks

@Al, I am not entirely sure I follow you with your question. Can you elaborate, as I have never seen bookmarks centered before. They are left justified in all the places that I have ever looked at a bookmark.

At the top of safari, underneath where the URL is entered, the bookmarks are listed

@Al, seems you are talking about the bookmarks bar, not the bookmarks menu. We have a pretty good walkthrough on the bookmarks bar.

I would start there. The only think I can think is you had your bookmarks bar set up in the past, in a way in which the first few items in it were empty items, giving it the appearance that they were right justified.

The bookmarks bar always works from left to right. Once you read the tutorial, let me know if it is still not clear, on how to edit, maintain, and manage it. If you still have issues, do not hesitate to fire off some more questions.

This a a problem I cannot figure out, and has asked alot of people, and they cannot figure it out either. Safari is my main browser on my mac. Some time ago, I am not sure what happened, but I must of hit just the right amount of buttons at once, and I lost my ability to edit my bookmarks.

Below the address bar, you have your single bookmarks and your bookmark folders. At the far left is a icon that looks like a open book. When you click on it normally, it opens the whole bookmark page where you can edit everything, reorganize, ect. Now, when I click on the open book icon, a gray bar appears at the bottom of the screen with a plus sign on the left. Nothing happens when I click on the plus sign.

What did I do?

@Jason, Hi. Sounds like you have some preference corruption. This should be pretty simple to solve. You will have to give up some of your saved data in Safari, but in most cases, that is not a huge deal. I would follow these steps, which should solve it, and give you a chance to backup most of your data and restore it.

1) Open Safari and go to your preferences, take screen shots, or write down how each pane in the preferences is set.

2) Go to the File menu, and down to Export Bookmarks, chose a location to export your bookmarks to, so we can import them later.

3) Quit Safari

4) In the Finder, go to your home folder, and open your Library folder. In the Library folder is a folder called Safari, open that, and move everything in there to the trash. You may be able to omit the deletion of a file called “Form Values” which is the file that remembers your name and other form values you have filled in on websites.

5) Now, also in your Library folder, is a folder called Preferences, you will fine a file in there called com.apple.Safari.plist, delete that file as well.

6) Jut for good measure, also in your Library folder is a folder called Icons, you can safely delete anything in that folder. The data in the files in there will be recreated next time you open Safari.

With those items in the trash, open Safari and you should be back to normal.

You can now go to the File menu, and re-import your bookmarks, and also go back to your preferences, and set those how you had them in the past.

Let me know how this works out for you.

That did the trick. Your a lifesaver. Thank you very much

Jason

You can organize your bookmarks with Advanced URL Catalog a bookmark manager compatible with Safari.

Hi, I’m looking for a bookmark manager for Mac that allows to add AND to visualize comments (key words, tags) added to a url. Url Manager Pro allows adding comments, but does not display them. Ideally I’d like to see sth like in iTunes or a database with various fields, where the tags or notes are just an extra field. Do you happen to know of such a program? thanks a lot
Michael

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Im having a big issue. My bookmarks are there. but when i go into the edit mode, to try and delete a bookmark. THE BOOKMARKS MENU IS EMPTY. Where are they? how can i get them to show up? I have every thing on “show” in the view menu. Still i cannot see my bookmarks to edit them. Only to go to them in the menu. They dont show up in edit mode. i need help.

@Shay, are you sure you are clicked on the “Bookmarks Menu” line item in the bookmark editor? Maybe make some screenshots and upload them to http://www.imgur.com/ so we can take a look.

http://imgur.com/dfkgv.jpg

http://imgur.com/59iup.jpg

the first one is showing all my bookmarks. the second is when i try to edit or delete bookmarks.. the entire menu is empty but only in the edit part. i can go to my bookmarks. but cant edit them cause theyre not there.. wtf? so why is the edit bookmarks blank? …thanks..

@Shay, are all your items on the left blank? So your Bookmarks bar, and bookmarks history are also missing? Sounds to me like a little corruption, I would just go to the “Export Bookmarks” menu, export them all, delete them all, and then import them in clean. You will also have a backup then as well.

bookmarks BAR and HISTORY are there. Only the MENU EDIT. is all missing. Maybe there is a button somewhere to get them to show? I have everything on “show bookmarks bar, menu bar, toolbar, status bar,”
i just dont understand. Everything works fine. I just cant edit my bookmarks. lol.

ok. I got it. lol. The problem was that I deleted ALL folders in Bookmarks column. If u see this image http://imgur.com/xtnqv.jpg
and the ones before.. I added a folder, with nothing in it, no webpage, nothing, and all the sudden all my bookmarks appeared. Its quite strange.. And just another bug thats in the safari 4 beta.. When is the release for the 4.0? Im still using beta, no updates on apple website either.

