Firefox bookmarks are a great way to keep track of your favorite websites and pages. But sometimes you want to see just a few of them at a time. That’s where the Firefox bookmark tool comes in. To use the Firefox bookmark tool, open Firefox and click on the three lines in the top left corner of the main window. This will open a menu with three options: Bookmarks, Favorites, and History. The Bookmarks option will show you all of your current bookmarks, as well as any bookmarks that you have added from within Firefox or from another program. The Favorites option will show you all of your past bookmarks, as well as any pages that you have visited recently. The History option will show you all of your past visits to websites and pages, both inside and outside of Firefox.
Before
Here is our test browser with an assortment of bookmarks not in folders. As you can see it does not take many to fill the visible area of the “Bookmarks Toolbar” therefore requiring the use of the drop-down menu at the end. Even if you have your bookmarks placed in folders they too can fill your toolbar up very quickly.
After
As soon as you have installed the extension and restarted Firefox you will notice an immediate difference. As you can see here all of the bookmarks shown above have been “reduced” to just their favicons. Now your “Bookmarks Toolbar” can have a very clean, colorful, and highly condensed look to it.
Hovering your mouse over any of the favicons will make the text associated with the bookmark appear (slider type of motion). This is especially useful if you happen to have two bookmarks that use the same favicon.
As always clicking on any of the bookmarks opens those links just like before. This is definitely a great way to get those bookmarks under control and make them easier to use.
If you prefer folders you can also have them condensed as well though they will all have the same favicon. One way to work with this might be to memorize “first folder = blogs, second folder = e-mail, etc.”.
Note: You may also have the names of folders permanently display if desired (see “Options”).
Just like before you can easily access bookmarks contained in the folders.
Options
The options for the extension focus on small operational tweaks for your “Bookmarks Toolbar”…select what works best for you. It is advised to deselect “Hide bookmarks names with no favicon” so that you do not “lose sight” of any new bookmarks that lack a favicon. Or if you already have bookmarks without favicons you could place those in an appropriate folder to work around that minor problem.
Conclusion
If you have been looking for a better way to organize and access bookmarks (and folders) on your Bookmarks Toolbar then this is one extension that you should definitely take the time to try.
Links
Download the Smart Bookmarks Bar extension (Mozilla Add-ons)
