Mac Bookmark Management

[Bryan Davis]

Tidbits compilation, part 2:

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More Bookmarks than Books, Part II
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  by Adam C. Engst <ace at tidbits.com>

  This article is the second part of my look at bookmark management
  utilities. In TidBITS-323_ last week, I looked at utilities that
  offer their own interfaces. This week I'm changing gears and
  investigating bookmark managers that rely on the Finder to
  organize, categorize, and search through your bookmarks. A few
  additional programs have straggled in since last week, so look for
  the third part of this article in the next issue of TidBITS,
  covering everything I missed in the first two parts.


**CyberFinder 2.0** -- Aladdin Systems' $30 CyberFinder control
  panel (with a 15-day fully functional demo) is completely
  integrated into the Finder, so your bookmarks appear to be files
  in Finder windows. CyberFinder can create "libraries" that look
  like folders in the Finder, and you can store bookmarks for all
  the common URL schemes in these libraries. Creating new bookmarks
  is a matter of either grabbing a URL from any application with a
  user-defined hot key, or pressing Shift and choosing New Bookmark
  from the Finder's File menu. Replacing Shift with Control toggles
  that item to New Library. You launch URLs by double-clicking the
  bookmarks in the Finder, or by selecting a URL in any application
  and pressing another user-defined hot key. The actual URL is
  accessible if you select the bookmark and choose Get Info from the
  Finder's File menu.

  CyberFinder's power is undeniable, since it piggybacks on the
  Finder's sorting and searching capabilities, and there are some
  nice touches, such as opening bookmark files from a variety of Web
  browsers as libraries (which makes moving to CyberFinder easier).
  CyberFinder's ease of use is very good, but it also inherits the
  Finder's clunkiness. In addition, some utilities, like Now Menus,
  don't see CyberFinder libraries as Macintosh folders, although I
  circumvent that problem by storing bookmarks in true folders
  rather than libraries, trading the larger file size of individual
  files in the Finder for the flexibility offered by Now Menus.
  CyberFinder has two notable problems: its bookmarks aren't
  available unless the control panel is loaded (but see URL Clerk
  below), and it can't grab the <TITLE> tag from a Web page if
  you're snagging a URL from a Web browser. Overall, however,
  CyberFinder is my pick for the best and most flexible of the
  bookmark managers.

<http://www.aladdinsys.com/cfintro.htm>


**DropURL** -- Perhaps the simplest of the bookmark utilities that
  rely on the Finder for their database work, Peter Marks's
  <peterm at jolt.mpx.com.au> free DropURL 1.1 uses Internet Config to
  launch a URL listed in the first line of a text file dropped on
  DropURL. If you change the creator of the text file to "DURL" (a
  utility to do this is included), you can double-click the file to
  launch its URL. Only the first line is used, so any additional
  lines are available for comments or descriptions. DropURL has no
  capabilities for easily capturing URLs or creating these text
  files - that's all up to you.

<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/inet/drop-url-11.hqx>


**Duke of URL** -- Although it uses the Finder for all database
  work, the postcardware Duke of URL 1.0 is unique in a number of
  ways. It works only with Netscape and saves a URL launcher of the
  current Netscape page as a mini AppleScript application. You must
  activate Duke of URL manually by launching it for each page you
  wish to record, and it's quite slow to work, both in saving URLs
  and launching them. In part because it relies on the Finder and
  AppleScript, Duke of URL ends up not being particularly usable in
  comparison to many other options.

<http://www.kei.com/duke-of-url/>


**NetSnagger** -- Rod Morehead's free NetSnagger 1.1b3 sports only
  two features. It lets you create Launchers, which are NetSnagger
  files you can double-click in the Finder in order to launch the
  URL associated with them. It also lets you create Draggers, which
  are NetSnagger windows that facilitate retrieval of files stored
  at Info-Mac and UMich mirror sites. You open a Dragger window to a
  specific mirror, then drag the partial URL to a file (say, from an
  Info-Mac Digest) into that window. NetSnagger works with Internet
  Config to retrieve the file, or, if you're using a Launcher, to
  launch the appropriate URL with your preferred Web browser.
  Creating Launchers and Draggers is a bit clumsy, but using them is
  relatively easy. All sorting and searching of Launchers relies on
  the Finder, and although it's nowhere near as useful or elegant as
  CyberFinder, NetSnagger is an application and it's free.

