Today we will talk about visual bookmarks for browsers. I will tell you what they are, what they are for, how to install them in your browser, and why such bookmarks are better than regular text bookmarks.
Described below, step by step and in pictures, visual bookmarks work in the most popular Internet browsers today - Google Chrome and Mozilla. Naturally, all other browsers using the same engines (Blink - new Opera, Yandex.Browser, SRWare Iron... and Gecko - Pale Moon, CometBird, SeaMonkey...) also wonderfully and fully support this very necessary, high-quality addition.
Today I will also teach you how to save (and restore) your visual bookmarks, for example, in case of a sudden death of the operating system, as well as synchronize them between different browsers. Yes, you understood everything correctly - you can transfer (copy) these bookmarks from Google Chrome to Mozilla. We made a bookmark in one browser and it appeared in the second - very convenient and practical, I tell you.
Every browser has a bookmark feature. If you liked a site, you bookmarked it and you can return to it in a week or a year. Comfortable. But over time, dozens and even hundreds of these bookmarks accumulate - how not to get confused in them, how to remember what kind of site you saved a month ago?
Favicons (site icons) don’t help the situation much, as you can see, and these are only 11 bookmarks that I just made on purpose (since I don’t use this method of saving sites I like at all).
Browser manufacturers quickly came up with bookmark bars (usually located below the address bar). Not the best way out out of position, it seems to me. You already know how I feel about different toolbars and panels who steal workspace in browsers. And this did not make ordinary text bookmarks any more informative.
And this is where visual bookmarks come into play! These are not just bookmarks, but small images of the sites that you liked, their pictures...
You can also imagine them as windows on the Internet.
This is how they look in Mozilla Firefox.
Why are visual bookmarks better than regular text bookmarks?
With visual bookmarks, there is no need to look for hundreds of lines of small text for the page title - you see this page right away! Before your brain even has time to turn on, you have already found the desired bookmark and clicked on the picture to go to the site.
Visual bookmarks can be easily sorted into groups (tabs) - for example, “Movies”, “Cooking”, “Auto”, “Mom’s”, “Dad’s”...
You can also update, change, delete, add, move from group to group or higher and lower in the browser window... in short, sort and mock them as you please.
I think you get the point - such bookmarks are more informative, more convenient, more practical, more attractive... the usual and boring bookmarks built into the browser. They are simple, clearer!
What are visual bookmarks?
Visual bookmarks first appeared in the Opera browser (2007) and they were called Speed Dial. Users liked this concept of saving popular pages so much that very soon all other browsers (except Internet Explorer, of course) acquired many add-ons and extensions that implement a similar function.
I have already described such additions in detail in the articles “ 6 Must-Have Mozilla Firefox Add-ons" And " Top extensions for Google Chrome» .
In addition to add-ons and extensions to browsers, entire visual bookmarking services have appeared on the Internet. For example, top-page and onlinezakladki. But, firstly, the method of distributing the first service is very reminiscent of forced imposition (yeah, remember Yandex.Bar?).
This is what they write about him on the Internet - “What kind of crap is this - top-page...”, “How to remove the sinister top-page from the home page...”, “[email protected]: help me how to remove the top-page...”, "How to remove top-page in Windows...". These are excerpts from the first page of search engine results for the query “top-page”!
The “prevalence” of this service is easily explained - for its advertising and positive reviews they pay money about him. They also contacted me and offered to describe it for a fee. Refused - reputation is more important than any money!
And secondly, all these services are very friendly with Yandex. All have a permanently built-in search bar on half the screen from this search engine! By the way, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that this is my attitude towards this company.
So, don't be greedy - here at this link You will be taken to the page of visual bookmarks from Yandex for Google Chrome. But! The number of settings (or rather the lack thereof) is simply amazing. You won’t be able to remove the search bar from half the screen, and a more or less decent view of the bookmarks is obtained only when the number of windows is 7 by 3 = 21. Only 21 bookmarks! No groups or tabs! You can, of course, set the maximum available number of bookmarks (48), but you won’t be able to view anything in them.
And here it is Yandex visual bookmarks for Mozilla. Here things are a little better - you can even remove the search bar (monstrous and frightening generosity from Yandex)! A little more variety of backgrounds... but only 25 windows for bookmarks! Of course, without groups and tabs!
So as not to deprive you of the opportunity to choose I provide a link to the review article about similar bookmarking services. Read, choose, swear, spit, delete and read on.
From all of the above, I think you understand that this is not our choice! What is ours like?
FVD Speed Dial - the best visual bookmarks for the most popular browsers
You can download this extension via direct official link- it will be installed immediately in Google Chrome.
As you can see from the video, this extension has a lot of settings, you can easily customize it for yourself...
In the “View” setting, you can give your visual bookmarks a 3D effect.
