Sunday, October 12, 2014

Setting up Bookmarks in Mozilla Firefox --




If you’ve installed Mozilla Firefox (called FF in the rest of this article), it probably tried to hide all the good stuff from you.  This is an attempt to bring a clean and modern interface to your computer.
            With the stock install, there will be an orange rectangle in the upper left corner of the FF window.  If you click on this, it will offer you the items that would normally be in the File menu.  To bring up the File menu, press the ALT key on your keyboard.  This will bring up the following menu items:
File, Edit, View, History, Bookmarks, Tools, Help
            To make the File menu stay, click on View, Toolbars, and then Menu Bar.  The orange square will go away to be replaced with the above items.  I also like to have the Bookmarks toolbar open.  Do the above steps, but click on Bookmarks Toolbar instead.  A new bar will appear below the address bar.  If there are no bookmarks, it will start off with two:  Most Visited and Getting Started. 
            Most Visited is just what it says.  Getting Started will give you a page that shows how to use FF and what the items on the window do.  If you roll your mouse over the markers, they will pop up messages on the items. 
            Once you have the Bookmarks Toolbar open, you can do a variety of things with it. 
            First, let’s get your bookmarks (favorites) from Internet Explorer (IE).
            Left click on Bookmarks, then Show All Bookmarks (also called Library).  From there, left-click on Import and Backup and then on Import Data from Another Browser.  Here, you can pick which browser.  Most likely, it’ll just be Internet Explorer, click on the Next button.  From here, you can probably uncheck Internet Options, Cookies, and Browsing History.  You might keep Cookies if you have customized setups for your homepage.  Click the Next button.  The import wizard will tell that the items were successfully imported.  Click the Finish button, then close the Library window.
            On the Bookmarks toolbar, there will be a new folder called From Internet Explorer.  This probably won’t be all of your favorites.  To find more, click on Bookmarks, then From Internet Explorer.  You should find more favorites there.  To move this folder to the Bookmarks toolbar, just click and drag the folder to the tool bar.  Yes, this means you will have two folders with the same name.
            From here, you can click and drag bookmarks from one folder to the other and arrange them as you see fit.
            If you would like to create a new folder on the Bookmarks toolbar, just right-click and then select New Folder… from the menu.  The next box will ask you to enter name for this folder.  Make a name that’s meaningful to you.  Quilting, Sewing, Computers, Cars, Science, whatever you want!
            To add a bookmark to your freshly created folder, just use the Address Bar and type the URL of the site you want.  Then wait for the page to load up fully.  Once it has done so, you should see a small picture at the start of the address.  This is called the favicon.  Many times, you will only see a grayish circle that’s supposed to look like the Earth.  Other times, if someone got fancy, you’ll see something else.  You can click on this favicon and drag it to the Bookmarks toolbar or the folder on it and then let go.
You might want to keep a folder called Media for all your radio TV stations and streaming content sites such as YouTube, Netflix or Hulu.
If you want to delete a bookmark or a folder from the Bookmarks Toolbar, just right-click and click on Delete.  Be warned, once you do this, it’s gone.  These do not go to the Recycle Bin.
The Bookmarks Toolbar is a great way to keep your bookmarks organized and out where you can see them.

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