Managing bookmarks tip

May 17, 2006

I’m sure you’ve all learnt this well before me but I recently had someone look at my browser and say, “wow, cool how did you do that?” Aside from using delicious, it’s nice to have the most popular sites you go to sitting right there in your browser on your bookmark toolbar.

The problem was, I was getting too many bookmarks on my toolbar. So, I started removing the site titles from the toolbar and made them as short as possible. For sites which had favicons, I’d remove the title completely from my toolbar. The problem was, lots of sites didn’t have favicons, so I couldn’t remove those titles completely.

I hunted around on the Firefox extensions site for something which would let me pick a custom favicon for these sites but the favicon picker there was for an old version of Firefox and wouldn’t work on 1.5.x. I hunted around to see if there was an update and found one in the Mozilla forums. Once installed I was able to just have little icons on my bookmarks toolbar:

Screenshot

See also
Comments

  1. Very nice tip with the extension. It looks like the perfect addition to my collection. I’ve begun collecting so many frequented sites in my toolbar that it’s beginning to look very cluttered.

    — Derek Punsalan, May 17, 2006

  2. is making favicons the bookmark automatic when you delete the name? I’ve tried this and it doesn’t work - is there a plugin for it or is this a ‘mac problem’?

    — Darren Rowse, May 17, 2006

  3. GREAT tip! I’ve been looking to find a tool like this for a long time. Thanks!!

    — Bethany, May 18, 2006

  4. [...] [Read More About Managing Your Bookmarks Toolbar!] Gada.be Tags: bookmarks, favicons, links, easy, Firefox [...]

    — Firefox Facts » Just Favicons on Bookmarks Toolbar, May 18, 2006

  5. That’s funny, I did this a while ago not knowing that anyone else has, it works well for me too, great tip.

    — Shalosophy, May 18, 2006

  6. That’s cool that you can do that. Me personally I use del.icio.us and have the RSS feed on my toolbar in Firefox. That got rid of the clutter from my toolbar since I now just have that 1 feed plus I have the same bookmarks available to me at work, home, or anywhere else I go.

    — Thomas, May 18, 2006

  7. good firefox extensions

    ==================
    CodeNote - 开�者的记事贴
    http://www.codenote.com/

    — CodeNote - å¼€å?‘者的记事贴, May 18, 2006

  8. Personally I use folders on the bookmark toolbar, nice extension though.

    — Nigel, May 18, 2006

  9. [...] Managing bookmarks tip — cre8d design blog A Firefox favicon picker lets you assign favicons to websites that don’t have one, so you can use those in your toolbar instead of lengthy site names. (tags: firefox extensions) [...]

    — Anne 2.0 » links for 2006-05-17, May 18, 2006

  10. It doesn’t work for 1.5.3

    Shame.

    — Mag, May 18, 2006

  11. Have any of you people used http://blinklist.com. It really pwns del.icio.us, by miles ahead and presents much better customization options.

    — Chrono Cr@cker, May 18, 2006

  12. Hopefully they’ll do another update of the extension for 1.5.3 Mag. I’ll keep an eye out for anything.

    Chrono - here’s the thing, I’ve tried a few other bookmarking tools and stopped… they offered features I didn’t need and were too complicated. If you were trying to convince me to switch from delicious, what would be the feature you’d tell me about?

    — Rachel, May 18, 2006

  13. Unfortunately Rachel, it’s not about 1 feature, it’s about a lot more…. I suppose del.icio.us users are just too complacent to change, I’ve heard this a lot but just check out Blinklist. (Will make it a point to link to a couple of reviews next time)..

    Nice tip btw!

    — Chrono Cr@cker, May 19, 2006

  14. I know there’s a lot of features - I guess I would love to hear a reason why someone should switch. What am I missing out on? :)

    — Rachel, May 19, 2006

  15. Does anyone know what hacking I need to do to the theme to enable favicon views in the toolbar? (I’m currently using the GrApple & SafariFox themes….)

    And has *anyone* figured out how to do this in Safari?????

    — Adin, May 20, 2006

  16. Long time no blog, Rachel, Hope everything is ok!

    — Pete, May 25, 2006

  17. Yup, everything’s fine thanks :)

    Just had lots of people over the last few nights… must blog this weekend :)

    — Rachel, May 25, 2006

  18. Cool, shall look forward to it :)

    — Pete, May 25, 2006

  19. [...] When I first came across Favicon Picker, an extension for Firefox, I didn’t really see the utility of it. It took Rachel Cunliffe at cre8d blog to set me straight. The real reason Favicon Picker is fantastic is that it lets you do away entirely with text labels in Firefox’s Links toolbar (if you want), as in the screenshot above, and it lets you assign favicons to bookmarklets. Not only does that each one a lot easier to pick out at a glance, it also makes room for a lot more of them. Excellent. [...]

    — Richie’s Space » Favicon Picker for Firefox, May 31, 2006

  20. And to make it more cool check this out
    http://gmarik.blogspot.com/2006/05/pimp-my-firefox-bookmarks_14.html

    — gmarik, June 2, 2006

  21. Nice, thanks! Have done that just now :)

    — Rachel, June 2, 2006

  22. Great!
    But my link is too long for your “Current Disscussions” list…
    overflow:hidden; may help:)

    — gmarik, June 2, 2006

  23. Thanks :)

    — Rachel, June 2, 2006

  24. Thanks Rachel - now I can cram even MORE sites into my toolbar. It’s always nice when impersonal Google sends you to a site you like for the answer!

    — farlane, August 21, 2006

  25. has anyone figured out how to do this with mac? it works for live bookmarks but not for regular ones. Dan dot Litvin at g mail dawt com.

    — Dan, October 1, 2006

  26. [...] +Learn more about Just favicons [...]

    — » Just Favicons on Bookmarks Toolbar, October 1, 2006