Creating and Using a Personal Bookmark File

Why would you want to use a personal bookmark file?

You can save your bookmarks into a personal file, on a diskette or on the desktop for later uploading to your server account.

Creating a personal bookmark file.

Saving your bookmark file to a diskette or the desktop.

Uploading your bookmark file to the server.

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Creating a personal bookmark file.

You might want to create a personal bookmark file, to carry with you as you move from one computer to another, or to use both at work and at home. If you save your personal bookmark file to a diskette, or upload it to the server, you can use it from multiple computers.

Plus, you won't have to worry about someone else deleting the bookmark file you've worked so diligently to create. (In lots of computer labs, the bookmark file is replaced with a standard one everytime the computer is turned on or a new user logs on.

Creating your own bookmark file is easy.

In Netscape, click on Bookmarks button (or choose Bookmarks from Communicator Menu).

Choose Edit Bookmarks....

This brings up a window:

Make any changes to the file. (If the file contains a lot of bookmarks left over from a previous user, you might want to delete those.)

Now save the file.

If you clik on the File menu, you'll see:

For our purposes, the important choices are:

Open Bookmark File

Import...

Save As...

These choices allow you to open and save bookmark files.

A note about bookmark files:

The bookmark file used in Netscape is actually an HTML file, like most other web pages, including the one you're looking at now.

The bookmark file is usually named bookmark.htm.

When you make a bookmark, Netscape adds information to the bookmark.htm file, and then automatically saves the file when you exit.

The "default" bookmark file in Netscape is usually stored in the Netscape/Users/default directory. If you've personalized Netscape, the directory will have the name of your Netscape user profile.

On a public computer, the default bookmark file could become pretty disorganized if allowed to accumulate from day to day. Most labs erase changes to the preferences or personal profile, include bookmark files, at the end of a user's session or when the computer is rebooted.

So you'll want to keep your own personal file.

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Saving your bookmark file to a diskette or desktop.

Click on the Bookmarks Button.

Choose File Menu, then Save As...

Find a location to put the file. If a diskette is in the drive, choose the diskette. Or save it to the Desktop. (You can upload it to the server later.)

Name the file. You can name it "bookmark.htm," the default name, or something more personal, like lizbookmarks.htm. Be sure the extension is htm.

Saving your personal bookmark file saves the file as it is when you save it. If you make additional changes to the bookmarks, these later changes will not be saved to the personal bookmark file, unless after you save it, you then open it.

Click on the Bookmarks Button.

Choose File Menu, then Open Bookmark File.

Find the Desktop or the directory where you saved lizbookmarks.htm Click on it.

Now lizbookmarks.htm will appear in the Title Bar of yourbookmarks window, and when you exit Netscape, any bookmarks you add will be saved into lizbookmarks.htm.

To use a personal bookmark file previously created, simply open it when you start using Netscape.

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Uploading your bookmark file to the server.

Your personal bookmark file, lizbookmarks.htm, can be treated like any other file. And because it is an HTML file, it is a web page. So you can upload it to your /www directory and then use it as web page, complete with working links that you created.

But you might not want everyone in the world to be able to see your bookmark file. You might want to upload it into your home directory, where you can get it if you want it (using FTP), but others can't find it.

Go to the FTP Module or learn about Publishing in the Introduction to Netscape Composer Module to learn about uploading and accessing "published" files.

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Back to Sharing Bookmarks.