Bookmarks


Bookmark windows are like address books. Over time, friends, colleagues and associates may send you interesting URLs to explore, and you will collect a list of your own favorite sites.

A bookmark window is a place where you store, organize, describe and access URLs.


Personal Bookmark Window

Your personal bookmark window is your primary set of bookmarks and is the one to which most commands in the Bookmarks menu apply.

The first time you run OmniWeb, you will be given a sample personal bookmark file that you can add to, or completely change to suit your needs. By default your bookmarks page is the one in the app-wrapper, but you can change that using Home Preferences.

To raise your personal bookmark window, click the button on the browser, or select the Open Personal command. This window is titled Bookmarks.html by default.

Creating Multiple Bookmark Windows

In addition to your personal bookmarks, you can create as many other bookmark windows as you want. You may wish to organize URLs according to subjects, or to create sets of URLs that can be shared with other people, or across your entire company.

You might, for example, use a bookmark panel to store the general company documentation that every employee should read. Your co-workers could access that bookmark window directly, or place a link to it in their own bookmark windows, ensuring that employees will always access the latest version.

To create a new window, choose the New Bookmarks command from the Document/Bookmarks menu.

To create a bookmark window out of a browser's current web page, select the browser and choose View as Bookmarks from the Document/Browser menu. The URL and all of its links will appear in a new bookmark window.

[Note: If you have multiple bookmark windows and want to change which is designated as your personal one, use the Preferences panel. See Home Preferences for more information.]

Adding URLs to a Bookmark Window

To add a browser's currently viewed URL to a bookmark window, open the bookmarks window, and then drag the symbol from the browser's URL well into the window and drop it. A zap can also be dragged and dropped from another bookmark window, a history panel, or any place a symbol appears.

[Note: To automatically add the browser's currently displayed URL to your personal bookmarks, click the button on the browser. This button will also raise the window if it is not already open.]

Adding/Deleting and Naming Bookmarks

Not every entry in a bookmark window has to be a URL. You can add a line of plain text by selecting a bookmark and hitting Return. This creates an Untitled Bookmark.

Double-click the text to select it, and type in a new name. Press Return when complete. In the Annotation field you can enter a brief description of the bookmark's contents.

To delete an entry, select it and press Backspace. Bookmarks also respond to the Cut, Copy, and Paste commands (Command-x, command-c, and command-v, respectively).

Loading a Bookmark

To load a bookmark, double-click its or symbol. If the bookmark has a symbol, double-clicking it will automatically begin loading the URL.

If the bookmark has a symbol, double-clicking will load the URL and all of its links in a new bookmark window.

To specify that a bookmark should be loaded in another bookmark window when double-clicked, select it, hit control-I (open Inspector) and select the Open in bookmarks window check box. Its symbol will change from to .

[Note: You can also drag and symbols from a window and drop them on a browser. Once dropped, the browser automatically begins to display the new web page.]

Organizing Bookmarks in a Window

When adding a bookmark to a window it can be placed at the main level, or indented beneath another bookmark. This ability to hierarchically arrange bookmarks provides a convenient way to organize groups of URLs.

As a URL is dragged into the window, a cursor () will appear to show where it will be placed when it is dropped.

To demote a bookmark (indent it beneath another), select it and press Tab. It will become a child of the one directly above it. To promote a bookmark to the main level, select it and press Shift-Tab.

[Note: If you delete a bookmark with children, all of the children will also be deleted.]

Bookmarks can also be dragged and dropped within a window to rearrange their order. Click the bookmark to select it, then drag the cursor () to the new location and drop. You may wish, for example, to keep bookmarks you access most frequently close to the top of the panel, or move pages from one parent group to the other.

The copy and paste commands in the edit menu also work in your bookmarks window. Cut and delete, in the same menu, will both remove a highlighted bookmark.

Collapsing and Expanding

Groups of bookmarks can be expanded, so that all members of the group are visible, or collapsed so that only the parent is visible. A collapsed group will appear with a filled circle () to the left of the group heading, while an expanded group has a hollow circle ().

To collapse a group of bookmarks, click the circle to the left of the parent. To expand the group, click the circle again. You can also select Expand Selection and Contract Selection from the Document/Bookmarks menu.

These groups, also called bookmark trees, can be dragged from one bookmark panel to another, as can individual bookmarks.

Loading Groups of Bookmarks

To load the contents of an entire bookmark window in a browser, drag the panel's main URL symbol () to a browser and drop it.

Each bookmark will appear as an anchor in the browser and can be selected by clicking it, as with any other web page.

Bookmarks Inspector Panel

The Inspector Panel assists you in managing and tracking changes in your bookmarked pages.

The page label and URL are displayed at the top of the panel, and can be reset.

With Automatic Change Flagging, OmniWeb can regularly check pages for changes at time intervals that you select. This can be useful with pages that change frequently, such as online magazines or weather centers &emdash; you won't need to spend time loading pages unless you know they contain new information. When a bookmark has unviewed changes, a icon appears next to it. If the bookmark is inside a collapsed bookmark tree, the icon will appear next to the parent title.

Bookmarks which you do not specifically set check intervals for will be checked at the time interval you set in Bookmark Preferences. Note that the default here is "Never."

The inspector panel also allows you to select several different double-click URL actions for individual pages. These options control how a page is diplayed when you double-click on a symbol; the default is to open the URL as a web page, but you can also open it as a bookmarks panel or as a search panel.

Saving Bookmarks

To save a bookmark window, select it and choose Save from the Bookmarks menu. Selecting Save All will save all open bookmark windows. When you quit OmniWeb at the end of your session, you will be automatically prompted to save your current bookmarks.


Click here to continue to the next chapter, Changing OmniWeb's Default Behavior.

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