04 February 2009

Improving the Firefox bookmark menu



I'm reluctant to offer computer advice on TYWKIWDBI because I'm not a tech junkie, but I recently made a major improvement in my Bookmark pull-down menu that I'd like to share with whoever might need it.

I'm running Firefox 3.0.6 on an iMac and an iBook, and I've been recurrently frustrated by the tiny menu that appears with the "Bookmark This Page" or "Bookmark this Tab" command. As shown in the top image, unlike in earlier Firefox versions, in 3.0.6 the default menu for storing a bookmark in a folder displays only a piddling number of folders, and the window size couldn't be increased, necessitating a laborious scrolling process, made worse when subfolders needed to be accessed.

I finally decided to post a question on the Firefox support forum. Within hours, someone had posted a fix, pointing me toward two Firefox add-ons, one of which (OpenBook 2.0.1.1.) did precisely what I needed - allowed me to enlarge the menu box and have it reopen to that size each time (see bottom figure). I still need to tweak the "recent folders" option (not shown in the Figure), but this simple add-on has markedly improved my life, since I have many hundreds of bookmarks and folders to manage.

Perhaps someone else will find this useful.

2 comments:

  1. like you I am a firefox fan, I use the bookmark menu and create new folders for my book marks, (blogger stuff, music stuff etc. subfolders when I need them

    ReplyDelete
  2. One of the reasons that Firefox has its deserved popularity is the expansion and customization opportunities which exist in their add-in community. This is a benefit of open-source development.
    Microsoft please take note...

    ReplyDelete

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