@Shay, nice trouble shooting. This was a hard one for me to help you with. If I can not replicate it here, then a lot of it is guesswork. You were running the Windows Safari, and I do not have access to that platform at the moment.

Glad you figured it out.

As to when the next release will be out, Apple is pretty slow on that. We have the public beta, and I believe one update was pushed out the other day, check software update.

You can get the most up to date, in that you will have a version of WebKit that is up to date for that day. Containing the code that was built out within the last 24 hours. These are called the “nightly’s”.

Remember, this is just webkit that is the up to date part. WebKit is the underlying part of Safari that does the rendering of webpages. This can be nice to have, as you gain all this great CSS support, as well as a ton of new standards and bug fixes.

What it does not give you, is a updated Safari. So if there is a bug in Safari, like what you had, or say, the download manager was busted, or anything to do with Safari, you are not going to see those things solved in the nightly releases.

Nightly releases can be downloaded from here:
http://nightly.webkit.org/

You can run them side by side with the official release of Safari. It can be fun to play with.

Following this blog: http://webkit.org/blog/ is a good idea, you can get a good feel for some of the amazing things that are happening.

For example, check this out: http://webkit.org/blog/324/css-animation-2/ which while I do not think you will see it in the Safari 4 beta you use now, if you download the nightly, you will see all the greatness that CSS animation is going to one day bring to the web.

ok. thanks alot scott. take care.

My bookmarks have been insane. I realized that my readings (1000s of ebooks) have a structured system (5 folders). You reminded me to apply a similar simplicity and extensibility to my bookmarks!

This would be GREAT, except if I EVER go to the Bookmarks menu in Safari it immediately hangs, and I have to Force Quit. Did it in Safari 3, and now in Safari 4. Major annoyance!!! Tiger 10.4

@Florie, sounds like a permissions issue. I would start with opening your home folder, it is the folder with your name on it, in there is a folder called Library. Inside the Library folder, you will find a folder called “Safari”. Make sure Safari is not open, and move the “Safari” folder aforementioned to your desktop.

Open Safari, and see if your issues go away. If they do, you know the issue was one of pereferences in Safari. Quit Safari once more, and move back in “Form Values”, which is about the only file that deleting would cause you some trouble in that you would lose some data that Safari remembers for forms you have filled out in the past.

If you think you can get away with not caring about that, and all is working well, then just leave it as is, and you should be working again.

If that does not work, feel free to report back here and we can try a few other things.

dear Scott, you have no IDEA how happy you have made me! And that was so simple too. I’ve read all kinds of complicated stuff that ‘might’ work.

OH NO, my bookmarks aren’t there! I do happen to have a backup version of some sort …

Thank you!!!

@Florie, yes you would lose your bookmarks, as they were corrupted, which is what was causing you to have issues. Either that, or it was permissions of the files.

Be careful just putting the bookmark file back, as you may just bring back all your problems again.

The best thing to do, is to go to the File Menu in Safari, and select “import BookMarks, then go select your old Bookmarks.plist file in the Safari folder we put on the desktop.

This should bring them in clean. They may not all be in the right spot, and they may have changed the order in which they are shown, but that can always be managed in the bookmarks manager.

Well Scott before reading this, I just dragged the bookmarks file back into the folder, and everything is spiffy!

Scott, do you happen to know of an app (or applescript) that would browse through my bookmarks in Safari and identify those that are no longer valid. I find that this is an issue in the management of bookmarks as they are aging .

I found this free app: SafariBookmarkChecker but it’s not perfect (one would delete too many bookmarks if one follows it’s diagnosis)

@ Jaladuvar I just tried http://www.coriolis.ch/en/sbc/ which seems very old, but also seems to work fine. The concept of parsing the bookmark file and following the urls is not a hard one, so I believe the above url for that app is safe. It does make a backup of your bookmarks, and you can make one before you run it just to be safe.

I can think of a few manual ways to do it, but they are all a little ugly and take a lot of work. Give the download above a try, or search for something similar.

@Jaladuvar how so? All it is doing is checking the http status code. You should only delete those that register a 404, if you see a 403 moved permanent, or moved temporarily, that is up to you if you want to follow that moved bookmark location, and update to the new location. If you only delete the 404 marked ones, those are truly no longer the page you bookmarked.

