Bookmark folder? How’d I miss that~THANKS!!!

I meant to say~I used them in the bookmarks manager but didn’t know I could have them on the bar…you are right, bookmarks get unorganized.

…I osxhelp is already on the bar;) thx

@JimB
Yes, bookmarks are near useless, as they get in a state of mess, and totally lose their value. About all I can do in a future post is suggest methods of organization and hope people follow them.

Safari having the ability to search bookmarks does indeed help though. In a day or so, I will show a few organizational tactics to get people in the habit of keeping bookmarks organized.

P.S. Jim, any chance you can pop in a real valid email address when you post a comment? They are not shown on the website, and not even stored anywhere, but I do get a copy of your comment via email, and when I try to reply to you, it bounces back as invalid.

@Scott,
email address fixed/I crossed my two different emails; tough gettin’ old

Great website and information for the new Mac user! I was wondering what the process is to increase the font size in the bookmarks area of Safari. I understand how to increase the font size for web pages, but the default font size for the listing of saved bookmarks in Safari is pretty small. Thanks!

i cannot find a way to add a folder in the fly, what i meant by that, if i’m about to add a new bookmark and found out that there is no appropriate folder for this new bookmark, i have to cancel the addition and creat the new folder first and then add the new bookmark. This should be a basic of a pattern to add something into a container: if i don’t have the container, then let me create that one.

@JohnH, Font sizes on OS X is something that troubles me as well. As it is now, unless the application developer makes efforts to allow font size changes, you are more or less stuck.

Office allows you to increase the “view percentage”, Photoshop allows you to alter some of the menu font sizes.

I find it hard to read the text on tabs at times, since 10.5 at least, the drop shadow is a bit blurry for me.

There are smatterings of data on how Apple is working on something called resolution independence. The Developer Tools package even comes with an application to test it out. When that sees common use, you will be able to adjust the display of all items in OS X. In the mean time, it is something you have to live with.

@wahy, Next Safari post will talk about this deficiency, and how to best deal with it. It is not perfect, but we will do our best to teach you some ways to make the process a bit cleaner.

Check back in a few days and see how we do.

The president of our user group sent your website to all the members. I really appreciate all your help! We all need to go over the basics and then some. Always learning something new or to refresh our memory!

Thanks again for all the time you put into this!

Eleanor

Thank you for the “Quick keyboard access tip.

Still a virgin at this computer game,find I am having to re-read every thing, over and over, not your fault it’s my age.
I keep dragging a book mark off the bar, it sometimes comes and sometimes it will not move.When it does come off the bar it appears on the desk top in a different form, but the original has remained on the bar, but I now have something on the desktop as well; that i am dragging into the trash to get rid of.I’m trying to remove a bookmark but can’t seem to do it?

@mike, you seem to be dragging to the wrong area. Dragging near anything out of Safari, to the Desktop, will make a “link” or “shortcut” to it. Drag an image, and it will make a copy of that image.

You need to be just a bit more accurate with the bookmarks bar. Drag it right into the page in Safari, and it should “poof” away.

This of course only applies to those items in the bookmarks bar, not those in your bookmarks manager, those you just delete with the delete key on your keyboard.

Hi there!

I just accidentally deleted my “News” folder on the bookmarks bar! You know the one that’s already provided with Safari with all the RSS stuff in it?

I right clicked on it and pressed delete, thinking it would delete the (382) RSS links, but it deleted the whole folder itself. Shame on my newbie ways!

Please help me get it back!

@Shella, ouch, so you deleted the news bookmark bar item. You can get it back a few ways, once would be to totally reset Safari, which means digging into some prefs files and deleting them, less than ideal.

Another is to create a new account, login to that account, and Safari will have the “news” items there, you can go into your bookmark manager, and copy them out, and move them into your other account.

For the above, if you look our our post on how to alphabetize your bookmarks, that will tell you in indirectan way, what you need to move out of the new account into the main account:

http://osxhelp.com/mastering-safari-learning-now-to-manage-and-tame-your-bookmarks/

Probably the simplest way, would be to download this archive I made for you, and unzip it, then just drag it to your bookmarks bar.

Yay! Thank you so much, Scott! You rock

What annoys me is that I can’t drag individual bookmarks within bookmark bar folders. anyone know a hack?

how do I enlarge the bookmark bar? Thanks
Jeff M

@Jeff M, at this time, OS X does not allow enlarging of UI elements. In the future, something called resolution independence will help with this.

Even with that, I doubt you will be able to enlarge one specific portion of an application.

well it doesnt exactly say how to gt rid of them, does it? >:/

@kenzie, see the comment above to mike, that should explain it.

Is it possible to create a double bookmark bar (two bars / showing twice the stuff)?

@tonya, no, you only get one bookmark bar.

Excellent explanation. I did not know how to use the RSS feeds. Thank you!

I wish there was a way to disable the auto fill feature of the Bookmark Bar. I really do not like it pulling up and displaying my Bookmarks – Firefox allows me to set its default so it only does this for the websites visited during a session.

Can I have the little logo of the website saved instead of a name? It sure was possible in my firefox used with windows. Then you’d recognize the logo much faster instead of having to read all the bookmarked names… Anyone?

@I wonder, most websites, like ours in fact, will have a logo called a favicon. It is what you see to the left of the URL in the URL bar in your browser. As long as the site creator has made this icon, it will also show up in your bookmarks to the left as well.

If you look at your bookmarks, and history, you should see a number of them. For some reason, ours seems to be broken, I will look into that.

how do I get the links in the toolbar to stay there and not continue to shift to the right every time a save a new website?

Thanks.

MAG

@MAG, if you are talking about the bookmarklet bar as seen here: http://osxhelp.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/safari-bookmarks-bar.png new links added to it always go to the right, starting at the left.

If this is not what you are talking about, please elaborate in as much detail as you can, or I am not able to offer suggestions.

Scott, I agree with @MAG, there are a few bookmarklets that I want to stay where they are despite me adding new ones to the bar. Is there any way to Stick them there (like on the far left end of the bar) and any new additions would appear further down and not move the ones I Stuck there? I have a few favorite links that I want to permanently keep in place on the bar. It just seems that you should be able to do this by right clicking on that particular bookmarklet, etc.
Thanks so much,
~M

@M I think the only way would be to stop using “Add Bookmark” and just use drag and drop to put them where you want them to be. It took your post for me to even understand what was being asked here.

The bookmark bar is only as wide as your browser, so there is a limited amount of items that can go in it. It seems a place that will get not all that frequent use.

In the rare times you need to put something there, drag and drop the link/url there, or rearrange them. It is my humble opinion of you are having management issues with the bookmarks bar, you are sort of using it for what it was not intended.

The bookmarks bar is a quick launcher to your sites, there is only so much width to your browser window before it is full.

That is excellent advice! I have always used the “+” button (“Add a bookmark for the current page”) , rather than dragging and dropping. And as you said the “+” button puts it at the far left, which then moves my favorites down the line and eventually off the width of the browser (Safari). But by dragging & dropping, I can just place it to the right of my few favorite ones and then they will stay put. You are a lifesaver. I don’t know why I never thought of that. Thanks so much! And thanks for replying so quickly. ~Mark

i accidentally deleted 2 of my bookmark folders…is there anyway i can get them back? i dont even know it happened, i looked and 2 folders are missing…i must have lost over 100 book marks. and i havent backed up my computer in months!! im using safari 4 by the way….

@jonathon, if you have no backups, unfortunately, they are gone.

how can i find a bookmark that i have deleted? It wasn’t one of the preset ones and i dnt remember what website it was which is why i am trying to recover it.

@Antoine A deleted bookmark is gone forever. If you have backups, let us know, I can tell you how to restore them.

damn…..allright…thanks for your help.

Help! We inadvertantly deleted a whole folder of favorite bookmarks.Is there anyway to retrieve them or are they lost forever??

@Chris, unless you have a backup, I am not aware of any way to get them back. If you have backups, I can certainly explain to you how to restore them.

Hi Scott, We do have a maxtor storage unti. Would that help?

Thanks, Chris

@Scott: There is a way to restore a deleted bookmark folder, if you use Time Machine or another backup application (as everyone should). Safari’s bookmarks are stored in the file ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist, where ~ is your home folder. If you restore an old version of the file with the folder, then you’ll undo the mistake.

Of course, Safari should just have a better undo manager, like every other browser.