<http://rampages.onramp.net/~rmore/netsnagger.html>


**URL Clerk** -- The freeware URL Clerk 1.1 <jeffp at dorsai.org>
  offers a few features not found in other Finder-using bookmark
  launchers. URLs (one per file) are stored in text files URL Clerk
  can create for you if you drop an appropriate text file or
  clipping file onto the included Bookmarker application. Another
  option lets URL Clerk convert text or clipping files automatically
  to its bookmark format after launching them. It can launch
  CyberFinder bookmarks, which might be handy if you normally use
  CyberFinder but don't have it loaded. Unfortunately, as with many
  of the Finder-based bookmark managers, there's no easy way to
  create URL Clerk bookmark files - you must do it manually in one
  of a few different ways. Double-clicking any URL Clerk bookmark
  launches URL Clerk, which in turn launches the URL in the Internet
  Config-specified helper application. URL Clerk is simple, but ends
  up being so simple that it's mostly useful to CyberFinder users.

<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/inet/url-clerk-11.hqx>


**Web ShortCuts** -- WhollyMac's $18 (with a 15-day trial) Web
  ShortCuts 1.0 relies on the Finder for all of its searching,
  sorting, and organizing. Its main claim to fame is that it lets
  you create an icon for the Finder file that holds a URL. Creating
  the icon is as simple as selecting something onscreen, although
  the entire process requires copying a URL, switching to Web
  ShortCuts, choosing New from the File menu, pasting in the URL,
  clicking the Clip Image button, selecting an image to turn into an
  icon, clicking the Save As button, and finally naming and saving
  the file in a Standard File dialog. Launching a URL is far easier
  - you can either double-click it or, if you're running Netscape,
  you can simply drag the icon from the Finder into the Netscape
  window. Despite the clever icon grabbing feature, Web ShortCuts
  just doesn't seem sufficiently easy, nor does it offer much over
  free programs like NetSnagger.

<http://www.whollymac.com/wholymac.html#Web ShortCuts>


**My Pick** -- I'm slightly surprised by my final choice of
  bookmark managers. Despite the fact I feel increasingly hampered
  by the Finder, after testing all of the bookmark managers I've
  looked at for these articles, I settled on Aladdin's CyberFinder,
  although I use it in a specific manner. I created a Web URLs
  folder, and using Now Menus, gave it an icon in my menubar so it's
  available all the time. Within that folder, I created yet more
  folders, including one called Unfiled URLs, and I set CyberFinder
  to save all snagged URLs to that folder. When I capture a new URL,
  I immediately open the Unfiled URLs folder from my iconic Web URLs
  menu. I then name the file appropriately, and using the feature of
  Now Menus that lets you drag files into a hierarchical folder that
  Now Menus has created, move the bookmark into the appropriate
  folder. I also keep a To Check Out folder toggled open within the
  Unfiled URLs folder, so if I grab a URL quickly without knowing if
  it will be worth keeping, I stuff it in the To Check Out folder
  for later perusal. Even better, since I can use Now Menus to
  assign keyboard shortcuts to menu items, I can now go to Yahoo or
  Alta Vista or a couple of other sites with a press of a key, no
  matter what I'm doing. Although the Finder can be slow and clumsy,
  CyberFinder turned out to be the best solution for me.

  To be complete, I also like Casey Fleser's ClipFiler FKEY, since
  it's a great way to stuff random bits of text into a SimpleText
  file. I haven't quite decided if I plan to use ClipFiler or
  WebArranger for this task, since after Matt Neuburg's article
  about WebArranger in TidBITS-313_, Tonya and I sat down and
  figured out more about how WebArranger works (and it's very cool,
  if you can get past the massive confusions). Another possibility
  is a future version of MailKeeper, if it makes it easier to
  recategorize text and generally improves the interface.

  Tune in next week for a grab-bag of the various programs that
  escaped my notice the first time around, along with a few
  additional tips and techniques.


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Bryan Davis, Assistant Director                 Cedar Rapids Public Library
davis at crpl.cedar-rapids.lib.ia.us                        319-398-5124 voice
                                                       Luck follows effort.
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