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Take Your Bookmarks Anywhere

Joe Rybicki — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 10:03:46 -0600

If you're anything like us, chances are good you use bookmarks as a memory aid. Researching stories, digging through recipes, planning vacations -- it's easy to amass substantial collections of fairly important links that you might want to refer back to at any moment.

Trouble is, most of us don’t spend all day in front of just one Web browser. And the more we switch between devices, the more important it becomes to keep all those bookmark lists in sync.

Difficulty level:
Easy

What you need:
> Open-source Web browser Firefox (free, www.mozilla.com)
> Foxmarks extension for Firefox (free, addons.mozilla.org)
> Safari (free, www.apple.com)
> Bookdog for Safari (free 14-day trial, $19.95 to buy, www.sheepsystems.com)

METHOD ONE: FIREFOX

1. Get Foxy

If you don't already have a copy of Firefox, you'll want to download the latest version and install it. We're starting with Firefox because of its amazing library of useful add-ons -- bookmark syncing is just one of the many nifty things you can do with this flexible piece of software. Anyway, if this is your first time using Firefox, choose File > Import to import all your Safari bookmarks and such.

Step 1: We think Firefox (especially considering all the add-ons) does make the Web better, but your mileage may vary.

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2. Bolt It On

Once you've got Firefox installed and running, choose Tools > Add-ons to bring up the Extensions window. Select the Get Add-ons tab and type "foxmarks" in the search bar. Select Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer and click the Add To Firefox button, then the Install Now button once it becomes available. Restart Firefox, and a Foxmarks window will pop up. Follow the instructions to sign up for a new account and upload your bookmarks.

Step 2: Find Foxmarks Bookmark Syncronizer in Tools > Add-ons > Get Add-ons.

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3. Go About Your Business

From now on, Foxmarks will sync your bookmarks with the server's on a regular schedule, transparently and smoothly. So all you need to do is add bookmarks as you normally do, and they'll be updated on the server automatically. Or you can Control-click on the Foxmarks icon in the lower-right corner of your Firefox screen to sync manually.

Step 3: Force a Foxmarks sync by clicking the little icon at the bottom-right. (Click to embiggen!)

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4. Spread the Love

Now that all your bookmarks are stored in a nice central location, you can keep your various machines in sync by installing Foxmarks on any machine you use on a regular basis. But maybe you only want to share some of your bookmarks. No problem. Go to Tools > Foxmarks > Foxmarks Settings and choose the Profiles tab. Click the My.Foxmarks.Com button to set up different profiles and associated bookmarks, then click the Change button to choose which profile you want to sync with which location.

Step 4: If you don't want your strictly work-related bookmarks synced to your home machine, tweak the Profiles settings.

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5. Take This Show on the Road

But what if you don't have the ability to install Firefox and Foxmarks on a machine? Maybe you're on a locked-down work PC, or a portable device. No problem! Just head to my.foxmarks.com from any browser, log in, and you'll have access to your full bookmark selection. The page even formats itself like an iPhone App if it detects Safari Mobile as the browser; if that's your setup, we recommend tapping the Plus sign and adding a direct link to your home screen.

Step 5: When you log in to my.foxmarks.com from your iPhone, your bookmarks are easy to navigate.

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METHOD TWO: SAFARI

1. Delicious is Golden

Bookmark syncing is definitely a breeze with Firefox. But if you simply can't bear to leave Safari behind, you're not completely out of luck. First, download and install bookmark manager Bookdog. Fire it up and choose File > Web Service > del.icio.us. Assuming you don't have a Delicious account, click New to sign up and follow the directions in Safari.

Now switch back to Bookdog, enter your account name and password, and click Log In. Once login is complete, choose File > New Migration/Synchronization. Make sure Safari is selected on the left, and your Delicious account on the right. Choose Bilaterally as the sync type, and make sure to check the box to translate Safari folder names into Delicious tags.

Step 1: Bookdog can keep Safari synced with Delicious, an online social-bookmarking service. (Click to embiggen!)

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2. All Access

Now you can access all your current Safari bookmarks by visiting Delicious from any browser and logging in. Mobile phone users can access their bookmarks through www.mobilicio.us, and iPhone owners can download an App called Bookmarks (iTunes Store link) to gain full access to Delicious. There's just one problem: Any new bookmarks you create in Safari won't transfer to Delicious automatically.

Step 2: Once your Safari bookmarks are synced with Delicious, you can access them from any Web browser on any machine.

