# Using Galeon Bookmarks

Bookmarks serve several important purposes in web browsing. Above all else, they allow you to quickly and easily jump to your favorite pages with only a click or two of the mouse. They also enable you to organize information that interests you, and make it simple to keep track of long, complicated URLs. In Galeon, additions have been made to the typical features of bookmarks to make them even more customizable and powerful. This chapter discusses those features and how to use them.

## Bookmarks Editor

The Bookmarks Editor, unsurprisingly, allows you to edit your bookmarks. Instructions on how to load it are given in . You can have several bookmarks editors opened at the same time, and you can dock a bookmark editor in a Galeon window.

### Galeon Bookmarks Editor

In the center of the Bookmarks Editor window, there is a tree-based listing of all of your folders, bookmarks, and separators. For easy viewing, all of the branches of the tree can be quickly expanded or collapsed by clicking the Expand all categories or Collapse all categories items in the editor's View menu. Objects can be repositioned by dragging them to new locations in the tree, and you can also move them up and down in the listing by selecting one and clicking the Up and Down buttons in the toolbar. New bookmarks, separators, categories (folders), and aliases (see can be created by clicking the appropriate buttons in the toolbar or in the editor's File menu. If the highlighted object is a category, the new object will be created inside of it; otherwise, the new object will be appended after the highlighted object.

After you select an object by clicking on it, its attributes will appear in the area in the bottom of the window. The available options will vary depending on whether a bookmark or category is selected.

When an bookmark is selected, you are able to edit its name, give it a nickname (described in ), edit the URL, add notes that are only visible in the Bookmarks Editor window, and select an image to replace the bookmark's name in the toolbar and menus (described in ). By modifying the URL field as described in , it is possible to create a bookmark that will use user-supplied arguments to form a URL, greatly simplifying the use of search engines.

When a category is selected, you are able to edit its name, add notes, and associate an image with it. In addition to this, the Show as toolbar checkbox allows you to make the contents of the category appear within a toolbar, as described in .

In both cases, the Add to context menu checkbox can be used to add the bookmark or category to the menu that is displayed when the right mouse button is clicked on the browser window. This feature is described in more detail in .

You can open a dialog that allows you to search for bookmarks using a variety of criteria by clicking the Find bookmarks... item in the Bookmark Editor's Edit menu.

If you have enabled Autobookmarks in you will also have a folder containing bookmarks based on your recent browsing history see .

Finally, the editor can be "docked" on a Galeon window by selecting the Dock item in the editor's View menu. The dock can be released from the window by clicking the small window icon in its upper-right corner, or closed by clicking the 'x' icon. The state of the editor (either windowed or docked) is automatically saved.

## Importing and Exporting Bookmarks

You can import and export bookmarks in Galeon, Netscape, Mozilla, and XBEL formats. The importing will take care of duplicated bookmarks. This feature has been tested extensively, but it would still be wise to make a backup of your `~/.galeon/bookmarks.xml` file before importing or your Netscape or Mozilla `bookmarks.html` file before exporting.

## Bookmarks Toolbars

A toolbar can be created for any folder in your bookmarks, including the AutoBookmarks folder. As described in , activate the folder's Show as toolbar checkbox in the Bookmark Editor window. Once the change is applied, a toolbar will be created containing all the bookmarks and folders within the selected folder.

### Tip

Show as toolbar only has an effect if Bookmarks toolbars under the View menu is selected.

Bookmarks toolbars support Drag and Drop (DnD) functionality. If you want to add a bookmark for the current page to a toolbar, simply click on the link drag button and drag it over an item in the toolbar. You will see a highlight box drawn around the item when it is possible to drop the new link onto the toolbar. If you drag the link onto a bookmark item, the new bookmark will be inserted after that item. If you drag the link onto a folder, the new bookmark will be inserted into the folder.

### Bookmarks Toolbar

Finally, each bookmarks toolbar has a popup menu that allows you to hide the toolbar or delete a bookmark from the toolbar. To display the popup menu, simply right click on any item in the toolbar.

## Bookmarks Context menus

You can add any bookmark category to your main document context menu (including the Root folder if you create an alias for it). As described in , activate the folder's Add to context menu checkbox in the Bookmark Editor window.

## Smart Bookmarks

A "smart bookmark" is a bookmark which takes one or more arguments and substitutes them into the URL. The arguments are represented by the string `%s`. For example, the URL `http://www.google.com/search?q=%s` can be used to expedite searching with the Google™ search engine. Smart bookmarks can be accessed in a number of ways:

- In the location field: If the bookmark also has a nick, the nick can be used with one or more arguments in the location field. For a bookmark configured in this manner, typing `google galeon` would search for the string `galeon` on Google.

- From the bookmarks menu: Selecting a smart bookmark will open a dialog box for entering the bookmark arguments. If you click the menuitem with the left mouse button, the composited URL will be opened in the current window. If you click it with the middle mouse button instead, the URL will be opened in a new window or tab.

- From bookmarks toolbars: If a smart bookmark is placed in a folder which appears as a toolbar, a small right-arrow will appear to its right. When you click the icon, it will expand to show an entry field on the toolbar. Typing a string into this field and hitting Enter or clicking the bookmark's name or icon will insert the string into the smart bookmark and jump to the resulting URL. If you hit Ctrl Enter or click on the name or icon with the middle mouse button instead, the URL will be opened in a new window or tab. Several options relating to smart bookmarks can be customized, as described in .

- From My Portal: Smart bookmarks will generate form entry fields in My Portal.

## Bookmark "Nicks"

Bookmarks can be given nicknames for quick access. The nick is assigned in the Bookmarks Editor. When the nick is entered in the Open URL dialog or in the location entry field, is expanded to the full URL automatically. So, Galeon could be configured so simply typing in `gal` could load `http://galeon.sourceforge.net`.

## Bookmark Aliases

Any bookmark or bookmark category (including the Root Bookmark) can have one or several aliases. They are useful for organizing your bookmarks, having special categories used only for toolbars or context menus or other uses that you can imagine.

## Bookmarks with Images

Bookmarks can be assigned images to replace their names in the bookmarks menu, bookmarks toolbars and in My Portal. As well as being a nice way to personalize your browser, this can be used to speed up your browsing (as images are more quickly identified than text) and conserve real estate on your toolbars.

## AutoBookmarks

The autobookmarks folder stores commonly visited sites based on your browsing history. You can configure the number of sites to display in . The ranking of the sites is based on how often the server itself is visited. This means that some ad sites will show up in the autobookmarks since content from those sites are displayed quite often when surfing.

## My Portal

"My Portal" creates a portal style view of your bookmarks in a web page. It makes a good choice for your homepage, since it provides a rapid way of jumping to a large number of bookmarks. You can visit "My Portal" at any time by opening the URL `about:myportal`, or you can set it as your homepage, as described in .