@Jack, I am aware where the plist is What browser are you referring to that has the ability to undo the deletion of your bookmarks?

Ah, no, I meant that every browser *needs* a better undo manager.

One of the worst—if not the worst—thing an application can do is irreversibly lose your data without your intent.

@Jack, thanks for the clarification. The thing is, it would be simple for anyone to implement this in a less than user friendly way, but a way that would work nonetheless.

A schedule that simply rolled out the bookmarks file, so bookmarks.plist would be copied and renamed to bookmarks.plist.1, and bookmarks.plist.2 and so on and so forth. If a user gets into trouble, they could quit the app, rename the last one to drop the .1, and be good to go.

This is actually a very simple script to write, and could be done in one easy to install launchd item on OS X, supporting 10.4 and 10.5. If I have some time later today, I will write this script and put it up somewhere.

The new Safari beta 4 is the slowest monster. I’m so sorry I let Software Update put it on my iBook.

It also now is adding the number of bookmarks in my folders along my bookmark bar, which HOGS UP SPACE in the bar, and which those said #’s/totals were NOT THERE BEFORE I downloaded Safari 4 Beta. I want those #’s GONE! I don’t care how many bookmarks I have in a folder. What I NEED is the “real estate space” in the Bookmark Bar for all the folders that I would like to show up in the Safari browser on this 14-inch ibook.

Because Safari has now decided to show me the totals in 2 of my folders, that knocks off two OTHER folders. See what I mean?

Grrrr.

BTW and FWIW, NO BROWSER, Safari or otherwise, will EVER beat the absolute EASE OF USE of the prior IE for Mac. Bookmarks in that browser were a PIECE OF CAKE to add/organize/delete, etc. Safari’s bookmark system is a royal pain in the neck and always has been. ;-(

@BG, By agreeing to use the Safari 4 Beta, you also had to come to terms with the fact there can and will be potential problems. This is the nature of beta software, you are giving up stability and safety for a chance to see what new tools and features are coming down the pipe.

if you do not want to have any problems, then do not update. I always tell people, if they are happy with what they have, do not change it. The general idea that because version x+1 is higher than version x means it is better, is never the case. The question is, does version x+1 add features you am looking for, or need, over the current stability and learned use of version x.

If you re-read this post, it explains how to manage your bookmarks bar, and remove, rearrange, and add items to your bookmarks bar. This will get you back to the same arrangement of bookmark items you had in your bar prior to updating.

Problems like this will always happen when testing beta software.

The slowness you mention could be a number of things. The way in which Safari loads pages seems to have been changed. Safari now waits longer before showing you any part of the page. You end up spending a lot of time staring at a blank screen, and then the entire page comes shooting in.

If you were to time the old behavior, to the new behavior, the new behavior would be faster as measured in a test. Perceived speed would be slower. This is a http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2004_05.html#005496. There is also another great article on this at die.net, written by Dave Hyatt, one of the main Safari (WebKit) developers.

Some have luck by changing the page load timings by quitting Safari, opening terminal, and entering in the following, as one line, and pressing return:

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitInitialTimedLayoutDelay 0.25

Safari is showing you the totals of the items in your bookmark folders because those are RSS items. The number represents unread posts on that website. This is explained in our post Understanding RSS in Safari.

A final effort you can make to speed up things, is to clear Safari of any old data it has laying around form the beta, that may not be compatible with the current version. Select the Safari menu, and select Reset Safari. I generally check off all the items in the window that pops up. You should determine if you are ok with deleting all your cookies, as well as saved forms and password. Those two can be a bit of a pain to build back up. However, deleting everything is the only way to know for sure you are starting clean.

There is also a chance you have 3rd party input manager installed for Safari, or that Flash is outdated, and you are now visiting heavy Flash sites. Websites have also gotten more complicated and are pushing the speed limits of older machines. An iBook is a relatively aged machine, and performance may not be the best.

You can always revert back to Safari 3, which you seemed to like better. Or, since you have an iBook, I assume it can run Classic mode, you are more then welcome to run Internet Explorer, though I can not see more than a very small percentage of the web working with that browser.

Help! I cannot save bookmarks in Safari 4.02. I have reinstalled repair permissions and everytime i quit I lose everything. Please help.
Confused in Berkeley, Mac owner since the very beginning!

An awesome tutorial. I just switched to Mac and am trying to learn my way around. This was extremely helpful and straightforward. I’m on to your next one.

On a previous MAC, in Safari top bar, the open book icon was blue and “clickable” to quickly see my bookmarks. On this one, the open book icon is black and doesn’t link to anything. How can I activate the icon? thanks

@Dean, If the icon is really black, something is wrong. If when you click on it you see a black page, look for three small horizontal lines in that area you can drag up and down to open the window up some more.

Aside from that, the next suggestion I would have would be to just toss your Safari Preferences file, and it should behave normally again. Quit Safari, and delete ‘com.apple.Safari.plist’ from your Preferences folder in your Library folder of your Home folder.

You may want to keep a backup of that file just in case.

Thanks Scott, I’ve looked VERY carefully, there’s NO “com.apple.Safari.plist” to delete.

I do use Safari and my bookmarks, with no problem. Just trying to activate that black icon to a blue usable icon, like all the others Thanks, Dean

@Dean, Safari could not run without the preference file. If you go to your Home folder, which is where your Music, Pictures, Documents and other folders are, and open Library, open Preferences, and there will be “com.apple.Safari.plist”.

Make sure you quit Safari before doing any of this.

If you are feeling brave, as with above, make sure Safari is quit, and paste this one line into the application called terminal, which is in your utilities folder. Press return after pasting it in.

mv ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist ~/Desktop

That will move the preferences file to your Desktop. Start Safari, and it should be reset enough that if that button is related to preference issues, it will now work.

Appreciate your help. I quit Safari, went to library, preferences, there is NO “com.apple.Safari.plist” I’ve tried advanced advice other places, with difficult results. Any other (simpler) possibility ? Dean

I have used Camino as my default browser because it allows the bookmark bar to wrap around and my work process is to add a number of sites to the bar and then later go back and organize them into folders (if I want to keep them). Is there any way I can do this in Safari? Snow Leopard does not play well with Camino, and I am willing to switch if only I could get this one feature “fixed.”

Thanks for all your help in an excellent support site…

@Craig, I am not aware of any way to get Safari to wrap the bookmarks bar around. Aside from opening your browser wider to see them all in one row, that is the only solution I can thing of.

Perhaps use the bookmarks bar with folders, so you can put multiple bookmarks into each folder. This can be very handy, since you can open all items in tabs, and you can also set it to be a one click opens all feature as well.

Is there any way of creating a second row for the bookmarks bar?

Thanks

Can I restore the “Popular” collection that was originally on the Bookmarks Bar, somehow it disappeared?

@Sal, yes, create a new account, login, open Safari, and open the bookmarks manage. Find the “popular” connection, and drag it to your shared folder, which is in the “Users” folder.

You can not log out of this account, and also safely delete it. I believe you could also do this with a guest account as well, side stepping the process of making a new account.

Locate the Shared folder, and in your account, just move the “popular” folder into your bookmarks in Safari.

There are a few other ways to do this, but I felt this is the easiest way to understand.

i keep trying to remove bookmarks from bookmark bar, i try to drag, click/hold/drag. they will not drag anyplace.

@scott what if you control click, or right click on the bookmark bar item, and select the “delete” menu item, does that work?

that works, thanks. but i must be doing something wrong with click hold drag?

@scott, I bet you have a folder of items in your bookmarks bar, not just one item, so your click and hold only opens and shows the contents of that folder in the bookmarks bar.

Try holding down the command/Apple key, and then do the “click and hold and drag”, which will allow left to right repositioning, if you drag horizontally, or if you drag vertically, you can drag down, release, and will be prompted to delete the entire folder.

thanks, but no go, the bookmark does nothing, just sits there

I just migrated to a macbook from an ibook g4 and the newest safari opens the bookmark (menu?) to the right instead of the left. It’s a small thing but since I’m still adjusting to the widescreen and the smaller type and the 3-D visuals (I could go on…) it’s an irritation. Can I move the menu back over to the left?

@Dee, I am not entirely sure I understand your particular problem. can you elaborate a little as to what it is that is opening to the right?

Do you mean that when you click on the menu at the top of your screen called “Bookmarks”, that the listings that show up, open and expand to the right, and they you used to see them move to them move to the left?