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3. Get Regular

Fortunately, the developer of Bookdog has written an AppleScript that lets you schedule a daily sync. Head back to the Bookdog page and grab the ZIP file of sample AppleScripts (link is to a ZIP file) the developer has put together. Unzip it and start up the Bookdog Migration Scheduler. Click Schedule, then OK. This will open up a synchronization window in Bookdog. Verify that the settings are the same as in Step 1. Now switch back to the AppleScript, click OK, verify the location of your Bookdog installation, and select the time to run the synchronization. Now comes the best part: wondering how you ever got by without instant access to all your bookmarks.

Step 3: Schedule a daily sync by downloading and running an AppleScript.

Adobe Dreamweaver CS3

Niko Coucouvanis — Thu, 31 May 2007 15:48:34 -0500

Dreamweaver CS3's new time-saving Browser Compatibility Check lets you check your site on different Web browsers without having to fire up each one.

Now that Dreamweaver has officially ousted GoLive as the favored app among Adobe's WYSIWYG Web tools, the question shifts from which app will earn its place in CS3 to whether the company will foul up Dreamweaver's traditional interface with the familiar Photoshop-style dressing that never really worked for GoLive. Happily, the answer to that second question is no - or not much, anyway. Native support for Intel-powered Macs is CS3's main draw, along with a new form of drag-and-drop eye candy, a slick image importer, and thankfully, no drastic interface makeover or other humiliating Adobe initiation. Dreamweaver looks more like its old self than it does the other CS3 apps.

Dreamweaver veterans will feel right at home in the new version, which retains key interface elements that we've grown to know and love: the Inspector and Insert palettes; a choice of Code, Design, or Split screen view; and thankfully savable Workspace Layouts so we can work in a kit that's streamlined for the task at hand. Dreamweaver's traditional respect for HTML and other coding remains, and the CSS support is better than ever, with a rejiggered CSS Styles palette that includes the CSS Properties, which used to live in a separate palette.

Photoshop has always been a click away from Dreamweaver's Inspector palette via the Edit In Photoshop button, and CS3 brings a slick new way of getting your roughs and comps shaped up and in place quickly. For example, you can select part of an image in Photoshop - in any format, even one with multiple layers - and then copy (Edit > Copy Merged to get multiple layers) and paste it into a Dreamweaver document. The smart new inline optimizer helps you turn it into a GIF or JPEG. Otherwise, the Properties inspector sports the same basic tools (Optimize, Crop, Resample, Brightness and Contrast, and Sharpen) that it's had for years. We expected more, but the paste importer is undeniably awesome.

The other marquee feature is Adobe's new Spry framework. If you've been waiting for an easy way to learn and use Ajax, Spry is it. Ajax (aka Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is the DHTML of Web 2.0. More of a technique of mixing Web technologies than a standard unto itself, Ajax combines the power of databased information with the immediacy of client-side script action. If reading that sentence made your head hurt, don't worry: Dreamweaver includes prefab Spry modules that you can customize via visual sliders in the Properties inspector - then you can peruse the underlying code to start learning how to create your own Ajax and Spry elements. Of course, serious developers will bypass the prefabs and create their own (if they don't bypass Dreamweaver altogether). As the Web and its tools mature, the divide between Joe Sixpack's paintball homepage and useful, data-driven sites is getting wider, and new apps like iWeb are taking over the low end, while high-end developers hack Ajax by hand.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are just a few clicks away in Dreamweaver CS3. The software comes with customizable CSS templates.

Buying Dreamweaver solo for $399 is a tough sell for most consumers, but the app is more stable than ever - which is to say it only crashed on us a couple of times in heavy, nonstandard use. Plus, Dreamweaver remains an excellent way to learn the technology behind the Web's pretty fluff. If you're not down with paying the piper for this easy education, there are cheaper ways to learn, but none are easier.

The bottom line. If your Mac has Intel inside and you make your bacon with Dreamweaver, CS3 will pay for itself. But if you're reasonably happy using one of the previous two versions of Dreamweaver (MX or MX 2004, aka version 8), hold off until you get a new Mac or Adobe adds fancier shizzle to Dreamweaver's WYSIWYizzle.

COMPANY: Adobe
CONTACT: www.adobe.com
PRICE: $399 à la carte, $199 upgrade, available in four CS3 bundles ($999 to $2,499)
REQUIREMENTS: G4, G5, or multicore Intel processor; Mac OS 10.4.8 or later; 512MB RAM; 1.4GB disk space
More Photoshop integration. Spry, which is drag-and-drop Ajax bling. Universal binary.
Not many new features for the money. GoLive's dead - if that counts as a bad thing.

