TechDuke

Internet Explorer maintains a repository of shortcuts to your favorite websites in the Favorites folder within your user profile. Any time you discover a site that you know you’ll want to return to, you can add a shortcut to that site to the Favorites folder. To return to a favorite site, select it from the Favorites menu, from the Favorites Center, or from the Favorites submenu of your Start menu (if you set your Start menu to display Favorites).

Now the Favorites Center, which is new to Internet Explorer 7. You can display your saved Favorites in the Favorites Center in any of the following ways:

@ Click Tools, Toolbars, Favorites.

@ Press Ctrl+Shift+I.

@ Click the Favorites Center icon (the gold star to the left of the row of browser tabs).

Remember also that the Windows Vista Search index includes the contents of the Favorites folder and your browser’s history. You can find individual items from the Favorites folder by typing search terms in the Search box on the Start menu; you can also open the Favorites folder in Windows Explorer; from that window, you can use the Search box to find any individual item.

Adding Pages to Your Favorites List
Internet Explorer makes it easy to add the currently displayed webpage (or an entire group of tabs) to your Favorites. Any of the following methods will work:

@ Press Ctrl+D.

@ Click the Add to Favorites button (just above the Favorites Center) and choose Add to Favorites.

@ Pin the Favorites Center open; then drag the icon to the left of the URL in the Address bar and drop it into the Favorites bar. If you want the item to go inside an existing subfolder that isn’t open, pause your mouse pointer over the folder icon. After a half second or so, the folder will open, and you can position the item appropriately within the subfolder. After you have added a favorite in this manner, you can edit its name by right-clicking it and choosing Rename from the shortcut menu.

@ Right-click anywhere within the current page (but not on a link) and choose Add To Favorites from the shortcut menu.

If you press Ctrl+D, right-click, or use the Add a Favorite menu, the Add a Favorite dialog box (shown here) appears.

The contents of the Name box are drawn from the page title, as defined by the page designer. You can (and usually should) edit this name to make it as descriptive as possible— a small amount of effort when you create the favorite will pay off later when you’re using the Search index to find that page.

The Create In box allows you to save the new favorite within the top level of the Favorites folder, choose an existing subfolder, or create a new subfolder. It’s efficient to use subfolders to organize favorites (with each folder representing a category of your choosing). If you prefer to clean up after the fact, use the Organize Favorites command to put items into subfolders.

To finish creating the new favorite, click Add.

Adding Groups of Pages to the Favorites List
Internet Explorer 7 allows you to save groups of pages to the Favorites list in a single operation. Tab groups are actually nothing more than subfolders in the Favorites list, and saving a tab group simply saves all open tabs into the folder you specify. If you have 12 tabs open, saving the tab group creates new shortcuts for all 12 pages. To save a subset of the currently open tabs, you either have to close those tabs you don’t want to save, or save the entire group and then edit the new folder to remove the items you don’t want.

To add all open tabs to the Favorites list, click the Add To Favorites button and then click Add Tab Group To Favorites. The resulting dialog box looks similar to the one for adding an individual favorite, with the following exceptions:

@ Shortcuts to all open tabs are created and saved in a new subfolder using the name you specify in the Tab Group Name box.

@ The Create In list allows you to choose the folder in which your new subfolder will be created.

@ You can’t edit any details about the individual favorites created in your new subfolder. Each one is added using the default title as defined by the website designer.

@ If the name you enter in the Tab Group Name already exists, all currently open tabs are added to the existing group.

To open all the tabs in a tab group in the current browser window, open Favorites Center, point to the folder name, and click the blue arrow to its right.

Editing Favorites
Each favorite you create is saved as an internet shortcut in the Favorites folder within your user profile. You can edit these shortcuts the same way you would edit any other kind of shortcut. Right-click the item you want to edit (on the Favorites menu, in the Favorites Center, or in the Favorites folder) and choose Properties from the shortcut menu.

You might want to edit a favorite item for the following reasons:

@ To change the name of the favorite

@ To change its URL

@ To change its icon

@ To assign it a keyboard shortcut

@ To make it available offline or change its offline-update parameters

To change the name that appears in your Favorites menu, edit the text in the box at the top of the General tab. To change the URL, edit the URL box on the Web Document tab. To select a different icon for this shortcut, click Change Icon on the Web Document tab.

Favorites, which are internet shortcuts, can have keyboard shortcuts, just like file and folder shortcuts. Click in the Shortcut Key field and press a key combination that you want to use to open the specified page. The shortcut key you assign must consist of one character key (a letter, number, or symbol) plus at least two of the following three keys: Ctrl, Alt, and Shift. (If you press a character key only, Windows automatically adds Ctrl+Alt.) This same basic technique is used with program and document shortcuts as well.

Organizing Favorites
Internet Explorer provides a small dialog box, that you can use to add subfolders to your Favorites tree, move items between folders, rename folders and shortcuts, and delete favorites or folders. To open this dialog box, click the Add To Favorites button and then click Organize Favorites.

An easier way to organize your favorites is to use Windows Explorer. To get to the Favorites folder, click Start, click your user name at the top of the Start menu’s right column, and then click Favorites in your profile folder.

Importing, Exporting, and Sharing Favorites
Got a batch of favorites you want to share? Because Favorites are nothing more than saved internet shortcuts, you can transfer any number of favorites by copying them to whatever storage medium you prefer: a network drive, writable CD, or flash drive, for example.

For a long list of favorites, a simpler alternative is Internet Explorer’s Import/Export Wizard, which lets you save any branch of your Favorites folder tree (or the entire tree) as an HTML file (named Bookmark.htm, by default), suitable for e-mailing to a friend or co-worker, for maintaining as a backup of your Favorites folder, and for use as an alternative route to your favorite websites. To open the wizard, tap the Alt key, click File, and then click Import And Export. Follow the prompts to choose Export Favorites, select which portion of the Favorites folder you want to export, and provide a file name and location.

You can use the same command and the same wizard to merge a set of links in an HTML file into your own Favorites tree. In the first step of the wizard, choose Import Favorites. The wizard will prompt for a file name and for the branch of your current Favorites tree to which you want to import the new links.

Using Third-Party Tools to Manage Favorites
A number of free or inexpensive third-party products and web-based services are available to help you manage your favorites and expand on features in Internet Explorer.

Among the features offered by these advanced bookmark managers are the following:

@ The capability to share favorites between different computers

@ The capability to share favorites with other people, either on a public website or privately

@ The ability to annotate favorites

@ Advanced sorting and searching capabilities

@ The ability to check your favorites list periodically and flag those with unreachable URLs

If you’re interested in a more powerful bookmark manager, we recommend either of the following options:

@ Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us) bills itself as a “social bookmarking” site. After you create an account on this free service, you can publish website addresses with titles, descriptions, and tags. Your collection can be marked as private or public and can have its own RSS feed. Toolbar buttons are available as add-ons for Internet Explorer, making it easy to quickly add a bookmark to your Del.icio.us collection.

@ Windows Live Favorites (http://favorites.live.com/) is a free web-based service, operated by Microsoft. It integrates with the Windows Live Toolbar and allows you to synchronize your local Favorites with a server. The benefit is twofold: you never have to worry about backing up your Favorites folder, and if you install the service on each computer you use you can always be certain that your favorites are in sync.