Or is there some other bookmark area you are referring to that is different?

Yes…when I click on the bookmarks menu and pull down bookmarks bar it opens up to the right. Is there somewhere to set this to the left? Thanks.

@Dee, Not that I am aware of. Menu’s tend to run off to the right, if there is space, if there is not, they will find space until they run out. Right is the default behavior, if your previous screen was too small to accommodate the right opening, it would be forced to the left. However, all applications try to go to the right first.

Thanks, in general I prefer Safari to other browsers so I’ll just need to adjust.

safari book marks are dead for me. all i get is a huge black bar. I dont want that black bar. I just want the usual assortment of book marks. I dont know what to do. My other computer seems to get safari book marks okay but this one cannot. I wish i knew what to do.

@Doro, Take a look at the reply we gave to @Dean, I believe this is the same issue you are having with the black bar in Safari for bookmarks.

I didn’t get the answer to this question someone asked a while ago: can I just get the small colored icons to show in the bookmarks bar when using Safari or is this only a feature ion Firefox?

@Ellen No, I do not think it is possible to have only icons in your bookmarks. About the closest I can get is giving it a single character for a name, that is near invisible. Something like a dash, or back tick, single quote mark, all those are very small, and would leave you with near nothing but the icon.

The icons don’t appear at all. I looked everywhere to see if there was a setting to change but nothing seemed obvious.

How can I create a folder on my Bookmarks Bar? Instead of having all of the sites I visit daily taking up the whole of the Bar, I would like to have a single folder or drop-down menu where I can put all of those sites.

@JD Wright, I suggest you read the article we wrote above, specifically, the section titled “Adding a bookmark folder”. If that is not clear, please let us know.

Hi Scott. Unfortunately, that article doesn’t help me. When I click , the new folder appears under the heading rather than in the Bookmark Bar, which is where I want the folder to go.

I have tried dragging and dropping the new folder into the Bar, but that doesn’t seem to work.

The bookmark folders that you mention in that article (Popular and News) are gone from my Bar–I deleted them before I really knew what I was doing.

Never mind–I’m an idiot. I tried dragging and dropping the new folder to the Bookmark Bar icon under the Collections heading. When I dragged the folder directly to the bar itself, it worked right away. Sorry to pester, and thanks for helping!

Since upgrading to Snow Leopard, the Bookmarks Bar has an annoying quirk: it no longer automatically shows the bookmarks within the folder when I pass my pointer over it. I have to actually click the folder to see the contents. This didn’t used to happen and this “auto expand” function is in all versions of IE and Firefox.
Any ideas?

@Kevin,
I was never aware that the bookmarks bar had this ability. I was just using a Leopard machine today, and hovering a mouse over any bookmark does not expand it.

Perhaps you had a third party tool that was offering this feature for you? However, since the inception of Safari, as far as I am aware, it never expanded a menu without a click. As a matter of fact, I can not think of any menus anywhere that will do so.

You may want to try to think it you had any third party tools, or a mouse driver that was offering this for you.

Scott, one step that I didn’t explain was that I first have to click on one of the folders and then it automatically expands the others. I can do this on Firefox on my Mac and IE7 on my PC. I first click on one of the folders to show the bookmarks inside, then move the pointer to another folder which automatically expands that one. This seems to be pretty common functionality and exists, for instance, in iWorks and Office apps as well as browsers. I.e., in Numbers, when I click on Edit, it expands my options. If I keep moving my pointer over to Insert, it automatically expands those without clicking again. Same with Pages, MS Word, Excel, etc. I honestly think that this is a glitch with Snow Leopard and/or on my Mac. Could you run this test scenario and tell me if you get the same result? Thanks! Kevin

Hi Kevin,
Now that you explained that you do in fact click once, that makes sense, and is indeed the normal behavior as I remember it for as long as I can remember it.

I am running Snow Leopard myself, and just tested it, a single click on a bookmark “folder”, and I can move the mouse to other sub folders, which will open automatically.

Since you listed off all the other apps this is working in for you, and it seems to be limited to Safari, that is at least somewhat simpler to troubleshoot.

My first question would be, is this limited to just bookmarks in the bookmarks bar, or does the main app window menu also have this broken behavior?

For example, can you click once on History at the top of Safari, go down to “Earlier Today”, and get it to work as you expect?

If not, my next suggestion would be to open your System Preferences, and create a new account. You can call it “test” and delete it when we are done with it. Login to that account, which will look new and shiny.

See if the problem follows you into the new test account. if it does, that is going to make things much harder to figure out. If it does not, then it should be relatively easy to figure out, though you may have to lose some preferences and other settings to Safari.

Please let me know how those tests work out for you.

Scott, did some tests and this appears to be limited to my bookmark folders. I.e., the main app drop-downs work as designed. I created a test account and this problem carries through to there. Do I have a bad copy of Safari? Thoughts? Kevin

@Kevin,
You could download Safari again, and see if that does it, it is really simple. Just go to http://www.apple.com/safari/ and download it from there.

Then, open your Applications folder, move Safari to the trash, empty the trash, and install the copy you just downloaded.

You will keep all your prefs, and everything should be fine.

The behavior you are seeing is not normal, but since it followed you to a new test account, we can pretty much rule out any local preference issues.

What exactly happens when you click once on a menu, and then navigate into a sub menu? I take it the mouse just moves on past it and does nothing?

The only conflict I would think it could possibly be would be in /Library/Internet Plug-Ins

Perhaps there is something unusual in there.

Scott, I downloaded and reinstalled Safari as you suggested. The problem still exists. When I click on a folder, I can scroll down and select a bookmark. If I scroll laterally, it is really annoying. I need to click two time to get the menu to show on the adjacent bookmark folder. It is as if I have to click once to select Safari and then again to select the folder. This really sucks. Thanks for you help. What do you think? Kevin

To @wahy’s point… it’s UNBELIEVABLE. How could a ‘modern’ browser not have a way to add a bookmark to a new folder in a few steps from a single operation. Why would Apple not fix this major deficiency? Every other browser I know of lets you choose a new folder to a bookmark to (heck even the Mac basic file save operations let you create a new folder on the fly to save to.)

I’m just amazed that the ‘add bookmark’ dialog is so horrible on Safari.

And I just noticed @wahy made that post in 08!!! Two years later and still no way to add a bookmark to a new folder from the ‘add bookmark’ dialog?

@Rick, ( and everyone else who is having bookmark issues )

Yes, I agree, bookmarks in Safari could be better. I use FireFox for development, and in turn will use Xmarks to sync my bookmarks across all browsers on all computers.

As a result, I have never made a bookmark in FireFox. I gave it a shot the other day. I have to say, if that black “Heads Up Display” style window is what people are calling a better bookmark manager, I am mystified.

Both offerings are weak in my humble opinion.

Yes, FireFox gives you the ability to make a new folder. In all honesty, I am happy to give that up, as I can easily shove a bookmark where I want it in Safari, without ever having my hands leave the keyboard.

The “add bookmark” feature in FireFox is visually confusing. The addition of tags, ugh, can we just let tags go, they did not work out as planned, let’s let that horse die.

I think in this case, I will take stable and simple over convoluted and confusing

It is strange to me how many comments there are surrounding bookmarks. I guess a lot of people use them. I always ask myself, when is the last time I really used any of my bookmarks? I have a top set on the toolbar, and use that hundreds of times a day. Outside of that though, the folders, and then nested folders, everything that I created to add order to my bookmarks, never really gets used, and in reality, added chaos and disorder.

Sure, you bookmarked something, but do you ever remember to go back to it? I bookmark things for the purpose of getting them into the auto complete mechanism of the browser. So I may bookmark favoritesite.example.com but that is not because I am ever going to actually hunt around for that bookmark, it is so I can press command-L and then type “fa” and have the browser fill in the rest automatically.

I think bookmarks are a failed idea, one that seems so logical, and so perfect for the scenario, but that fall apart very fast beyond more than 20 or so bookmarks.

For the most part, google is my bookmark manager. I can search and find what I need faster than I can find it in the browser in most cases.

Case in point, I was working at a clients the other day, general computer cleanup and maintenance. There were several computers, two laptops, two desktops, a lot of crud from over the years, backups of files etc. Very common and normal scenario.

An important aspect of cleaning all this up was consolidation. I was asked to make certain to carry along all the bookmarks from each machine, and from all the older backups. I have to wonder, why are bookmarks so important to people. I see a lot of cases where people are more concerned about their bookmarks than the safety of their email. Happily allowing Entourage corrupt years of email, but damit, my bookmarks better be saved!