Scott, thanks for your answer(s). I tested this app from Coriolis (funny it’s the only one). I agree that 404 means the actual page is no longer here, but sometimes it’s still my entry to a website I want to keep bookmarked. I’m just being lazy to edit the link to get back to the “root” of the web site. Thanks for your guidance on managing bookmarks.

Please i need some help i deleted a folder by mistake from my bookmark with lots of link that i use daily.

I am using Safari on a pc.. is there anyway to recover the bookmark folder??

tks

@Leo, do you have a backup of your files? If you do, resoring it should not be hard. May I suggest you look into xmarks which will backup your bookmarks to their system, and also allow you full synchronization amongst multiple machines.

I am afraid though, if you deleted a bookmark, or folder therein, that unless you have a backup, it is gone.

The file you are looking for is called bookmarks.plist and is located on WIndows in the Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari folder

thank you wil check Xmarks

Is there any way to add tags/comments/notes to a bookmark?
I know there is an app called Webnotehappy but is $25.!!!
Any FREE plugin/application availables?
Why didn’t Safari think about this.. is soo needed!

@Anniebananie you could always put some tagging identification words in the name of the bookmark. If you like Webnotehappy, I do not think that 25.00 is an unreasonable price to pay if it adds the features you need.

I am not aware of any way to tag a bookmark natively in Safari.

Hi there, i deleted my news bookmark in safari and bookmarks.plist hasn’t it anymore. how can i get the original news bookmark back? tks for your help

@Cesar, I believe this was covered in my reply on Restoring default bookmarks

@Hexley, Tks for your reply, i will try that

I have just started using Safari again after a couple of years of using another application. I imported all of my bookmarks and everything is working properly, except that when I save a bookmark now, it enters it at the bottom of the list instead at the top. This wouldn’t be an issue, accept that I have a VERY long list of bookmarks. According to the info above, it should put the new bookmark at the top of the list where it belongs. How can I correct this.

Thanks.

@Elliiot, looks like either we were mistaken, or behavior has changed, as indeed, bookmarks are added last in the list.

I can not find any way to alter this behavior. You may want to look at something like Xmarks for Safari which would allow you to load a web page with all your bookmarks, and I imagine you could sort them as well, though you may want to check first.

How can I find a subfolder, other than opening every bookmark folder and looking into it?
When I type anything into the Safari search window, it gives me all the individual bookmarks that match, but not the subfolders that match. I’d like to know the parent folder that contains the subfolder I’m looking for.

@nick When you do your search, at the top of the results list is a column header name, one is called “parent”, which will tell you the name of the parent folder that bookmark is in. This of course, probably only gets you the answer for bookmark folders that are one level deep.

For deeply nested folders, you can control-click on the bookmark in your found set, and select “show in collection”, which should take you to an expanded list of where that bookmark lives.

If you are adding a bookmark, and want to be able to stick it into a sub folder somewhere, I usually press command-D to add the bookmark, click on the menu list, and just start typing the name of the subfolder. OS X will generally take me right to from the list.

Depending on how you have your tabbing preferences set in the System Preferences, you may actually be able to tab to the list of bookmarks, instead of manually selecting the list with your mouse.

I do try to limit myself to just one subfolder. Anything more than that, and I find I am being to granular in my thinking, and will spend more time on bookmark organization, than on just stuffing it into a single folder, and leaving it there, to never book looked at again anyway

Thanks.

Also, my “never looked at again” folder is called “temp,” unfortunately.

wow! drag them onto the desktop to alphabetize….it worked!!!!! been driving me crazy..thanks

Is there a way to always display the bookmarks on the side (like I do with Internet Explorer), rather than always having to open up the bookmarks book?

@Diane I am not aware of any way to keep the bookmakrs bar open at all times. Maybe you can use the bookmarks toolbar more often, that is able to be enabled to always be shown.

I personally do not spend a lot of time in bookmarks, so I rarely have needs for this. As long as a bookmark is made, and I can remember a few bits of it, I just hit command-L and start typing, Safari usually will be able to figure out the url I need pretty quickly.

A year or two ago my Safari bookmarks changed from a list to a page split between a list (bottom of page) and an awful attempt at an image, surrounded by black (top of page). Is there a way to revert to the old interface with no image on top? I’d be really grateful to anyone who can tell me!

@Nicole,
Yes, this is pretty simple to solve. When you are in your bookmark screen, and you are looking at the upper lower split screen view, you should notice three horizontal thin lines.

Grab those, and slide that split window up, all the way to the top. You should be able to get it to go away entirely, aside from the search box, which still is handy to have.

You can take a look at a screenshot I made that shows how to restore your bookmarks to a list from the new split screen mode.