Thanks for the additional info – appreciate your help!

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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?