Quick Firefox Bookmark Check
For those of you who are using the almighty Firefox browser, here’s a little tip for more convenient browsing…
When I’m browsing the internet, I like to be able to check my favourite bookmarks quickly and easily with as little clicks as possible. When you start your browser, it opens on the site that you configured as your ‘homepage’. But that’s only one page. I have about 10 sites that I like to check on almost every time I open my browser.
Some of you might know that you can edit your homepage URL so that it has more than one page by splitting the site URL’s with a |. If you change your homepage URL for example to http://thequicky.net|http://news.google.com, then every time you open your browser it will load two tabs. One will contain my website, the other will contain the Google News site. I used to have about six to eight sites in there which opened up every time I started my browser so I could really quickly check my most important favourites.
After some time though I started getting annoyed by the loading times when I had just opened my browser to find something on google really quickly for example. Then I got the idea of using the ‘throbber’ button to put my main favourites into, and leaving only one page in my normal ‘homepage’. The ‘throbber’ button is the little circle of dots in the top right corner of your window that animates when a page is loading. Normally if you click this, you are forwarded to some mozilla page. But you can edit the link. So what I did was edit the link so it had about 8 of my main favourites except for the one that I wanted to keep in my normal ‘homepage’ using the | to split the URLs.
Here’s how you can edit the throbber link…
- Go to about:config (through your Location Bar).
- Type throbber into the filter bar.
- Right-click on the value for browser.throbber.url and choose “Modify”.
- Change the value to the URL or URLs you would like to be taken to (e.g., http://thequicky/net|http://news.google.com).
- Restart Firefox if the new setting does not take effect immediately.
So now when I open my browser it opens my most important favourite (at the moment that’s the VRT news site, http://www.vrtnieuws.net). And when I want to check on my other main favourites I click on the throbber icon and it loads up my main favourites. Pretty handy :).
Note: In order to be able to use multiple URL’s in the throbber, you apparently need the Tabbrowser Preferences extension for Firefox which you can find here. Make sure that once installed, the “Load Web browser links into a” option is set to ‘New Tab’. You can find this setting under ‘Tools’ –> ‘Options’ –> ‘Tabbed browsing’ –> ‘Links’.
Tijl Kindt
You can also open multiple bookmarks by using bookmark folders. After you click on it, there is an option at the bottom called “Open in Tabs” (or you can right click on the folder and select that option).
I have a folder I keep on my toolbar for just that - favorite sites I visit everyday.
Oh, by the way, you can change your toolbar configurations really easily by going to ->view->toolbars->customize in the top menu. It allows you to add/remove controls and re-arrange the tools you want to better utilize screen real-estate.
May 8th, 2006 at 23:19
Yes, but that’s three clicks… ‘Bookmarks’ –> Folder you want to open –> ‘Open in Tabs’… I’m too lazy for that :D. Oh wait… You can put a folder on your toolbars? Cool… just tried it out and it works indeed… Cute :). Thanks mate!
I know about the controls. This is what my toolbars look like: http://thequicky.net/pictures/firefoxtoolbars.png
Thanks for the info :).
May 8th, 2006 at 23:38
How about a mouse gesture plugin? There are some out there, I use “All-in-One Gestures”. You can configure it, so for example you just have to to do a command (e.g. load some links). That one click too, but you don’t have to move your mouse so far to the throbber (whatever that is :D). Maybe I’m a nutpicker, but you mentioned it should be easy :)
btw: nice site; found it through Sea3D’s forum
greetz
Thinkpositiv
May 11th, 2006 at 20:01
For the troubles described above, Opera would be a nice solution: when you quit Opera, having 10 tabs open, it will open the same 10 tabs when you restart the browser next time. For me that is more convenient than either making them my homepage or using the throbber thingy, because today’s favourites aren’t tomorrow’s..
And in Opera, mouse gestures are built in. See: http://www.opera.com/features/mouse/index.dml
May 12th, 2006 at 12:43
However, Opera’s built-in newsreader isn’t even remotely as nice as Firefox’s Sage…
May 12th, 2006 at 12:44
I use SessionSaver to replicate the Opera feature
June 27th, 2006 at 14:44
Guys guys, use the middle mouse button!
I think you might need an extension, but I’ve had it so long I can’t remember what it’s like not to have it.