You can adjust the size and color of the fonts, set your own background color or even insert any photo instead of the background, change the number of columns and the size of the windows. You can also bookmark the password!…
You can even make an additional widget panel, but I didn’t see the need for it ( There are few widgets and they are all “boring”) and disabled this feature.
On the left there is a panel with quick access to the services of the “good corporation” - I also disabled it in the settings, which can be found in the drop-down panel on the right and at the top...
...it can be hidden...
A window like this will appear in your bookmarks...
Click on it and take a picture of the site (screenshot) using your camera...
You can carry a camera by the green cross.
You can adjust your bookmarks at any time...
In the same window you can create new groups of bookmarks.
FVD Speed Dials for Mozilla Firefox are absolutely the same in settings and use - here is the link to this add-on.
In any browser you can add your favorite site to bookmarks and return to it at any time without unnecessary searches. Convenient enough. But over time, quite a lot of such bookmarks can accumulate and finding the desired web page becomes difficult. In this case, visual bookmarks can save the situation - small miniatures of Internet pages placed in a certain place in the browser or control panel.
Internet Explorer (IE) has three ways to organize visual bookmarks. Let's look at each of them.
For operating systems Windows 8, Windows 10, it is possible to save and visualize a web page as an application, and then place its shortcut on the Windows start screen. To do this, you need to follow the following steps.
- Open the Internet Explorer web browser (using IE 11 as an example) and go to the site you want to pin
- In the upper right corner of the browser, click the icon Service in the form of a gear (or the key combination Alt+X), and then select the item Add a site to the list of applications
- In the window that opens, click the button Add
- After that, click the button Start and in the menu bar find the site you added earlier. Right-click on it and select Pin to Start Screen
- As a result, a bookmark to the desired web page will appear in the tiled quick access menu
Organizing visual bookmarks through Yandex elements
Visual bookmarks from Yandex are another way to organize work with your bookmarks. This method is quite fast, since you just need to download, install and configure Yandex elements. To do this, follow these steps.
- Open Internet Explorer (using IE 11 as an example) and go to the site
- Click the button Install
- In the dialog box, click the button Execute, and then the button Install(you will need to enter the PC administrator password) in the application installation wizard dialog box
- After the installation process is complete, restart your browser
- Next, click on the button that appears at the bottom of the web browser
- Click the button Enable all to activate visual bookmarks and Yandex elements, and then the button Ready
Organizing visual bookmarks through an online service
Visual bookmarks for IE can also be organized through various online services. The main advantage of this option for visualizing bookmarks is its complete independence from the web browser. Among such services, we can note such sites as, as well as, with the help of which you can quickly and easily add visual bookmarks to the Internet Explorer browser, group them, change, delete, and the like, completely free of charge.
It is worth noting that in order to use online services for organizing visual bookmarks you will need to go through the registration procedure
Yandex elements are used not only in the browser of the same name: they are successfully integrated as add-ons into other browsers, even into the standard Internet Explorer, which is not very popular. If you do work with it, then the question arises of optimizing your work with it. For example, you can and should download convenient visual bookmarks that are easy to customize.
Where can I download Yandex Elements for Internet Explorer? We will answer this question and also tell you how to configure them and remove them if necessary.
Features of Yandex Elements
This is a plugin that expands the standard set of browser functions and makes working with it more comfortable and convenient. What exactly does it give?
- Visual bookmarks with all kinds of settings. You can determine the number of cells, the background of the start page and other things.
- Smart line for maximum effective search.
- Translation tools.
- Synchronization.
- Add-ons for music, weather forecast and more.
Yandex elements previously (before 2012, in particular) had a different name: Yandex Bar.
Installation
You can download Yandex Elements directly from the company’s official website. It doesn’t matter which browser you use them on. They are installed as a separate program.
1.Open Internet Explorer and paste the following link into the address bar: https://element.yandex.ru/.
2.Click on the yellow “Install” button.
3.In a small window, left-click on the “Run” item.
4.The installer will open. Remove or leave checkmarks next to the items as you wish. Click on “Install” and write the computer administrator password.
5.Click on “Finish” and restart the browser.
Please note that the plugin will only work if you have IE 7.0 or higher.
Settings
Now you can customize the extension for yourself. When you enable Visual Bookmarks, a separate “Settings” button will appear on the start page. By clicking on it, the user will open a small window with several parameters: everything will be intuitively simple.
1.Launch IE and click on the button at the bottom “Select settings”.
2.Select one or both items to activate. Visual Bookmarks are translated as “visual bookmarks”.
3.Click on the “Done” button.
4.Restart your browser.
Immediately after this you will see the Yandex panel at the top of the window. Right-click on any of the icons and a context menu will appear with just one item “Customize”.
5.Enable all the options you need and click on OK.
Removal
Getting rid of the extension is very easy. Elements are deleted not in the browser settings. They come as programs, so you need to go to the Programs and Features window.
1.Launch Control Panel via Start and find the Programs and Features window.