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BONUS TIP (obituary, actually...): Whither GoLive?

Macromedia (Dreamweaver's original developer) may have lost the war when Adobe bought the company in 2005, but Dreamweaver won its epic battle with Adobe's GoLive for King of WYSIWYG Web tools. CS2 was GoLive's last stand, but Dreamweaver CS3 comes with a GoLive extension for exporting old sites into a Dreamweaver-compatible format.

Glance

Rob Buckley — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:18:42 -0500

The Session Information window tells you all you need to know, with Email and Copy buttons providing ways to pass your information to others.

Glance is a service that enables you to let others watch your screen over the Internet. In one sense, it's far from unique - Apple's own Remote Desktop offers screen sharing and control, for example. But Glance doesn't require your friends or colleagues to install any software, and it works whether the viewer uses Mac OS X, Windows, or Linux.

The service costs about $50 per month, and up to 15 computers can view your screen simultaneously (a corporate account for multiple users is $119 per month). That's relatively affordable, considering that WebEx, a popular online meeting service, charges 33 cents per minute per user for its Pay-Per-Use meetings - that means a one-hour, three-person meeting can cost nearly $60, not including WebEx teleconferencing.

After signing up, you enter a password and a username that'll be used as the gathering point: If your username is MacLife, for example, you'd tell everyone to head to maclife.glance.net. If you're hosting an event, you can download the Glance application for Mac OS X. (Incidentally, there's a Windows version too, but Linux users have to content themselves with being attendees; they can't host a Glance session.) When you want to share a screen for a meeting, you launch the application and select the Start Session command. Once meeting participants arrive at the gathering point, they must enter a randomly generated key provided by you, and then click the Join Session button. Presto, they can see whatever's on your screen, regardless of what operating system they're using.

In practice, Glance works just fine. We were able to connect to Web conferences from behind firewalls, NAT routers, and other network interferences. We could even join and host conferences with other people on the same network, something that usually causes headaches. All the same, the Glance application has various advanced settings for problematic network setups.

The Mac Glance app is streamlined and uncluttered, but keyboard shortcuts for menu items would be helpful. Glance doesn't have true Web-conferencing features, so you'll have to rely on iChat or another app for two-way communication. It also doesn't allow anyone to take control of the watched computer remotely, making it less useful for technical support. Restricting Mac users to the Safari browser is also slightly irritating.

We also tested the system with Windows clients and Windows hosts, as well as a SUSE Linux client, and again, there were no problems that we could find. The Windows client did require a few nudges, with a pop-up not appearing when we needed it, and it also required us to download a Glance viewer application.

The bottom line. If you're a small business, consultant, or an educator who needs to perform onscreen demos on a regular basis, Glance is a convenient way to meet via the Internet.

COMPANY: Glance Networks
CONTACT: www.glance.net
PRICE: $49.95 per month, or $499 per year
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3.9 or later, Safari, broadband connection
Easy to use. Works with Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. Universal binary.
No keyboard shortcuts. No Web conferencing functions. You must use Safari.

Adium 1.0.3

Rob Buckley — Fri, 18 May 2007 22:05:29 -0500

Most aspects of Adium's interface can be customized via a quick trip to the application's Preferences.

You can't help but love the convenience of instant messaging, but what we hate are the numerous services available, each with its own client that's not cross-compatible with the others. With Adium, you can use your AIM, iChat, .Mac, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Jabber, Google Talk, and other IM services through a single interface. Once signed in to each relevant service (a process that's automated once you've defined accounts and changed your status in the Contacts window), your list of contacts is presented, and from that point onward, Adium works like any other chat client.

The convenience and stability of Adium can't be overstated, and its developers have also ensured that you have a pleasant experience with it. The customizable interface is a joy to use - you can replace icons, change the message window's appearance, define event sounds, add custom status messages, and more. The Xtras website (www.adiumxtras.com) offers downloadable components, although for most users, the built-in sets should suffice.

Adium isn't perfect. Video and audio chats aren't supported, and the developers note that they may never be. But since the app is free, we're not making much of our AV complaint. The fact that Adium conveniently lets you use multiple IM accounts without any hitches and with a lot of customizable features is enough to make up for the missing video and audio chats.

The bottom line. For Mac users sick of juggling multiple IM accounts, Adium is an essential download.

COMPANY: Adium
CONTACT: www.adiumx.com
PRICE: Free
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3.9 or later
Supports multiple IM services. User-friendly interface. Solid, reliable, and stable. Customizable. Universal binary.
No video support. No audio chat functionality.