My Favorite Things

My Favorite Things

The Web really does have cool places to visit. Some you will want to visit over and over again. (We’ve probably visited the Google Web site thousands of times by now.) All the makers of fine browsers have, fortunately, provided a handy way for you to remember those spots and not have to write down those nasty URLs just to have to type them again later.

Although the name varies, the idea is simple: Your browser lets you mark a Web page and adds its URL to a list. Later, when you want to go back, you just go to your list and pick the page you want. Konqueror and Mozilla call these saved Web addresses bookmarks; other browsers you may use call them favorites.

You can handle bookmarks in two ways. One way is to think of them as a menu so that you can choose individual bookmarks from the menu bar of your browser. The other is to think of them as a custom-built page of links so that you go to that page and then choose the link you want. Mozilla, a prime example of the “Great Expanding Blob” approach to software design, does both. Konqueror favors the menu, although it is happy to put the menu at the top, bottom, left, right, or even in a little window of its own.

Bookmarking with Mozilla and Konqueror

Mozilla and Konqueror bookmarks all lurk under the Bookmarks menu. To bookmark a Web page — that is, to add the address of the page to your bookmarks — choose Bookmarks�Bookmark This Page (Mozilla) or Bookmarks�Add Bookmark (Konqueror).

After you create some bookmarks, your bookmarks appear as entries on the menu that you see when you click the Bookmarks menu. To go to one of the pages on your bookmark list, just choose its entry from the menu.

If you’re like most users, your bookmark menu gets bigger and bigger and crawls down your screen and eventually ends up flopping down on the floor, which is both unattractive and unsanitary. Fortunately, you can smoosh (technical term) your menu into a more tractable form. Choose Bookmarks�Manage Bookmarks (Mozilla) or Bookmarks�Edit Bookmarks (Konqueror) to display your Bookmarks window (shown in Konqueror in Figure 18-5).

Because all of these bookmarks are live links, you can go to any of them. In Mozilla just click them, in Konqueror right-click and select Open in Konqueror. (You can leave this window open while you move around the Web in other browser windows.) You can also add separator lines and submenus to organize your bookmarks and make the individual menus less unwieldy. Submenus look like folders in the Bookmarks window.

Figure 18-5: The Bookmarks window includes commands for moving, editing, and deleting bookmarks.

In the Bookmarks window, choose File�New�Separator (Mozilla) or Insert�Insert Separator (Konqueror) to add a separator line and File�New�Folder (Mozilla) or Insert�Create New Folder (Konqueror) to add a new submenu. (It asks you to type the name of the submenu before it creates the folder.) You can then drag bookmarks, separators, and folders up and down to where you want them in the Bookmarks window. Drag an item to a folder to put it in that folder’s submenu, and double-click a folder to display or hide that submenu. Because any changes you make in the Bookmarks window reflect immediately on the Bookmarks menu, fiddling with the bookmarks until you get something you like is easy. Mozilla preloads your bookmark window with pages it likes you to look at, but feel free to delete them if your tastes are different from Mozilla’s.

When you’re done fooling with your bookmarks, choose File�Close (Mozilla) or File�Quit (Konqueror) to close the Bookmarks window.

�Tip��The Personal or Bookmark toolbar is a row of buttons that usually appears just below the Location box. If it’s not there, choose View�Show/Hide�Personal Toolbar (Mozilla) or Settings�Toolbars�Bookmark Toolbar (Konqueror) to display it. This row of buttons gives you one-button access to a bunch of the browser author’s favorite Web sites. Wouldn’t it be nice if your favorite Web sites appeared there instead? No problem! In Mozilla, stick your top favorite sites in the Personal Toolbar Folder — any sites in this folder automagically appear on the Personal toolbar. In the Konqueror bookmark window, right-click the folder you want to use as your toolbar folder and select Set as Toolbar Folder. You can even add folders with bookmarks in them. Folders appear as folder icons, and bookmarks appear as blue ribbons. We love this feature.

Where do we start?

In Mozilla: Mozilla has an informative home page that it shows each time it starts up. After one or two times, beautiful though the page is, you will probably find that you can do without it. You can tell Mozilla not to load any Web page, or a different page, when you start the program:

1. 
   

   
   Choose Edit�Preferences.
   

   
   

   You see the Preferences dialog box.

   
   


2. 
   

   
   Click Navigator in the Category box down the left side of the window.
   

   
   

   This category may already be selected, and its settings appear in the Preferences window. The first Navigator setting is called Navigator Starts With (or When Navigator Starts Up Display) — the Web page that Netscape displays on startup.
   

   
   


3. 
   

   
   To start with no Web page, click Blank Page. To choose a page to start with, click Home Page, click in the box below it, and type the URL of a page you would rather see (how about http://net.gurus.com, which is our page?). To make the last page visited your home page, select that option.
   

   
   

   The home page is (surprise!) the page that Mozilla displays when you click the Home button on the toolbar. To set the home page to the page you’re looking at right now, click Use Current Page. To display a page stored on your own computer, click Browse or Choose File and choose a file.

   
   

   You also have the option of starting where you left off last time by clicking Last Page Visited.

   
   


4. 
   

   
   Click OK.
   

   
   

�Tip��You can set your Mozilla home page to your own list of bookmarks — handy! Choose Edit�Preferences, click the Navigator category if it’s not already selected, click the Browse or Choose File button in the Home Page section, and go to the Bookmarks.html file that stores your bookmarks. It’s usually in a sub-sub-sub-folder of the .mozilla directory in your home directory.

In Konqueror: Konqueror usually displays your home directory, which is a pretty boring start page. Follow these steps to change your start page:

1. 
   

   
   Choose Settings�Configure Konqueror from the menu.
   

   
   

   You see the KDE Control module window.

   
   


2. 
   

   
   Click the Behavior tab at the top left.
   

   
   

   Actually, it’s probably already selected, but we say this in case you’ve been looking around at what’s on the other tabs.

   
   


3. 
   

   
   In the Home URL box, type or paste the URL you want.
   

   
   

   If the URL is long and complex, open it in a browser window, highlight the location box, and copy the text with Ctrl+C, and then paste it here with Ctrl+V.

   
   


4. 
   

   
   Click OK.