There were several hundred bookmarks per machine, and per backup archive. Looking through a few, I got the general impression, most were sites that were seen as “interesting”, but being too busy at the time, the person decided, I will bookmark the site, and come back to it later.

Perhaps that is part of the problem. Bookmarks are abused as this playground for where you want to mark something to come back to later. Bookmarks are not the place for that.

This has me wondering then, beyond the bookmarks toolbar, which would hold a small handful of bookmarks, what good are they really for? I have 15 or so sites I go to daily, a handful of RSS feeds I check into… that is about all I need.

To solve the “I am too busy now” problem, where bookmarks are a hit and run procedure, I had gotten in the habit of dragging the url to a folder in my dock. I can go back and look at those later, at leisure. If it is compelling, I may bookmark the site, but only so I can again, press command-L and type the first few letters of the site.

I actually no longer do the drag and drop of the url, but instead, I wrote a small script that I control via a keyboard shortcut. This will take the current url, and write it to a “title-of-site.url” file. The data in that file is in a open format, that can be read by any browser, on any platform. It would have been much easier to write this script to just save the Safari .webloc file, but those can not be sent to others unless they use Safari, and those also can break when moving them across networks. The .url file is plain text, guaranteed to work now and in the future.

I have those all saving to a folder that is connected to DropBox, which will sync them to every computer I access, including my phone.

Long long story short, I agree with you, bookmarking is weak in Safari, but it is also weak in FireFox, and to add insult to insult, it is more visually confusing to me in FireFox. FireFox went with an entirely new graphical user interface to the add a bookmark feature. This is fine, but if one is going to change a long standing user interface methodology, it generally has to be executed perfectly. This is far from perfect in my opinion.

I personally think the entire bookmark paradigm is a failure. No more than the bookmarks toolbar is really needed. Outside of that, I would look to something like the script I have created, or, a bookmarking service. Delicious, Xmarks, Stumbleupon and a few others are all pretty good.

Judging by the amount of comments here, it may be time for me to put the development hours in my spin on a solution to this. I have been wanting to build out my own web based bookmarking system for several years now. It has a significant twist on it compared to the other services out there, with speed and ease of use being the priority. Maybe I will get around to outlining that and putting in the time to bring it to light.

Thanks for your comments.

@Kevin,
What version of Mac OS X are you running? Also, what is your hardware, is this a laptop, desktop, mac mini etc? I wonder if perhaps this has something to do with the keyboard preference pane, or some other similar setting.

What is troubling, is that the new test account inherited this problem. There are very few preferences that are above the account level, which is why a new account is such a good way to test things out.

Would you mind going to the Apple Menu, and down to “About this Mac”, click “More Info” in the resulting window, which will open Apple System profiler. Select File -> Save As and change the format to Plain Text. Open the file in Text Edit, find and replace your username with something else, such as “me”, and delete any other private data you may feel you do not want out there.

Copy the whole lot of text, and paste it into the form at this Pastie. This should allow me to get answers to any questions I would have about your setup.

The only thing I would try right off the bat, is to make note of any 3rd party browser tools you may have installed at any point in time, or even non browser ones. Anything that modifies men behavior, open and save dialog box behavior, could all be related.

Finally, one quick test, open the icon of your hard drive on your desktop, open the first folder in that hard drive called “Library” and look for the “Internet PLug-Ins” folder. Go ahead and move everything out of there and then reboot.
See if your problem goes away.

If it does or does not, at least we know what it is related to. You can move back in the files after that test, and report back your findings. Hopefully we can figure this out.

@Scott

Actually I agree with a lot of your points. I also use xmarks and think it’s awesome (also tinkered around with just relying on googleboomarks but decided back on xmarks – formerly foxmarks.)

I definitely agree that people bookmark too much and with the power of google you can often find things just as fast. However, I still like to bookmark more things than the average user.

In my industry, software development, I have to have examples using a lot of different technologies (java stuff, ruby, js frameworks, flex, bla bla.) Often times I have to spend a LOT of time googling for something that doesn’t just pop up as a first hit. Once I find that web post I definitely bookmark because I’ll often need it again or will want to share it with members of my team as they’ll often run into the same issue. I obviously need an organized structure of where to find things and have it place in the right technology folder. Actually I really liked tags better and was using them die hard for a long time since it made intuitive sense since many times an article would fall under multiple categories and with a folder structure you’d have to bookmark it more than once. (As an example maybe you work on cars and trucks and a great article on fixing toyota cars and trucks – do you bookmark it under the ‘car’ or ‘truck’ folder – probably both.)

I’m not saying also that I couldn’t get around the safari bookmark issue – it’s not ‘that’ big of a deal but to me it’s more of a principle thing since I KNOW over at Apple they have to be knowing it’s sort of lame and yet refuse to fix it.

OT:
EVEN WORSE though, much worse imo, is the fact that apple refuses to have MAXIMIZE really maximize on Safari (and in a few other apps.) I have to use a javascript bookmarklet to do a full maximize. Granted safari will remember the last size you left it so you can drag it to what you want…but if sometimes I want it smaller but then later want to leverage the full browser size when viewing a site? – don’t try maxmize – you either drag it large yourself or use a bookmarklet. That is just soooooo dumb that it amazes me. I swear it’s apple being stubborn just like they were with refusing to give in to having a right click on a mouse:) I love OSX better than any other OS I’ve used since it gives me the best of everything, but man come on Apple.

Mac OS X Help bginnner readers, you can probably safely ignore this rather long post, I do not think there is a lot for you to gain from it. We are working on setting up forums so that the comments can stop being used as my own personal little blog/sopabox

@Rick,

Actually I agree with a lot of your points. I also use xmarks and think it’s awesome (also tinkered around with just relying on googleboomarks but decided back on xmarks – formerly foxmarks.)

Xmarks is really nice software. I have been pestering them to fix the issue it has with always asking me to unlock my keychain every time it syncs, which is a hassle. Most people never run into this as they allow their keychain to share the same login and password as their user account, however, for security, I do not run my system that way. It is far too simple for someone to use a boot disk to reset my login password, and at the same time, reset my keychain password, which gives them access to all my stored logins and passwords.

I plan on adding a tutorial that covers this in the near future, however, it is a little advanced in concept, and will make the number of times you are authenticating your computer increase by enough to be annoying.

Could not agree with you more that google bookmarks and any of the online bookmarking solutions fall short. They either make it too painful to bookmark, saving you no time, or are too hard to learn to use, which means there is too much resistance for me to consider it something as a day to day use application.

Really too bad that Apple insists on charging for Mobile Me. Most of their sync features are darn near mandatory for anyone using more than one computer, but sync services and their API’s while somewhat open, are not open enough that developers can come out and compete with Mobile Me and have feature parity.

Someday perhaps. In all reality, I should be able to build out my own Mobile Me clone service on Mac OS X Server. While it is close to allowing me to do so, it is not 100% there yet.

I definitely agree that people bookmark too much and with the power of google you can often find things just as fast. However, I still like to bookmark more things than the average user.

Agreed as well. You present some compelling arguments below. But at the same time, you are also a developer of some form, and I think need to take that into account. Your needs are well above that of the beginner user. If you look at Apple’s bookmark implementation as a beginner user would be using it, I think it makes a lot of sense. It is easy to use, does not offer too many options which would confuse the new user, and does enough to perform it’s core task, which is to mark a space on the internet so you can get back to it at a later time.

In my industry, software development, I have to have examples using a lot of different technologies (java stuff, ruby, js frameworks, flex, bla bla.)

Ok, so you are in the same boat as me. I share the same industry as you, as a freelance developer. I probably have many of the same bookmarks that you have. One of the best things I did for myself was to set up my own internal wiki on my home network. I put almost everything in there. It is a little more work, and a little more time to get the data into it, but the long term benefits are paying off nicely.

I no longer have random code snippets laying around all over the place, and I am no longer trying to mush bookmarks to do something they are not entirely intended to do. It is like adding tags to bookmarks, adding that meta data can be useful, but it too will fall short, where you need a bookmark a tag, and perhaps some form of comment or note.

Now if notes were to be added to bookmarks, I would call that meta data overload, which is where my wiki comes into play so nicely.

