Pimping Your Firefox Part III: Easily Accessible Favourites

Today's tip comes from an older Lifehacker post. I thought I woudl share the advice. Some of you may have the bookmark toolbar on the top of your browser and it may go unused up there. Some of you may also have turned it off. I originally had it hidden until I realized how helpful it can be. Two extensions help you make it quite useful. The first is a nice one that will put only the icons of the site on the bar. Those icons are those little pictures that appear before the address in the address bar (the orange "B" symbol for this site). All that you really need to do is download Smart Bookmarks Bar. You can change the settings for this bar by going to Tools -> Extensions. There should then be a dialog box that lists all your extensions. Just click once on Smart Bookmarks Bar and then click on the "options" button down below to change the settings. There is only one setting (Showing the name when you roll your mouse over the picture). I personally have that box unchecked because I find it distracting. You may want to keep it so you know what the sites are.

The second extension that is helpful is Favicon Picker 2. This extension gives you the option of picking what the icon is for your bookmarks (because not all sites have nice icons like this one). Simply download the program and you are ready to go. If you want to change the icon, just left click on it and click properties. There should be a section of that box that has the icon and two options: Erase or Browse... pick browse to find an icon you want to use (it has to be on your computer).

For those of you who aren't so sure how to make an icon, I will send you to a website that will help you: Favicons from Pics. Simply click on the "Browse" button on the page and select a picture from your computer. It will generate a file that can be used as an icon. You will need to download this to your computer and put it somewhere safe. I suggest making a folder for it (Call it "Icons" if you want to be safe and put it with your other pictures). You can then find this file with the above program to make your icon.

All together, this can give you several of your bookmarks or favourites right in your browser without having to open up the bookmarks sidebar or drop down menu. I personally have 34 bookmarks in my browser with room for 5-10 more. I suggest you try this and see how much easier it is to check your favourite sites.

As always, if you want to try this and are confused, just ask me any questions you may have...

UPDATE (20:50): Oops, I lied. Just after I wrote this, I updated my extensions and the new version of Smart Bookmarks Bar has more options, including decreasing the space between the icons, which allows for more icons on the toolbar. Yet another great feature of Open Source Software - constant improvements!

Pimping Your Firefox Part II: Multiple Tabs for Your Homepage

One of the neat things about Firefox (if you haven't downloaded it yet, see the link on the sidebar) is that it has tabs. Tabs allow you to have more than one window open in the same browser. This is helpful so you don't have to open too many browser windows which can become confusing. One nifty feature that Firefox allows is to have different tabs to open up when you open a new browser window. For example, when I open Firefox, I get three pages instead of one. How do you do this? Let me show you.

The first step is to make a folder in your bookmarks sidebar. To do this, open the bookmarks sidebar (there should be an icon on the top - it may be called favourites). Once there, left click to create a new folder. You can name this folder anything you want, but it might be best to name it "Startup."

Once you have that, go find multiple pages you want to open when you open Firefox. When you are at the page, right click the little picture in the address bar that shows up before the address (for this site it looks like an orange square with a "B" inside of it. Hold the mouse button down as you drag that picture into the folder you just made ("Startup"). Repeat this as many times as you want, but I would not add too many as it could get overwhelming when you open Firefox.

The next thing you need to do is to go to the menu on top. Go to Tools then to Options. A window should open. Go to the "General Tab." It should show what your current homepage is. Below it will be a button that says: "Use Bookmark" Click on that and select the folder you just made ("Startup"). Close Firefox and the next time you open it you will get all the pages you selected. There are other ways to do this as well, and if you figure them out, feel free to share.

If you want to change the pages that open for you, change the pages in the folder first and then complete the last step again. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them.

Hope this was helpful and that you are starting to see the advantages of using Firefox! More tips to come next week.