Part of the ‘”energy efficient” involves saving and using power resources wisely. When using your PC saving time is saving energy. We all have a fixed budget of 24 hours a day and can’t buy anymore, so saving time is what today’s tip is all about. I shared this tip with a new ISP customer who was relatively 
new to the Internet. She was so delighted with this tip, she insisted on paying a little extra! Ding! I’ll bet you may like it too.
For our Internet experience to have any value we need a map. The Internet is a big place and being able to quickly return to important sites is very useful. Search engines like Google are helpful, but having your own personal map or bookmarks is most valuable. I enjoy using Mozilla Firefox as my primary Internet browser and the following tip is based on it.
Any kind of filing system is easy to use when there’s already folders created for what you want to file. Creating new folders is always a pain, and at the speed of our web browsing I’m doing good just to remember to create a bookmark before moving on. Sometimes a site fits into 2 or 3 categories and putting it in multiple folders is a waste of time and redundant. This technique uses bookmark tags instead of filing them into folders.
Here’s how it works in Firefox:
- When viewing a site to bookmark, double click on the star in the address bar as circled below. The first click creates a bookmark, the second one will bring up a dialog box shown in step 2.
- The edit bookmark dialogue box shows up. You want to click on the bottom right drop down arrow on the right side of the “Tags” line.
- Now the window expands revealing all the Tag goodies for us to use. You can edit the bookmark title and select a group of existing tags for this bookmark. If you want new tags, just enter them in the tag line separated by commas.
- Click Done. Now you can retrieve this good site under several different categories!
Now when you want to return to that great site, just select Bookmarks -> Tags and drill down to your site as shown below.
Now I never use the bookmark menu for anything other than getting to my tagged system of bookmarks. Normally, when I find something good, I doubleclick on the bookmark star, expand and select my tags, and done! This is my Lazy Bookmark system for Firefox. This tip is a great compliment to using RSS feeds to keep up on your favorite places.
Was this tip useful? Do you have any other shortcuts for web browsing that you use to save time (and power)? Leave your tips and questions below!
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