Often times I have to spend a LOT of time googling for something that doesn’t just pop up as a first hit. Once I find that web post I definitely bookmark because I’ll often need it again or will want to share it with members of my team as they’ll often run into the same issue. I obviously need an organized structure of where to find things and have it place in the right technology folder.

God do I ever know; that lonely mailing list post that takes you hours to finally find, because the search terms you are using are so vague and apply to so many different techniques, that it is near impossible to figure out where to even get an answer.

My solution goes back somewhat to the core of the tutorial post. If you think about it, you could spend some time setting up a directory structure in your bookmarks in advance. I may have “Programming/Development” and in that directory, I will have a single directory that contains “Docs”, “Resources”, “Mailing Lists”, “Misc”. Those are fake examples, but you get the idea. That directory is called “Template”. I then copy that directory, and will rename it “php”, then copy the template again, and rename it “JavaScript”, or “Jquery”, or “Ruby”, “Python”, “Regex”, you get the idea.

Now I have structure, and I may have to go in and update it from time to time, but for the most part, once I set it up, I am good to go. The times I need to make a new folder are few, and I can easily do so with a few keyboard commands. You could look at something like Keyboard Maestro to give you the ability to add folders on the fly.

Finally, I have a “Misc” directory, which almost everything will get tossed into at some point in time, if I can not find a more narrow place to put it. I want to bookmark, and move on about my work. The last thing I want to do is change my train of thought. I need to keep on working, and not get out of the frame of mind I am in at that time. So command-D and I am done, come back and deal with it later.

If I could add a new folder, by the time I did, and figured out where it was to go, and wrestled with the “car” and “truck” scenario you describe below, I have already lost too much of my current train of thought. I just reserve 15 minutes a day every day to deal with whatever management of files, folders, notes snippets, wiki entries etc. For me, not breaking my current thought process is critical.

Actually I really liked tags better and was using them die hard for a long time since it made intuitive sense since many times an article would fall under multiple categories and with a folder structure you’d have to bookmark it more than once. (As an example maybe you work on cars and trucks and a great article on fixing toyota cars and trucks – do you bookmark it under the ‘car’ or ‘truck’ folder – probably both.)

Hard to say, but I certainly see your point and sympathize with you. This is why I like using a local wiki for these things. I am not forced into any directory structure at all, it is much more free form. Right now, you are in a dilemma because an age old file/folder paradigm has not been wholly updated. Tags have been shoehorned in to try to make it work better, social bookmarking services have popped up, and on and on.

An entirely new system needs to be developed. I have no idea what it is though. I do know the problem, so hopefully if I ever do develop my own little social bookmarking system, it will come to me as an elegant solution to this problem.

I’m not saying also that I couldn’t get around the safari bookmark issue – it’s not ‘that’ big of a deal but to me it’s more of a principle thing since I KNOW over at Apple they have to be knowing it’s sort of lame and yet refuse to fix it.

This is where I disagree with you. I think there certainly are people who think it is lame and sucks, people within Apple. But when they sit around and discuss how things are going to work, I suspect they are trying to do so from the perspective of who it will benefit most. Look how long it took copy and paste to make it to the iPhone. Apple would rather not have a feature, then implement a half baked one.

I have many a debate with friends about the iPhone copy and paste issue; they all had their simple methods for solving it. Comparing copy and paste on every other mobile out there, and it is very clear, Apple made the right choice, nothing comes close to the ease of use, perfect functionality, and self teaching ability of copy and paste on theie mobile platform.

I look at the bookmarks as the same thing. If they can not solve it in a way that is groundbreaking, revolutionary, they are going to lean on the side of minimal and simplistic, since that is after all, where 99% of most computer users are.

As a developer, I too find I get tunnel vision and need to just step back and look at things from an end users perspective. What is logical and simple to me, is never logical and simple to someone who does not sit in front of a computer 12 hours a day. Just watching people struggle over the concept of where to single click versus double click should be enough to make one realize, adding folders within the process of adding a bookmark may just add more confusion to something that is just barely understood by the new computer user.

OT: EVEN WORSE though, much worse imo, is the fact that apple refuses to have MAXIMIZE really maximize on Safari (and in a few other apps.) I have to use a javascript bookmarklet to do a full maximize. Granted safari will remember the last size you left it so you can drag it to what you want…but if sometimes I want it smaller but then later want to leverage the full browser size when viewing a site? – don’t try maximize – you either drag it large yourself or use a bookmarklet. That is just soooooo dumb that it amazes me. I swear it’s apple being stubborn just like they were with refusing to give in to having a right click on a mouse:) I love OSX better than any other OS I’ve used since it gives me the best of everything, but man come on Apple.

My girlfriend and I joke around with a term that we have for full screen mode. I probably should not say it here. Screens are huge these days, a browser in my humble opinion has no business being full screen. It breaks the entire way sites are designed. I do not need to see 500px of background on the left and right. Very few apps benefit from full screen from my perspective.

Maximize, minimize, etc is certainly inconsistent and broken, we will agree there. I just want it to be consistent, so I can learn how it works. It is all over the board. I tend to just not use those three little round buttons to the left of every window. Command-W will close for me, command-M will shove it to the dock, but I rarely use that, and use command-H to hide.

As for the size of a window, I tend to set it where I want it, and it rarely changes size, so I never bash my head into the maximize button. I have always had a strong aversion to full screen apps. I see it as a problem, as more and more developers hit the Mac platform coming from the PC, and they design their app for full screen size as the target. If there are any split panes and you resize, things get messy really quickly. Screens will keep getting larger, resolutions are going to keep getting higher. Maybe one day we will have resolution independence on all UI elements, until then, seeing Apple Mail in full screen just looks off to me, what did I buy that 24 inches for if I am only going to spread the app out across the entire screen?

Nice chatting with you. I agree with most all your points. One thing I try to stress to myself, is that I am a developer, and what makes sense to me, and what seems logical, almost never is. I have been fortunate enough to create things that had hundreds of thousands of registered users. A ton of feedback would come in at the smallest of UI changes. I was always surprised, and near almost always wrong in most of my assumptions. I try to remember that when I think something is goofy about how the Mac works. The good news is, there is also almost always a 3rd party plug-in, utility, finder replacement, browser replacement etc, that will fir the needs of those more advanced users, or those who are thinking different.

* This is a long reply, I did not re-read or spell check it, sorry about that. Most readers of our site, feel free to ignore this post.

Scott,

I attached the system info to the Pastie on 1/18 at 10:00AM ET. Trying to paste the whole file repeatedly crashed Safari, so I only included the beginning through Software.

Tried the Internet Plug-in removal solution to no avail.

Can’t think of any 3rd party SW. Also, Firefox works correctly.

WTF???

Kevin

@Scott. I moved the discussion to a crappy generic blog I started a while ago that I thought I’d use more:) I don’t want to hijack this bookmark related thread any more, but feel free to add any comments.

http://reumann.blogspot.com/2010/01/organization-and-some-minor-general-mac.html

@Kevin,
The idea with Pastie is you share the resulting url with us, so we can see what you pasted in. However, if Safari is crashing when you paste data into a form field, it sounds like you have some deeper issues with Safari.

What mouse are you using? Did it come with it’s own mouse control software? If not, what are you using to control the speed and click operations of your mouse?

If this is not driver related, either mouse, printer, or some other deeper rooted type of installed software, I am at a loss. It would bother me enough to do a clean install, and start over just to make it go away.

Scott, thanks for your help. None of this seems to work. This started happening after a fresh install by an authorized Mac agency. Going to take it back to them. Kevin

@Kevin, sounds like a good move. Look in your home folder, into the Library folder, and into the Preerences folder. See if you see files in there that have names that remind you of applications that are no longer installed.

If you do, then you have proof positive that the “fresh install” you paid for, was in fact an “upgrade and install”, and you may want to bring that up with them.

For example, if you see “org.perian.Perian.plist” but do not currently have Perian installed, then you know that this was not a clean install, and a bit of a messy repair.

I do not know too many honest Mac Shops, when you find one, stick with them, they are rare, and worth the 75 to 100 an hour they charge, and they are that much faster, and always save you a second trip.

Not saying they are all bad, far form the truth, but finding the good ones that are not too busy is always a challenge.

I have been considering a paid for remote control based Mac repair service through this website. What would your thoughts be on that? I could work at anyones machine that has iChat installed. The only trouble comes with when they need a clean re-install, and it is just just software mess related.