Anyway, my middle click button opens links in a new tab, and opens all the links in a favourites folder. All my favourites folders sit on the top bar of my browser.
One click, and all the pages I check daily are opened at once.
Glory to the middle click!
June 27th, 2006 at 17:34
Indeed, I so have to adjust whenever I’m on a computer with only IE… Middle clicks don’t work anymore :P.
June 29th, 2006 at 16:06
There’s no such thing as a computer with only IE. PortableFirefox exists for a reason ;)
June 29th, 2006 at 18:58
there are many ways to handle your daily-favs, i for myself prefer the middle-click-thing.
but a main reason why this “workaround” is very handy: i guess there are not much people out there using the throbber for any reason, though it’s always up there.
now some more foxlovers can easily make it useful - thumbs up! :)
July 4th, 2006 at 6:53
This is FYI not an endorsement. The extension “Morning Coffee” is a great tool for opening all at once as many sites as one wants. I.M.H.O. a very useful extension.
http://tinyurl.com/lp9nr or
http://www.shaneliesegang.com/misc/coffee.php
July 6th, 2006 at 13:24
You know, you can do this ALOT easier. Just open all the tabs that you want to have open up at startup, then go under TOOLS>OPTIONS, click on the GENERAL tab, and click USE CURRENT PAGES. Voila! I have 11 pages open on startup. It rocks.
July 6th, 2006 at 16:48
The thing is… I don’t want 11 pages to be loading at startup when I just want to quickly search for something with google or something like that. I want a button for it that I can push when I have some time to check my favourites.
July 7th, 2006 at 6:05
how an you get your bookmarks in your toolbars like quicky’s screen shot?
July 16th, 2006 at 3:18
Go into ‘manage bookmarks’ and put all the links and folders you want into ‘Bookmarks Toolbar Folder’
July 17th, 2006 at 4:43
In Fx2b1 there is no browser.throbber.url ption in about:config =(
July 21st, 2006 at 18:16
That’s easily solved just right click > New > String type in browser.throbber.url in the first box click ok then put the urls you want in the second box
August 2nd, 2006 at 0:38
It’s not working for me I get the first page but not the second. I pasted ‘http://thequicky/net|http://news.google.com’ into the throbber url but I don’t get the second tab. It works in the as the homepage but not in the throbber. What am I doing wrong? I’m using Firefox 1.5.0.6 I have Stumble, autofill plugin and del.icio.us plug-ins.
August 16th, 2006 at 16:45
It should work :-/… Dunno what’s going wrong for you :-S.
August 17th, 2006 at 7:45
Also you can edit the value to be a work safe website so when you see your boss coming you can click the throbber if your on a nsfw site, and all of the sudden you’ll be looking at linux.net or microsoft.com.
August 20th, 2006 at 3:18
i tried the throbber html edit using your way with the | in between th esites I wanted to load.
What happened is it tried to load all 3 sites I had inputted in the throbber in the one tab.
WHat can I do to fix this
Thanks Andre
August 22nd, 2006 at 16:05
Ok, I just added a note to my post. Apparently you need the Tabbrowser Preferences extension for multiple URL’s to work. I hadn’t realised that this wasn’t possible without the extension. Check the note at the end of my post for a link to this great extension.
August 22nd, 2006 at 16:24
[…] + Follow the Steps at TheQuicky.net! […]
August 24th, 2006 at 12:46
I’m interested in how you saved the screen real estate by combining the Navigation toolbar with the File/Edit/View/Go… toolbar. How did you do that.
September 1st, 2006 at 0:47
Hi
September 19th, 2006 at 12:54
**raises an eyebrow**… Hi back :)
September 19th, 2006 at 19:12
[…] [learn more about throbber bookmark.] […]
October 1st, 2006 at 17:27
Would it not be easier to create a shortcut to firefox with all your URL’s in the command line and then put it in your startup menu or, if you have a programable keyboard or builting quicklaunch keys on your laptop, assign that shortcut to a button.
October 13th, 2006 at 10:37
FYI,
Theres a new Firefox extension called “Bring The Porn”. Kind of like Stumbleupon but with lots more features for porn. You can scrape media clips and save them to your online gallery - amongst other cool things. Check it out:
www.bringtheporn.com
September 8th, 2007 at 1:26