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Working with Bookmarks

Keeping track of those great sites you want to visit over and over again.

Working with Bookmarks

 

How do I manage bookmarks?

To organize, create, and delete bookmarks, choose Show Bookmark Manager in the Bookmarks menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcut ⌘B or the Bookmarks item on Camino’s toolbar to access the Bookmarks Manager.

In the Bookmarks Manager you can drag items around to rearrange them, use the buttons at the bottom of the manager to make new folders and bookmarks, sort bookmarks, and edit or delete bookmarks. Double-clicking on an item will load the bookmark, and using the context menu (ctrl-click on an item) or the Action menu (the “gear” button) provides easy access to other options related to opening or managing bookmarks.

How do I import bookmarks from another browser?

Select Import Bookmarks… from the File menu and in the Import Bookmarks dialog’s menu, choose the browser whose bookmarks you want to import. Although Camino can import bookmarks from Firefox, Netscape 4.x-7.x, Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Safari, OmniWeb, Opera, iCab 1.x-3.x, and Camino itself, the menu only lists browsers whose bookmarks files are located in each application’s normal profile location. If you have removed the rest of the other browser’s profile and have only the bookmarks file (or wish to import from Netscape 4.x or Camino itself), use the Select a file… option and choose the file on your disk. (If you want to import bookmarks from Firefox 3.0 or later, you will first need to us export your Firefox bookmarks to the standard HTML format; see our Migrating from Firefox documentation for more information.)

When the process is complete, the newly imported bookmarks will appear as a new collection in the left-hand pane of the Bookmarks Manager. To make the newly imported bookmarks appear in the Bookmarks menu or in the Bookmark Bar, simply drag the bookmarks or folders, individually or en masse, into the appropriate collection in the left-hand pane of the Bookmarks Manager and arrange them as you desire.

How do I export bookmarks?

Select Export Bookmarks… from the File menu. In the Save dialog, choose a location and name for the exported bookmarks and select either HTML or Safari from the Format: drop-down menu. Then click the Export button.

How do I create new bookmarks?

You can add a new bookmark to your collection of bookmarks in several ways:

  • Choose Bookmark Current Page… from the Bookmarks menu, or use the keyboard shortcut ⌘K. You can simply click OK to save the bookmark using the current web page’s title, or you can rename the bookmark. By default all new bookmarks are added to the bottom of the Bookmark Menu collection, but you can also put the bookmark in a sub-folder or another collection (for example, the Bookmark Bar collection) by choosing that folder or collection in the Create in: pop-up menu. After you have chosen a location, Camino will remember your selection for the next time you add a bookmark. If you want to add a bookmark quickly, in the default location and without renaming it, hold down ⇧ while selecting the menu item or using the keyboard shortcut.
  • With the Bookmarks Manager opened, you can add a bookmark for a page by dragging the globe or icon next to the page’s URL in location bar from another window and dropping it into any folder or collection in the Bookmarks Manager. For web pages displayed in tabs, you can also drag the globe or icon next to the page’s title in the tab “widget” and dropping it anywhere in the Bookmarks Manager; this does not require you to open the Bookmarks Manager in a separate window.

How do I create new bookmark folders?

You can add a new bookmark folder in several ways:

  • Choose Add Bookmark Folder… from the Bookmarks menu, or use the keyboard shortcut ⌘⇧N, and choose a location for the folder from the Create in: pop-up menu.
  • With the Bookmarks Manager opened, you can add a bookmark folder by clicking in the right-hand pane of the Manager to choose a location and then clicking on the Add button (the leftmost button in the group of three buttons at the bottom of the Bookmarks Manager) and choose the Add Folder… option.

What is a tab group?

See our Tabs documentation for information about tab groups.

How do I add items to the Bookmark Bar?

The Bookmark Bar is the area just under the main toolbar which can display bookmarks you want to access quickly or with one click. To add an item there, drag any link from a web page, the globe or icon from a tab, or the globe or icon from the location bar, and drop it on this toolbar.

To delete a bookmark from the Bookmark Bar, drag an item to the Trash can in the Dock.

To make more changes, open the Bookmarks Manager and edit the contents of the Bookmark Bar collection. You can also add a bookmark to the Bookmark Bar by choosing the Bookmark Bar as the destination in the Add Bookmarks sheet.

How do I change what is displayed in the Dock menu?

Ctrl-clicking on the Camino icon in the Dock displays a menu with several commonly used features, a list of all open Camino windows, and the contents of one of the folders or collections in your bookmarks. The initial source is the Top Ten List collection. To use a different folder for the Dock menu, ctrl-click on a folder or collection in the Bookmarks Manager and select Use As Dock Menu.

How do I reset the contents of the Top Ten List?