Any suggestions on what this should be billed out as? Right now I do a lot of support in these comments, perhaps I should just move to using forums, and work on promoting those, and getting the site back up to regular posts. I suspect that, with some advertising, could be just enough to keep the site from costing me money.

Scott,
I will tell you what I think, but my caveat is that I am probably the wrong person to ask. Personally, I would pay for a remote repair service, especially if it came with phone support. While I used this forum – and appreciate it – my issue was too complex to resolve and we had to do a lot of back-and-forth that would only have taken a few minutes. I am actually going to ask if my Mac vendor can remotely fix mine rather than bringing it in. I see ads for Geek Squad remote support. I would look at their pricing and come in under that (a fact that I would advertise). Not sure if this is what you meant, but I would use the forum as a way to drive business. For instance, in this case, if I did not have a warranty call with my vendor, I would pay you to fix my issue. Your posts could be enough to help people with simple “how to?” stuff, but when it comes to repair, you should not feel at all bad about saying “Would you be interested in a consulting arrangement for me to resolve this issue?” Like I said at the top, I am probably the wrong guy, but that is my two cents. Good luck. Kevin

@Kevin,
Thanks for the comments. The idea for this site was to keep it very simple, simple down to the first time user who barely knows how to even move around, let alone the difference between a home preferences directory or a System level one.

I can tell you one thing, stay as far away as you can from Geek Squad, whether it be in store, or remote. Just look at their prices for basic repair, and also their “optimized” machines.

There is a lot of data on some of their nefarious acts:
http://consumerist.com/2010/01/consumerist-investigation-best-buy-optimization-is-a-big-stupid-annoying-waste-of-money.html

I take it you have iChat on your machine? Are you routed or plugged directly? I can use ARD to connect to any machine without the trouble of port forwarding or DMZ if they are plugged in direct. Otherwise, iChat acts as a nice proxy service to do the port translation.

If you are around this weekend, maybe I can take a poke at your machine. I would not charge, I am genuinely curious as to what is going on. Drop me an email to hexley@osxhelp.com if you want to start a dialog outside of these comments.

how do I put a bookmark folder in the bookmark bar. I’m a newbie an would love any suggestions.

@Jan,
Just click on Bookmarks menu and select “Show All Bookmarks”. Take the folder you want to have in the Bookmarks bar, and drag and drop it to the menu on the left labeled “BookMarks Bar”.

Scott – excellent site & smart answers. Here’s a question: I like Safari and its performance characteristics but when it comes to the bookmarks bar I find insufficient contrast between the black bookmark titles and the too-dark gray background. Ironically, when another app window or Finder is active, the whole Safari frame brightens dramatically and the bookmarks are clearly legible. So finally to the question: is there a way to lighten or brighten Safari’s window frame, thus increasing the contrast ratio, when it is the active app? Thanks.

@Bruce,
I too share your exact sentiments. I also find that the backgrounding of a window makes it easier on the eyes. Though it is a long tradition of the Mac to make background windows lighter in color, I would not expect that to change any time soon.

I also notice that as I get older, and my eyes are no longer in such great shape, the black I see is no longer as pure black as it used to be.

This is weird, but if you make a fist where you have a small hole to look through your hand, and view the black on grey contrast, looking through your hand as if it were a telescope, staring right at the edge where it is blurry, all of a sudden, the contrast ratio looks fine, and the blacks darken up.

There is a name for this effect, and it is the principle on which pinhole glasses work. I forget the name.

This tells me, it is not so much the fault of the computer, as it is my eyesight. Black is as dark as it is going to get. You can try names with all caps in them, or putting in blank bookmarks of items to add more space between them, which helps some.

Until Apple moves the OS to “resolution independence”, there is not much we can do. Resolution independence will allow you to enlarge the fonts in all applications without affecting the layout.

I share your problems and sentiments, and have not found a solid solution in Safari. FireFox has themes that you can chose from that may help, but I like Safari enough to live with it..

If you are on a laptop, the angle at which you have the display at plays a hug role in this, so try adjust that forward and backward until you hit the sweet spot.

Sorry I could not be of more help. For what it is worth, you can dig into the images that make Safari up, and alter them, but it is not for the beginner user, and every Safari update will break your hard work.

Thanks for the lengthy response, Scott. I guess when the contrast issue with the Safari bookmark bar gets to me, I’ll just switch to Firefox or Camino, both of which place vivid favicons (and file folders for grouped bookmarks) on their bookmark bars. I rarely disagree with Apple’s design sense, but this one baffles me – and my aging eyes.

PS – I’m on a 2008 iMac, and find that tilting the screen forward (more vertical) does help. So thanks again for that.

My 3 buttons(close, minimize etc..) are grayed out but still work and my icons for my bookmarks are too and they don’t connect me. Here’s an example. file://localhost/Volumes/HD-PFU2/Favorites/St.%20Louis%20Cardinals%20%20The%20Official%20Site.url. How do I get them to work again

@John
You can not send a link to someone else that comes from your computer which starts with file://. That means that the protocol for locating the resource is only on your computer. If you think about it, you would not want that to be a possibility, as it would lead to a security problem. Security aside, the data on your computer is generally not publicly accessible.

I imagine you are seeing a grey set of buttons, which are still functional; so in Mac parlance, they are not grayed out, but just a color you are not used to or dislike.

Are these the grey version of the “minimize”, “maximize”, and “close” buttons that you see?

If that is the case, I would bet you want those three buttons to be in color.

The color of the buttons is controlled by a system preference in the System Preferences. While I personally like the grey better, to change it, go to the Apple Menu in the upper left corner of your screen, and select “System Preferences…”. Once that window opens, choose “Appearance”. Change it from “Graphite” to “Blue”.

The setting to change your Mac OS X System Appearance colors should look something like the picture in the link above.

I hope that helps, if not, please feel free to come back and we will see what we can do to help you out.

Thanks so much for your reply. Next problem is that all of my bookmarks have the icon grayed out(actually it’s a white page icon). It also lists the address as……. file://localhost/Volumes/HD-PFU2/Favorites/All%20Things%20Science.url (thats a sample one)
I know that can’t be right as none of these work as links anymore. How do I turn my hundreds of bookmarks back into usable links. Thanks in advance. John

@John
Interesting problem. A few questions:
Do new bookmarks also create broken bookmarks?

Have you installed any third party utilities or bookmark managers that you are aware of?

At what point in time did you realize your bookmarks broke? Do you remember what it was you were doing, or perhaps you did a restore, update to an newer operating system, or something along those lines?

I am afraid that your bookmarks are broken. The fact they end in .url, tells me a little, in that OS X does not make bookmarks that end in .url. They end in .webloc usually. .url is more a Windows format, or a more universal and open/generic bookmark format. Seeing the word “Favorites” in the url string, sort of leads me to believe these were imported from a windows machine, and done so incorrectly.

If you could drag one of the .url bookmarks to your desktop, and open it in a text editor, you may find that the real url is inside the file. You could then copy the url, paste it into Safari, and make a new bookmark from that. Depending on how many you have, that may be a lot of work. I would probably try to find a way to write a script to do it.

But first, lets get to the root of the problem. How did those bookmarks get there, and do new bookmarks exhibit the same problem?

I accidently dragged a folder off my bookmark bar is there anyway to get it back?

@Donald,
If you have backups, and you can get the Bookmarks.plist file from your Library folder, within which is a folder named Safari, then yes, you can get the folder of bookmarks back. Without backups, then no, it is not possible to recover them.

This article was very helpful and effective. thank you!

Hello Scott~
I have the same problem with Kevin .
I’ve seen all comment between you and Kevin.
Seen still no help finally.
Have you solved this?
I’ve google lots of article but with no help.
Could you help me pleace? X’k

@X’k, Sorry, I have not been able to replicate this problem, or find a solution. The only thing I can offer is if you have iChat, and a spare minute, I could remotely login and take a look at your machine so you can show me what is happening.

Are you 100% certain you have not installed any 3rd party plug-ins to Safari?

Dear Scott
I’ve install xMarks for Safari.
Will it effect safari’s work?
I have an iChat ID and surely you can take a look
if you would like to give me a help~
But my OS/X is chinese version ,I’m afraid that you may read hardly .
By the way I’m come from Taiwan.
Sorry of my poor english…..X’k

@X’k

I too used to run Xmarks, though I stopped for a few reasons, mostly because it was much newer when I was using it, and I needed something to work, and did not have time to be a tester.

