An introduction to Firefox, part 4, bookmarks and Firefox sync
Bookmarks
Bookmarks and the bookmark feature is something most of you who browse on a daily basis will use. In this article I will explain a bit more about the options you get in Firefox regarding bookmarks. I'm sure with a bit more knowledge on how Mozilla Firefox works, and how to use bookmarks optimally, your experience and satisfaction with the browser will increase.
If you're on a Mac, try opening the Bookmarks drop-down menu in the top of the screen.
Now, if you look at the screenshot above, first click on Firefox in the upper left corner, then click on bookmarks and the menu should appear. There are a number of options in that menu, lets start with the commonly used bookmark page option. Click on it and the following window should appear:
Here you can select the name of the bookmark, in which folder it will lie, and the tags it should have, if any. Name and folder are pretty straightforward while tags are newer and a bit more interesting. I guess the easiest way of explaining what a tag is to say that it is a category. And a bookmark can have multiple categories. Adding a bookmark for the current open page in the selected tab can be done using Ctrl-B (⌘-B on Mac).
To remove a bookmark, go to the bookmark menu view, navigate towards the bookmark you want to remove and right-click (Ctrl-Click on Mac) and select delete on the bookmark that should be removed. This works the same way for tags too, go to the bookmark menu, right-click (Ctrl-Click on mac) on the bookmark (or tag) you want to delete and click on delete.
Bookmark browsing and management
Another useful feature in Firefox is the bookmark manager, or bookmarks library. If you navigate towards the bookmarks menu as describe above and select "Show all bookmarks" entry, or click on Ctrl+Shift+O (⌘+Shift+B on Mac) the bookmarks window will appear as shown below:
In the left-hand part of this window one can select to browse by folder, (download) history, tag (category), and a couple of other things. I guess one of the more interesting options here is the Views tab, as shown on the screenshot below:
Here I'm highlighting the Visit Count option which I select, and then when viewing folders etc. in the bookmark manager, the number of times a bookmark (link) has been visited will display, and it will also be possible to sort ascending or descending on the visit count.
OK, enough about that, onwards to a new useful feature for Firefox, Firefox Sync. :)
Firefox sync, aka. sharing of Firefox settings between computers and devices
A great and useful new feature in Firefox is the ability to synchronize settings between computers and devices. This means that you can browse around on different devices, add/remove bookmarks, save passwords and more one time, and use it on any device with Firefox afterwards. For example using a password on the mobile phone after having saved the password when you logged in to the site on the computer.
To setup Firefox sync, one first has to go to the Firefox menu and select "Set up sync..." as shown here:
If you have a Mac, "Set up sync.." is in the Window drop-down menu. If you don't have that Firefox button in the upper-left corner, locate the Tools menu drop-down by pressing the Alt key (on Windows and Linux... on Mac the Tools drop-down should be available in the top of the screen when Firefox is the application in use).
After that, the following screen should appear, select Create new account:
At the following screen you will be prompted for email address, a password, server (leave the default Mozilla Firefox sync server), check off the terms of service and privacy policy, and enter what you see in the image in the captcha field, in my case "offsud lections".
Click on Next. The following tab should pop up:
Congratulations! You now have Firefox sync setup, and can relax knowing that your bookmark data, passwords, add-ons, preferences, history and tabs are saved. Now, Firefox sync starts to be really useful when you connect for example a mobile phone to your Firefox account. Click here for instructions on pairing a device to your Firefox account.
This is the fourth article in a series about Firefox, if you have Firefox-related topics you want covered here, let us know. Comments on this article, thumbs up or flames, can be sent to articles@nidelven-it.no. If you need help using Firefox, we recommend using the Firefox forums.
If you know a language or languages besides English and would like to translate these articles, let us know via articles@nidelven-it.no as well. :)