2. In the list we look for “Yandex Elements”. Right-click and select the first item “Delete”. If after some time the item disappears, this will mean that the user has deleted the object.
Yandex Elements is very easy to use. You can download them directly from the official website. With their help, you can optimize your work on the Internet, make it more convenient and faster.
3 ways to organize visual bookmarks in Internet Explorer:
1. Tiles of favorite sites on the Windows 8/8.1 start screen;
2. Visual bookmarks from Yandex;
3. Online visual bookmarking service Top-Page.Ru.
Microsoft has finally taken up the standard Windows browser and brought it to mind - Internet Explorer 11 began to work many times faster, and its Metro version has become almost the ideal browser application for working on touch screen devices. But, opening the desktop version of Internet Explorer 11, we see the asceticism of the interface. The organization of favorite sites is limited to a list of bookmarks on the browser panel and visual cells of the most frequently visited sites, which the browser generates automatically. While, for example, the Mozilla Firefox and Opera browsers have flexibly customizable express panels for visual bookmarks.
How to organize visual bookmarks in Internet Explorer? Let's look at a few ideas below.
1. Tiles of favorite sites on the Windows 8/8.1 start screen
Most likely, Microsoft deliberately wants Internet Explorer to be a minimalistic browser, radically different from many “Chrome-like” clones and assemblies based on the Mozilla Firefox engine. After all, the concept of Windows 8/8.1 provides for a kind of merging of the operating system and the Internet. Each individual site can be saved as an application and its shortcut tile can be placed on the Windows 8/8.1 start screen along with tiles for desktop programs, Metro applications, system services and folders.
Working with site bookmarks in the Metro version of Internet Explorer 11 is convenient and without additional settings.
By clicking on the star button, you will see large tiles of a collection of favorite sites that can be easily scrolled with your finger or mouse wheel. And to add a tile of a website you like to the Windows 8/8.1 start screen, just while on it, click the corresponding button - “Pin to start screen”.
A site pinned to the Windows 8/8.1 start screen in this way will open in the Metro version of Internet Explorer 11.
With the desktop version of Internet Explorer 11 you will have to tinker a little more, because in order to pin the site you like on the Windows 8/8.1 start screen, you first need to turn it into a system application. And you can do this by going to such a site and selecting the “Add site to the list of applications” option in the settings of desktop Internet Explorer.
The site will restart in a separate Internet Explorer 11 window, and its application shortcut will appear on the Windows taskbar. Now the launch tile of such an application can be easily pinned to the Windows 8/8.1 start screen by finding it (the application) in the Metro list.
Thus, you can turn the most visited sites into applications and pin them to the Windows 8/8.1 start screen, combining them into a separate group.
Browser bookmarks in a single heap with other shortcuts to the entire contents of the computer is a very original and, perhaps, promising idea, but we should not forget about the inertia of human habit - users have been working with visual browser bookmarks for too long.
2. Visual bookmarks from Yandex
Microsoft's work to improve Internet Explorer 11 did not affect the increase in the range of add-ons for it. In this regard, the standard Windows browser is seriously inferior Google browsers Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, whose stores are literally bursting with various content - add-ons, extensions, applications, games, themes that can greatly increase the functionality of these browsers or add variety to their design. The selection in the Internet Explorer 11 store is very limited. To implement an express panel of visual bookmarks in Internet Explorer, let's look for it on the Internet.
Fortunately, the search will not be complicated in any way, since in this case we will be looking for something that is often imposed on users - these are visual bookmarks from Yandex. And the easiest way to install this add-on for Internet Explorer is to enter exactly what we are looking for in the search engine.
Already in the first lines of search engine results we will see the desired offer - a site from where you can download the visual bookmarks add-on from Yandex.
Download and install the add-on on your computer.
The installed add-on must be activated in the Internet Explorer settings. Open “Settings”, then “Configure add-ons”.
Select Yandex visual bookmarks from the list of add-ons and click the “Enable” button.
With a new open tab, Internet Explorer will outwardly resemble “Yandex.Browser” - with a yellow Yandex search bar at the top and a nice express panel of visual bookmarks.
In the lower right corner of the express panel window you will see its settings, where you can select one of the proposed design themes, set the number of cells, enable or disable the bookmarks bar, etc.
3. Online visual bookmarking service Top-Page.Ru
The main advantage of online visual bookmarking services is their independence from a specific browser. You can change the browser on your computer every day, but to get access to your organized and organized visual bookmarks, you just need to log in to such an online service.
Top-Page.Ru is one of the popular online services that offers users to organize and store visual bookmarks of their favorite sites completely free of charge. You can start using Top-Page.Ru immediately after a simple registration.
Top-Page.Ru offers a small selection of background themes for the express bookmarks bar.
Quick access You can access Top-Page.Ru visual bookmarks by setting the site to the Internet Explorer home page.