I do want to stress, it is fine software, this was an issue with timing on my part, and nothing to do with Xmarks itself.

For me, it was the first time I used Xmarks. I run my system a bit different with regard to security, and how I setup and configure my keychain, something called ssh key’s, and how that crypto system does not share the same passwords as those that I use to loin to my computer.

As a result of this, Xmarks would ask me to enter in my login and password to their system about once every hour or so. Until I see that bug resolved, It was costing me more in time than it was saving.

Xmarks also can not sync bookmarks that are in your bookmark sidebar within the bookmark viewer where you see your collections, history, RSS feeds, Bonjour, Address Book, and Bookmarks Menu. Though this is a limitation of Safari’s bookmark format from what I understand.

With that, and the “ghost” folders it made, I decided to let the app sit a while, and come back to it when it was more mature.

Great bunch of developers though. Smart, and they certainly have a sense of humor to put up with my rather ridiculous bug reports I was sending in. I hive them a 5 star rating for certain, as all software is a work in progress.

As an aside, you may want to take a look at fruxx, which syncs, bookmarks, Address Book, iCal, and eventually, application preferences. Also a great group of developers. Smart too, in how they will not support iPhone until Apple publishes the wireless sync frameworks rather than hacking in their own to be denied entry to the app store, at the expense of much development time.

fruxx is much like having an OS X Server setup in your home, without the need for a middle man server playing the role of an expensive and glorified syncing gateway.

On to your questions, which were darn near poetry in the way you wrote them, well done!

I’ve install Xmarks for Safari.
Will it effect safari’s work?

I do not believe that there should be any conflict.

I have an iChat ID and surely you can take a look
if you would like to give me a help~
But my OS/X is chinese version ,I’m afraid that you may read hardly .
By the way I’m come from Taiwan.

Hmmmz, I suspect with your time zone difference, we will have a hard time ever meeting up. I do believe that the language of your OS should not be a problem, I could quickly change it to English to do my testing, and then when done, put it back.

That may be a valuable test to perform. Since you and one other user have this same issue, and the other user made a new test account only to have the problem follow him into the new account, we know it is not local preferences.

With that, perhaps it has something to do with localization. Can you toggle the OS to US English language, restart, and see if Safari behaves for you then?

Thanks.

Dear Scott

I really appreciate you spend time to help me.
But I don’t understand some sentences mean.:(
…So when are you available to examine my mac ?:)
My free time is GMT 11:00~16:00 on Mon. to Fri.
and all free on holidays.
By the way, my iChat ID is superlimitxk@gmail.com
Could we appoint some day?
Sorry of my bad english again……X’k

@X’k, did you try my last suggestion of changing to English in the OS? I want to make sure this is not a problem with localization, where it is only an issue on non English settings.

OK I’ll try tonight.
I’ll also let you know tomorrow
Thx…..X’k

There are two sites (HSN and Ustream) I could access last week, but now when I select them off my bookmark bar all I get is the ‘circle of death’ and it spins forever until I quit that window and select ‘new window.’ What changed? and it seems I have a few other sites I try to return to that do the same?

Hi Karen,
It appears that both of those sites use Flash. I certainly know that Ustream makes heavy use of Flash.

I would bet that you updated Safari to version 5. With that, I found I had to download the newest version of Flash, or I was not able to play any flash files at all.

While I was not getting a spinning wheel like you are, the behavior was erratic. If you go to Adobe you can download Flash and install it which hopefully solves this for you.

Success!!! Your diagnosis was spot on. I should have gone searching for a solution days before. Thank you so much.

Dear Scott
Thanks for solution~
I have tried your method last night.
But it’s not working finally.
So I should try other method or…? X’k

I read every word of this useful blog and was very surprised that nobody has my two greatest issues with SAFRI bookmarks included.

One, if you use and carefully manage many bookmarks using folders like me, when you select DADD BOOKMARK, the pulldown list appears allowing you to place it in any folder you wish. In 10.4 this list presented only the root folders but in 10.5 they are expanded. It’s a nightmare so I drop everything in one folder now and manually place it later.

Second issue is the auto popup feature that appears when you are in the BOOKMARK list mode. To relocate a bookmark, the folders auto open and the response time if about .2 seconds. Avoiding opening a dozen folders when dragging down the list is impossible and then you cannot find the one you are looking for.

I am a researcher and have about 5000 bookmarks carefully organized.. I highly recommend using FOLDERS in the BOOKMARK bar to everyone and pray that someone here has a workaround for my two problems…

Thanks, John

Hi @John
I feel your pain. For your issue number one, how I have dealt with it in 10.6, which will work in any version as far as I know, is to press command-D to bring up the add a bookmark dropdown sheet.

Next, I usually press the right arrow key, and chop off the trailing bits of the title, or otherwise, modify or re-key the title of the bookmark to something more manageable than then often very long titles of some websites.

I then hit the tab key, which will bring focus to the select menu. I then type the first few letters, usually 2-3, of the folder I want to store the bookmark in. This will also select dub folders of any depth no matter how deeply nested they are.

Usually, I am where I need to be at that point. If not, I use the arrow keys to navigate around, and get to the correct folder.

From there, it is two return keys away to being done; one for getting out of the select menu, and one to hit the “Add” button. It takes a little practice to type your way into a bookmark folder, but it is very doable once you get the hang of it.

Your second issue, I too find the rate at which the folders expand open to be a little fast. There are also issues with the folders being below screen or in an area that is not visible. It is simply a challenge to manage.

I have not been able to locate any preference or setting within Safari that will allow me to alter that setting. The only thing I have been able to do, is to use the left area of the bookmarks window, where you see your “Collections” items such as History, Bookmarks Bar, Bookmarks Menu, Address Book, etc, as a “slop” area. This sidebar can accept bookmarks and folders. I will usually drag whatever item it is that I want to work on over to the left, where it will sit for a short time. I then drill down into the folders where I want the bookmark to end up, and drag and drop it from the left, to the right.

The only word of caution, though it applies to all bookmarks in general, is be careful of the delete key. You can delete an entire folder and all the sub folders of bookmarks with no more than the delete key. It does not take a command-delete like most all other delete operations. It is very easy to accidentally delete something, and undo does not bring it back.

The only other suggestion I could offer, would be to choose any other browser you desire, and use that to manage your bookmarks. You will then have to find a bookmark syncing application to bring those changes from the secondary browser, into Safari.

With Safari 5′s new ability to allow developers to build extensions, I am hopeful that someone will make an extension that gives some better bookmark management abilities. Unfortunately, I have looked fairly deep into the Safari Extension API, and even made a few test extensions myself. It does not look like extensions will have the ability to modify the bookmark area.

Scott, thanks for the attention and time.

I am not getting the same effect you describe when I hit the tab button. I key in and nothing occurs.

You would have to see my book marks to understand. Highly manually managed like a library. The one dreaded occasion that I used a bookmark manager/synchronizer I learned that these by default place everything in alphabetically order in order to synchronize. I don’t do alphabetical order but thematic order. it was a nightmare and took me a month to get things straight again.. What I do now is periodically save the e-mails as an HTML archive. These will reload in the order that I created them…

The new READER in Safari 5 is great!

@John, there are many bookmark synchronizing options out there these days. I know for certain that at least one of them does it’s best to maintain the exact order of your bookmarks. You may want to give them a look again.

In order to be able to tab through user interface elements, you will need to enable Full Keyboard Access in your Keyboard System Preferences.

Also, when trying out any bookmark syncing service, or bookmark manager, simply backup your bookmarks.html file. If anything goes wrong, you can always restore that file.

HI! Somehow my bookmarks editor is dispaying the bookmarks on a black screen with an image of one website, with URL listed below. I can’t find how to get back to the regular list of bookmarks!

Can you help me???? Thanks so much!

Hi @Vicky, I am pretty sure that your issues of only seeing the bookmarks as a black screen with a single url can be resolved. I previously answered a similar or identical question on another post. Can you give that a try?

Thanks for all the info.
My biggest need is to increase the font size of the text in the bookmarks bar. So far, I understand that’s still not possible(?); I’m using OS10.5.8, Safari 4.0.5
I’m not a developer; is this an easy fix and/or as anyone tackled this issue?

@Rich, what you are looking for is called resolution independence. And even with that, it will take the re-doing of all applications to have specific elements made scalable.

Apple has started putting out guidelines for developers on resolution independence. However, I would not expect it until 10.7, but more than likely, 10.8.

