Cleaning Favorites and Bookmarks

I remember someone posting a tool that will go through all your bookmarks and favorites and see which are still viable. Can anyone remind me what that was?
Thanks.
abri

 

>> I remember someone posting a tool that will go through all your bookmarks and favorites and see which are still viable. Can anyone remind me what that was? Thanks. abri <<

Hi Abri...

Some of these ‘bookmark checker’ types of programs out there are ridiculously priced (like G-Lock Software’s "Links Analyzer" which goes for around 75 bucks!)

I haven't actually used it in quite a while; but I'm pretty sure that a program called "Check&Get v1.14" could fairly accurately scan and check bookmark links. I think it is still available in a freeware (as well as a paid shareware) edition. What this program basically does is; it scans, checks and detects any duplicated, mirrored or dead links in your bookmark collection and then users can delete or correct them as well.

Try Googling the exact terms: "Download Check&Get" and then pick the first link. When you open that link scroll down to the very bottom of that page and the Check&Get v1.14 (freeware) download link is right there.

Note: Be careful when downloading from that page, because as I said, the program comes in an unsupported "freeware" edition v1.14 as well as "shareware" version v3.0 (which I believe costs something like a whopping $40 bucks!). Therefore make sure that the program that you download and install is the FREE one called: Check&Get v1.14.

Good Luck!

 

I found AM Deadlink, here at MG:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/AM-DeadLink_d2880.html

It went through and told me everything that had been redirected ok or which was 404 unknown. I was wondering if 404 is always a dead site or if it also refers to one that is being worked on? It's astonishing how many bookmarks I had that are still active and good. Like ... most of them. Hooray humans!

abri

 

>> I found AM Deadlink, here at MG abri <<

That's great Abri! Horray! Thanks for the tip about AM Deadlink

Side Note: Here's a small "tip" for anyone viewing this thread: Before you try out such utilities; make sure that you back up all of your favorites (usually located in C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Favorites).

One time I tested one of these "Bookmark Verifying" utilities (without taking a moment to back up the "Favorites" folder first) and the utility program "froze" in the middle of checking/scanning and when I restarted the computer all the favorites were gone!

Good Luck

 

Hi Compuable,
Actually, I've been looking for the favorites and also the bookmarks for Firefox, because I want to back up both. I've backed the favorites up many times during the past years, but I was surprised to see that the date in properties for the favorites is 2004. What I do with backing up My Documents, etc., is to put them on CD and then rename the MyDocuments folder to something like MyDocuments061201, so I know that those Documents were backed up on that date. Then I make a new MyDocuments folder and start over. It seems like when I tried doing this with Favorites, it wasn't possible. This constantly backing up things that have been added to seems a waste, so I was wondering how to do this better with Favorites. Also, I don't understand why the favorites take up so much more space than the FF bookmarks. Someone once explained that they are stored differently, but within Windows Explorer, I don't find much that I can understand about FF bookmarks. Do they store links to an online site where the whole addresses are stored?
Thanks!
abri

 

Hi Abri,

It seems like you haven't grasped exactly what the Firefox program is doing with bookmarks, unless you've got it figured out since this thread was last posted in, so I thought I'd explain a few things which might help you sort out what you want/need to do.

Web pages can be somewhere out there on the internet or on your own computer. All the web pages "somewhere out there on the internet" are on a computer of someone's, somewhere or other in the world. (Computers that have the purpose of keeping lots of internet stuff on them for others to look at are known as "servers" and are set up specially for lots of people to access from all over the world.)

Firefox makes a web page on your own computer of all the sites you bookmark. So opening the bookmark file will seem like looking at a page on the internet - they are the same type of file but one is on your computer and one isn't.

If you want to test that or to help you understand further, copy and paste this into NotePad and use the "Save As..." to save it as mypage.htm or mypage.html (.htm or .html will work). If you type it up, be careful to make sure that you use < and > symbols and put the / in where they belong. Save it somewhere easy to find like your desktop - you can delete it after playing around.

When you've saved this file, double-click on the file and you'll see a web page open which says:

If you want to know if the file is on your computer or not, look at the address bar and see if the address starts off http:// or if it starts with something more like c:\ or d:\ - the ones that start http:// are on the internet and the c:\ and d:\ type ones are on your computer.

Internet Explorer (IE) makes a shortcut in a folder for each bookmark (or Favorite as IE calls them) so it isn't a simple case of copying the bookmarks from one browser to the other. What you can do though, is to use the import feature that they both have. Look under the File menu and follow the prompts to find and import them to whichever you want.

Firefox seems only to have a feature to import them to itself but IE has a feature to import or export. If you use the export feature of IE, it creates a web page with all your Favorites in it.

