Mastering Safari, learning now to manage and tame your bookmarks

Written by: Scott Haneda on Wednesday February 27th 2008, 10:30 am

Filed under: Applications, OS X 10.4, OS X 10.5, Safari

Every browser I am aware of has the ability to save a bookmark. A bookmark is nothing more than a way to get back to a site at some later time. Most users, at some point, will bookmark a site, with the idea that they can come back to it later and keep updated on what the site has to offer.

The problem as I see it, with bookmarks, is you end up with an unmanageable list of links to sites. Over time, this list will grow to the point that it becomes easier to simply search Google for the site. If your bookmarks menu has gotten somewhat out of control; this tutorial will teach you basic organizational tactics allowing you to tame your bookmarks.

The bookmarks menu
The bookmarks menu, as shown below, has all the basic features you can access in regards to bookmarking. You have quick access to your bookmarks bar, the ability to add new bookmarks, see all your bookmarks, or even add a folder to help organize your bookmarks.

The bookmarks manager
If you select “Show All Bookmarks” from the “Bookmarks” menu, Safari will drop you into the bookmark editing area. It is here you have full control over all your bookmarks, as well as the bookmarks bar.

You can also access the bookmark manager by clicking on the small book icon on the left of your bookmarks bar. Of course, you need your bookmark bar set to visible, which was covered in Mastering Safari’s bookmarks bar.

Making a bookmark
Making a bookmark is simple, simply select “Add Bookmark” from the Bookmarks menu, or press command-D on your keyboard. A small sheet will pop down asking you what to name the bookmark, as well as where in your bookmark structure you want it saved. The name should default to the title of the site you are bookmarking.

One nice feature of adding a bookmark is that it will be saved to the same location as the last bookmark that was saved. I plan on exploiting this feature to a degree.

Exploring the Bookmark Manager
The bookmark manager has two sections, Collections and Bookmarks. You may not see a section called “Bookmarks” at first. If you have never dragged a bookmark to the side of the bookmark manager, this feature will not be visible.

Starting with the Bookmarks section, you can drag a URL out of the URL bar in Safari, and store them here. To me, this seems counterintuitive, as this section is not accessible from any other area than the bookmark editor. As far as I know, you cannot get to these bookmarks from any menu in Safari.

If you want to store items in the Bookmarks area of the bookmark manger, by all means do so. I find it takes too long to jump from Safari’s browser view, into the bookmark manager, locate which bookmark I want to use, and then double click it.

Collections
Collections are where I spend most of my time in Safari when managing my bookmarks. We already covered the Bookmarks Bar section of collections. Today, let’s focus on the Bookmarks Menu.

Designing a workflow
The following are all suggestions. This is how I work in Safari, and how I manage bookmarks. This may or may not suit your workflow. My hope is that you can take these general ideas, and adapt them to your personal needs.

As you can see, I set up my bookmark manager with a few simple folders, and one subfolder. When I am making a bookmark to a site, I want to do so quickly, and get on with what I’m doing. In order to accomplish this, I have built a structure of folders to store bookmarks in. While it takes a second to pick where to store a bookmark, in the long run, I feel like I am saving time.

At the very least, I end up with a collection of bookmarks that are simple to manage. This method will allow you to easily know which bookmarks are safe to delete, and which you may want to keep around for a while longer.

Starting with the Temporary folder. This is where I will put a bookmark to a site I know I will only visit once. I may be surfing around, and decide I need to come back to something, but it is not highly important that I do return. Temporary acts as a trash can for various site URL’s that are interesting, but ok if I forget about. Once a week, I delete everything in this folder.

Check Later, as you can see, has a sub folder in it called Done. The Check Later folder is perhaps the most valuable to my workflow.

In the example image above, I have three items in the Check Later folder. One is a forum post where I asked someone a question. The second is a link to a post here at OS X Help, as I wanted to follow the comments. And the third is a link to a bug report I filed with another software developer.

Every few days I will check in on each of these, and see if there has been any progress or updates to the bookmark. If there has, and this issue is resolved, I simply move the bookmark to the Done folder. In general, I leave the Done folder as is and allow it to fill up. Maybe once a year I might be inclined to clean it up. I certainly do not manage it daily, as that would waste too much of my time.

Check Later can hold anything from eBay auctions you want to keep an eye on, to forum posts you are following. Any website that has something I will be interested in for a short period of time, ends up in the Check Later area.

The Daily folder is pretty self-explanatory. Sites that I visit once a day, end up here. Before the more advanced users cry foul, this would indeed better be served by using RSS. We have not covered RSS yet; I feel this is an acceptable method in the meantime.

Below that you can see I have folders for Work, Shopping, Banking, and Research. These are what suit my needs. You will of course want to create folders that work for you.

Perhaps you spend a lot of time on a photography website, you may want to make a folder for all the sites you visit in that category.

Setting up your bookmark structure
If you want to create a similar folder structure, it is relatively simple. Select the “Bookmarks Menu” item on the left, go to the Bookmark menu, and select “Add Bookmark Folder”. At that point, you can move them around, move one into another, delete mistakes, or change the name. The entire area is built on dragging and dropping items around; organize them as you see fit.

Putting it to use
Now that you have this structure all set up, it is time to make a bookmark. If you are like me, the Temp bookmark folder is where most of your bookmarks are going to go. Next time you decide to bookmark a site, select that folder from the pop down sheet. All future bookmarks will have your last used bookmark folder as the default selection.

Eventually, you can quickly press command-D and then return. In one quick motion, you have now added a bookmark and can get back to whatever you were doing. Next time you have a spare moment of free time, you can peruse your Temp bookmark folder, and see what you wanted to follow up on. Some you may want to keep, in that case, move them to the appropriate folder in Safari’s bookmark manager.

Alphabetize your bookmarks
In a past post, a reader asked how to alphabetize your bookmarks. Bookmarks are interesting in that they are entered in the order you make them, so your oldest bookmarks will be near the top, and your newest near the bottom. The name of the bookmark has no relevance on how it is sorted.

The only way I have found to accomplish this is to take the folder of bookmarks you want to put into alphabetical order, and drag it to your Desktop. This will make a copy of that folder. Now drag the folder back into Safari’s bookmark manager.

At this point, you will have a duplicate folder in Safari. Delete the folder that is not alphabetized; leave the one you just dragged in as it is. Finally, you can also delete the folder of bookmarks you put on your desktop.

Share your ideas
This is by no means a definitive set of rules to managing your bookmarks. Merely a suggestion to get you started. Please share your own organizational tips in the comments below.

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