The Top Ten List is a “smart collection” that fills up automatically as you surf. It is composed of the ten most frequently visited sites in your bookmarks (Bookmark Menu, Bookmark Bar, and any new collections you have created, but not History or any of the other special collections). To remove an item:

  1. Ctrl-click the bookmark you want to remove from the Top Ten List, either in the Top Ten List itself or in the bookmark’s actual collection, and choose Bookmark Info from the context menu (or select the item and use the keyboard shortcut ⌘I).
  2. Click the Status tab of the Info panel.
  3. Click the Clear Visits button.

How do I duplicate a bookmark?

In the Bookmarks Manager you can easily make a duplicate of an existing bookmark by selecting the bookmark and dragging its icon while holding down the opt key.

How do I find a bookmark?

It’s easy to find bookmarks even when you have hundreds or more because Camino’s Bookmarks Manager includes a search field in the bottom right corner. From there you can search the currently selected collection (for example, the Bookmark Bar or History). If the search field is not already focused, you can click in the field, tab to the field, or use the ⌘F keyboard shortcut.

You can also choose the search criteria (all, title, location, shortcut, description) by clicking on the magnifying glass (or by pressing ↓ when the cursor is at the right edge of the search term). The results of your search will appear “inline” in the right-hand pane of the Bookmarks Manager.

How do I sort bookmarks?

Camino allows you to sort or rearrange your bookmarks in ascending or descending order by title or location. To sort a group of bookmarks, select them and then click on the Arrange button (the rightmost button at the bottom of the Bookmarks Manager) and choose one of the options, or ctrl-click on the selected bookmarks and choose one of the items in the Arrange sub-menu in the context menu.

  • Selecting a single folder will sort the items within that folder.
  • Selecting two or more items will sort those items together.
  • Holding down the opt key when selecting one of the sort options will do a “deep sort” of all selected items (sorting items inside subfolders).
  • If nothing is selected, Camino will sort the current collection, if that collection is not one of the special collections (History, Top Ten List, Bonjour, and Address Book).

Where are my bookmarks saved?

Camino saves all of your bookmarks in a file called Bookmarks.plist, which is located inside your user profile (the ~/Library/Application Support/Camino folder).

What are bookmark shortcuts and how do I use them?

Bookmark shortcuts are a special feature of Gecko-based browsers that allow you to assign a letter or word (shortcut) to a bookmark. Instead of locating the bookmark in the Bookmarks menu, you can simply type the shortcut in the location bar and press return, and Camino will visit the site listed in the bookmark. For example, the “Camino” bookmark in the “Camino Info” folder in the Bookmark Bar has the shortcut camino. If you type the word camino into the location bar and press return, Camino will visit the home page of the Camino Project.

To add a shortcut to any bookmark, simply open the Bookmarks Manager, select a bookmark, and choose Bookmark Info from the Edit menu (or use the keyboard shortcut ⌘I, or ctrl-click on bookmark and choose Bookmark Info from the context menu). This opens the Info panel for the bookmark; type the desired keyword in the Shortcut: field and close the panel. (You can also enter the keyword directly in the Shortcut column in the Bookmarks Manager.)

Bookmark shortcuts and searches

Bookmark shortcuts can also be used as powerful search tools, enabling you to perform specialized searches directly from the location bar. You can easily search different sites, databases, or search engines with just a few keystrokes! After making a bookmark, modifying its URL slightly, and assigning a shortcut, you will be able to search from the location bar using that search engine.

To add new bookmarks for use in shortcut searches (for example, imdb.com, eBay, or FedEx package tracking), the first step is to determine the URL for each site’s search “results” page. After doing that, you will need to modify the URL slightly for use as a bookmark by replacing part of the URL with a shorthand (%s); Camino will substitute your search term for the shorthand when performing a bookmark shortcut search.

There are many ways to do determine the URL, but the easiest is to visit the site, enter a unique search string such as CAMINO_SEARCH_STRING, and look at the resulting page’s URL. For example, using FedEx’s package tracking “search” yields http://www.fedex.com/Tracking?ascend_header=1&clienttype=dotcom
&cntry_code=us&language=english&tracknumbers=CAMINO_SEARCH_STRING

Now replace CAMINO_SEARCH_STRING with %s and the result is http://www.fedex.com/Tracking?ascend_header=1&clienttype=dotcom
&cntry_code=us&language=english&tracknumbers=%s

Enter that string in the bookmark’s Location: field. Many search engines add extraneous parameters to their search strings, and these can often be removed without affecting the results; the FedEx tracking bookmark can be simplified to http://www.fedex.com/Tracking?tracknumbers=%s without any adverse effects. Be sure to give this new bookmark a shortcut (like fedex), and you can now track your FedEx packages by entering the shortcut, a space, and the package number in location bar and then pressing return.

For more information about bookmark shortcuts and some sample bookmarks, see the Mozilla Custom Keywords page on mozilla.org and Bookmark Keywords at the Mozilla Developer Center.

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