I'm not sure from things you've said, whether you are aware that there is a "History" button in both Firefox and IE. In Firefox, it looks like a clock and in IE like a sundial. If you click on this, a sidebar will open that shows you where you've been and when. You can change the sort order by clicking on their own "View" menu, found just above the sidebar. One thing I don't like about Firefox is that if you click on a history item from a few days ago, it's deleted from the few days ago location and moved into Today. IE leaves a copy in the few days ago location and makes a new entry in the Today section. I find this much more convenient at times, especially if I want to see what a page looked like when I was last there by using the Work Offline feature. Firefox tends to keep only the most recent version of a page after you click on a link but it doesn't always seem to be that way in IE which can be helpful sometimes.

Also, you made a comment about 404 errors. If you get a 404 error, it might be because the page has been taken away permanently or it may be for other reasons, such as the site is being worked on, the server that the web page or site is on is offline for some reason or even just a temporary glitch with your browser. If you particularly want a page that got a 404 error, try again in a few days or a week and see if it's back. Or try finding the home page of that site and looking to see if they renamed or moved the page. I've had 404 errors for a web site I created and knew should still be there so it's always worth checking again later - mine turned up again in due course! I assume my web hosts were having problems with their server since I tried finding my site with another computer and still couldn't.

Hopefully this will help you to get a better understanding of how to deal with your bookmarks and Favorites.

 

Thanks Chookers!

I've become an avid Firefox user since I first posted that thread. Also, an avid bookmarker, because I use CCleaner often and don't keep a history at all. I appreciate the explanation about FF's bookmark storage, because I was thinking they are all out there somewhere, and when things are out there somewhere, they always feel slightly less under my control than when they are on my own harddrive or have been backed up on a cd. I never thought about it being a html address to my own harddrive. A nice useful tip.

After I left IE, I noticed upon returning to it for things like Windows Updates, that when I click in the Google search bar, a dropdown list of names appears. I wondered if this is a sort of mini-history of Google searches.


Abri

 

Bound to be a kind of history which probably Ccleaner would get rid of if you check all the IE options. I'm not actually sure which you're talking about - sounds like the official Google toolbar which I've never used. In that case, I'm not sure if Ccleaner has an option for that or not.

 

Actually, I don't remember seeing anything like it before. It's not the google toolbar. When google loads, it has a search bar in the middle of the page, and I think normally when you type in something like "maj" a dropdown bar appears giving you words like majorettes and majorgeeks, offering a completed option of something you typed in in the past.
In this particular case, I get the same dropdown kind of a menu without typing anything in at all with words that look like searches I once did. They are in no way related to spellings, since I haven't typed anything in the box. It looks sort of like it might be a list of the past 30 entries or something. I expect that's what it is.

abri

 

Just to be on the safe side, it might be as well to post a screen shot of what you're talking about - probably nothing to worry about but it wouldn't hurt to check.

If you need help with that:

To take a screen shot, have the thing you want to screen shot showing on your monitor and press the Print Screen key on your keyboard (usually near the Home key). Then paste it into something like Paint and save it as a jpg format (File - Save As). Then you can attach it to your post here.

 

Not true. Adding a bookmark to Firefox does NOT save that entire web page to your hard drive. It merely saves the URL in Bookmarks, just as IE saves them to Favorites.

 

The issue with Google toolbar is the feature called type ahead. Whenever you type a query in the search bar by default it searches ahead and starts presenting additional words. You can disable it by going to Tools / Advanced / General and deselect the Start searching for words when I type check box.

 

What I was referring to was that Firefox creates a web page on your computer and puts a link for each of your bookmarks on it, as opposed to making a shortcut for each bookmark and putting them in a Favorites folder, like IE does. Abri was a bit concerned, thinking that the web page with all the links was kept somewhere out on the internet, not realising that it was being stored on his/her(?) computer. I've re-read it and seen how you could have misunderstood - not very well put that bit! So thanks for bringing that up, Usafveteran - I'm sure other people would have misunderstood too.

 

Yes, I'm familiar with that. I was wondering why it would start presenting additional words before I'd typed anything into the search bar. It is enough if I only click in it with the cursor.
abri

 

Yeah, calling it a web page is what caused the confusion. I would have referred to it as an HTML file, since it's not actually out on the web. Indeed, it is an HTML file; by default, the file created when you export Bookmarks from Firefox is bookmarks.html.

Anyway, thanks for the clarification. Yes, I thought you meant that the full web page for each link added to bookmarks was saved to the hard drive. Now, I understand you meant that a "web page" of links to the actual web pages is created.