Firefox is an incredibly versatile and flexible tool that offers a lot of possibilities for individual customization.
An integral part of browsing the internet is collecting URLs or favorites, better known as bookmarks within the Mozilla browser family.
The integrated Firefox bookmarks however are rarely used to their full potential.
Here is a selection of tools that will help you get quick and easy access to your most important bookmarks.
Bookmarks Toolbar
The Bookmarks Toolbar provides instant access to a small collection of your most favorite and most visited websites. You can even add folders with bookmarks to this toolbar.
However, with just text, the Bookmarks Toolbar is rather bleak. You can easily spruce it up and save a ton of space by installing the Smart Bookmarks Bar extension, which replaces the text with the site’s favicon. Further settings are up to you.
I love the Bookmarks Toolbar, but I notoriously run out of space and have to pool URLs into folders or move them to the main bookmarks section. If that is not an option for you, maybe Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar extension can help. It does what it says and extends the toolbar to multiple rows.
Bookmarks in Tabs
A pretty cool option seen in Google’s Chrome browser is when thumbnails of your favorite pages appear once the browser is loaded as well as in every new tab. There are extensions for Firefox that provide you with similar features
Fast Dial integrates this feature, which was originally introduced by the Opera browser, into Firefox. You can choose whether you launch a tab with your favorite websites manually using [CTRL] + [T] or make it your homepage by defining “about:blank” as such. Per default it will appear in every blank tab.
Mark has reviewed Fast Dial in detail in his post Access Your Websites Quickly With Firefox’s Fast Dial.
Auto Dial is similar but different. Rather than listing your favorite sites, something that you can influence by manually adding pages in Fast Dial, Auto Dial displays only your most frequently visited pages in a blank tab. Furthermore, it does not display thumbnails, which makes room for many more bookmarks.
Bookmarks Tab has a slightly different approach. It displays all of your bookmarks in the center of every new tab you open. This may serve both as a reminder of all the links you have collected as well has a HUB from where you can dive into the net.
With these extensions you will always have your favorite bookmarks right at your fingertips. Which bookmark tools do you love to make use of?
Don’t forget to check out other popular MakeUseOf posts on Firefox addons:
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Another extension to really power up your bookmarks is bookmark previews. Let´s face it: after some time, no matter how organized you are when bookmarking, there just will be some bookmarks you won’t remember if you are organizing them, and fast dial or speed dial won’t keep all your bookmarks available as thumbs. With this extension, you van generate a thumbnail for every bookmark you have, and even view them in cover flow style. Great extension!!
Great work!
and the newly best fast dial approach from New Tab king (newtabking.com)
–shelly
If I only had the time to organize. (I know organizing is supposed to save you time in the long run, but you can over do it.)
Lame Fox-marks(X-marks) is all you need and its not even on the list.
Hello,
I have recently been using samfind Bookmarks Bar. It is relatively new but getting good reviews.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9866
It is like the Smart Bookmarks Bar, but it has Social, Search and RSS in the Bookmarks Bar as well as static links to the websites you choose.
There is a new version that is awaiting AMO review:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addons/versions/9866
That also includes a Hot-Key system (weirdly) called Hotsam.
Steve
i love firefox
I use symbaloo.com as my homepage b/c you can add all your favorite bookmarks as well as the sites you go everyday. I love it and can’t imagine life w/out it.
I am really all about using Delicious or Worio for my bookmarks…
HI…HUGE thanx for the team at MAKEUSEOF.com for sifting thru the net and giving the best of it.
I prefer DELICIOUS bookmarking add-on as the bookmarks are saved on-line and i can access them thru any browser anywhere. Hows dat for portability.
Best Wishes
Really very useful, especially i was searching for fast dial type extension,there are lots of feature already embedded inside chrome, thats why i love chrome.
I use symbaloo.com as my homepage b/c you can add all your favorite bookmarks as well as the sites you go everyday. I love it and can’t imagine life w/out it..
That slowed down my firefox.. I always think that keeping a browser in its original form works best.. Tweaking it might temporarily work but for long term uses .. It gets messed up and then you have to restore it.. But still very nice discovery…
Whether or not the browser is slowed down by an extension often depends on what other extensions are already installed.
I definitely agree with what you said. If speed matters, it’s best to do without extensions as much as possible, which really is too bad.
If you care about bookmark organization please consider voting for these 2 bugs.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=479189
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=444601
I love the Bookmarks Toolbar, but I notoriously run out of space and have to pool URLs into folders or move them to the main bookmarks section
Check out the samfind Bookmarks Bar:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9866
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addons/versions/9866
Steve
That one looks very good, too. Thanks for sharing Steve.
Good work! firefox the best browser!