One thing you can do, is that every item in your bookmarks bar is automatically assigned a keyboard command. So the first item is command-1, second is command-2 and so on up to command-9. Of course, these can’t be folders, or if they are, you will have to set the “auto click” checkbox in the bookmark manager. This will open all items in the folder at once, by keyboard command as well.

So if you can’t read the text, if you can remember the items, you can get to them via the keyboard.

Sorry there are no better answers.

Scott,

Thanks for the additional info – appreciate your help!

I accidentally deleted the News and Popular bars from the bookmark bar that contained things i wanted to keep. Is there any way of getting them back? It would be a big help.

@Ruby, in order to restore the default bookmarks, you can go to your home folder, open the Library folder, within there, open the Safari folder, and within there, move the “Bookmarks.plist” file elsewhere.

Specifically, you will be looking for /Users/your-useranme/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist

Make sure that Safari is quit before moving the file. The next time you open Safari, a new “Bookmarks.plist” file will be made, and Safari will have the default set of bookmarks it did on the first day you used it.

However, any bookmarks that you created on your own, will now be lost, and held within the “Bookmarks.plist” that you moved out of the way.

If you want to get your old bookmarks back, I would perform a two step process.

Now that you are using Safari and it has your News and Popular bookmarks back, open your Bookmark sidebar, and drag and drop the bookmarks to a folder on your desktop. You should now have a folder that contains .webloc files of each of the links that were originally in Safari.

Quit Safari, put back the original “Bookmarks.plist” file that you moved out of the way. You will either replace the one currently there, or you will delete that file and move your backup in place.

Next, launch Safari, which will bring you back to your old bookmark set that is missing the news and popular items you want. Create bookmark bar folders to represent those, and drag and drop in the .webloc files that we saved out to your desktop. Alternatively, you could open the .webloc files and make new bookmarks, saving them where you want to mimic the Apple original setup.

It’s a bit of a process, but is the only way I know to merge your current bookmark set with the default set that came with Safari. Make sure to backup “Bookmarks.plist” somewhere safe, as this can get a bit confusing. If things do go wrong, you run the risk of losing all your bookmarks. As long as you have a backup of “Bookmarks.plist” you will be safe.

Thanks! I kept on trying to put a bookmark on a bookmark!!

My kids were on my computer and deleted a folder from my bookmarks menu that i desperately need, is there anyway to recover it!

@Michael, are you running any backups of any form, perhaps Time Machine? If you are, then yes, there are many ways you can get that data back. If not, then no, unfortunately, there is no way to restore something that has been deleted from within an app such as a browser.

Guys i don’t know what is going on here but everytime i log in and look things up i see that my favorites sometimes disappear and then come back maybe a couple of days later. I can i prevent this and why do i lost stuff in favorites. I never delate anything on bookmark. Any hints would help thanks

How do I drop items from my bookmarks?

Is there a way to recover accidentally deleted bookmark folders? I deleted one that I really need to recover. Thanks

@Nick, unless you have a backup of your files, I am not aware of any way to restore bookmarks.

I had accidently slip and end up having my finger on the button of my mouse and draged my popular from the bookmark bar and sent it to the X for closing an page and it made a exploding noise and I lost my whole popular stuff and itself what to do to get that stuff back and it back.

@Steve, once you delete a bookmark, be it in the toolbar, or in your bookmarks list, it is gone. You could et it back from a backup. In your case, you deleted “popular” which is a standard set that Apple includes with Safari. If you google a bit, I am sure you can find a list of what they were and recreate them. You could also create a new account, log into that account, and the popular list will be there, which you could then transfer to your primary account.

I cannot find the bookmarks editor. I can click on the bookmark bar on the left but no editor with the names on the right comes up, just the cover flow. I get the list of bookmarks, but no editor as shown here, on the right. This is really frustrating. How do I get to it, please.

what a wonderful advice site! I hope I manage to explain my problem: it annoys me so much that when I add a bookmark and want to choose a destination, safari show a “expanded” list of ALL my folders+subfolders – this is an endless list which I always need to scroll up or down forever to find the right folder. I have seen a few screenshots of other users where it looks different: Is there a way to “collapse” this tree = only see the “major”/first row of folders, and then choose the destinations folder step-by-step?
thanks SO much for help, I will do my best to clarify this a bit more…

How can I add a new folder when I use the keyboard shortcut Command D to bookmark? It’s a bit of bother to have to leave a page to go up to the menu and make a folder. Lots of times I find a site I’d like to bookmark into a new folder as I bookmark.
Other browsers give you the ability to make a folder as you hit the keyboard command – can you do this in Safari?

how do you add a folder in a bookmark you made?

thanks so much for this. I want to know how to restore the “popular” folder in book mark which i mistakingly deleted. i had some important links in this folder. Thanks

How to delete a bookmark.

can I get back a folder and all the bookmarks in it that I accidentally pulled off the bookmarks bar?

@Dave, generally no, once you delete a bookmark, folder, bookmarklet, or bookmarklet with many items in it, they are done. If you have backups, and you restore the file at ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist that is one way to get them back.

If much has changed since your last backup, I would save a copy of the current ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist file, restore the old one, drag the target restore folder you want to your desktop temporarily, and then return back to your pre-backup ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist file. Then, import the temporary backup you made on your Desktop.

This should get you back to where you were before this happened, keeping things the same as they are right now, with the addition of the old files bookmarks being returned,

I depend on the bookmarks bar between firefox and chrome. Apples browsers bookmark bar does not support logos of websites which are far better than words. My chrome browser has all my favorite websites with no title just their websites logo, when I want netflix I click its icon, when I want Hulu I click its icon, Facebook etc.etc. Safari does’ t do this; this is a major flaw to me. Its 95% of the reason I don’t use safari on my Macbook Pro. Safari renders better on a mac than chrome, but the bookmarks bar is a heavy part of my web browsing habits, I have probably 50 bookmarks in folders if they need names, and spread along the screen under the address bar if their website has a logo. It is compact, pretty and easy to use. This is accomplished in Chrome or Firefox by erasing the websites title from the book mark when you make it in chrome or firefox, erasing the title erases the book mark in safari! Boo

@Chris you are correct, that is one think Safar can’t do. I make my bookmark bar items one character. I also use dingbats and other special fonts for those characters if I’m feeling particularly creative.

However, to get them as Chrome has done can’t be done natively. I would be willing to bet there is a Safar extension that allows for the change in behavior. There’s thousands of them now that dons wide range of cosmetic alterations to Safari.

I have found that with font characters and single letters I can get quite a few bookmarks in my bookmarks bar and I memorize them pretty quick. The first 5 I don’t even worry about since those can be activated by the command -1-5 keyboard sequence.

Many of the rest I end up not going to as often as I thought so I get rid of them, or put more than one bookmark in the item to make a category I can open many at once.

Try searching for a Safari extension to modify Safari’s native behavior. Aside from that, you may have to resort to some of the trickery I have to get closer.

For some reason my favorite links that were on my favorite bar is now gone, even with my favorite bar showing

My a mistake, I have somehow removed the Bookmark “Top Sites” from the Bookmark list on top of the Safari screen. How can I get it back? There is no URL to Top Sites, så I can’t do what you wrote in the edit part. Can you help?
Thanks.

there is a row of tabs of websites showing under my bookmark bar. how did they get there and how to delete?.

@john, I am assuming you are referring to the bookmarks bar in safari. This is a thin bar about 100px tall that has links to other website locations — or behave like folders of sorts and contain multiple bookmarks.

As per the screenshot in the article, you can select the “Show BookMarks Bar” whicheaa
will toggle the visibility of this feature. It will give you a little more vertical browsing space on a smaller height laptop, but to little to gain much on anything but the smallest of MacBook Airs.

Once customized, I find it quite valuable, as each are attached to keyboard shortcuts. It I were to put osxhelp.com as the first item, a quick press of command -1 will get me there. The same for the second and third as well.

Though at the end of the day, it is totally up tobthecuser how valuable the Bookmarks Barcis. I find that it is indespensible.

I do belive this article as well as the multiple comments by users, should explain the issue rather well.

Good luck!

I need help deleting items I added to the bookmark bar. I did it once but can’t remember how and have several I don’t need.
Thanks

Hi there, great tutorial. I was wondering wether you could tell me how to add a second or third row to the bookmarks bar? I tried to find an add-on, but wasnt successfull so far. Thanks!
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