For some reason I’m reluctant to keep adding bookmarks when I visit web pages, especially links sent by friends or places I go for research. But I have a solution I call the Q&D Desktop Bookmark.
Bookmarks are the traditional way that you remember remote web pages. Like dropping a breadcrumb, you press Ctrl+D or ⌘+D to drop a bookmark, keeping a note of that web page.
The bookmarks you create in your web browser are stored in a list of bookmarks, typically found in a Bookmarks menu. One of the great things you can do to make your web browsing life easier is to organize that list, creating folders and categories just as you organize your computer files.
If you don’t organize your bookmarks, you get into one huge bookmark mess. Bookmarks, bookmarks everywhere! It can be a mess. In fact I recommend routinely reviewing your bookmark list and pulling out those you’ve not visited in a long time.
One situation I find myself in often is visiting a site and wanting to come back to it later, but not really feeling that the site is worthy enough to bookmark. Or I’m doing researching and plowing through a list of sites I want to remember, but don’t really want to bookmark (because I know I’ll just delete the bookmark later).
The solution I’ve found in that situation is to create a desktop shortcut for the website, the Quick & Dirty Desktop Bookmark. Here’s how it works:
- Visit the web site. Click on the link, whatever. Just open the web page.
- Drag the web site’s icon from the Address bar out to the desktop.
Yeah, there’s only two steps. That’s because it’s a cinchy operation: dragging the web page’s icon (called the favicon by those in the know) creates a desktop shortcut or alias that references the web site. In fact, the shortcut icon is exactly the same thing that’s saved when you create a bookmark. The difference is that the bookmark is saved as a handy icon on the desktop.
To re-visit the website, you simply open the icon on the desktop. Ta-da! There it is. And when you’re done with whatever you were doing, you can much more easily delete the desktop icon than you can plow through a long list of saved bookmarks in your web browser.
Of course, this trick works fine for me because I’m a desktop icon minimalist; I do not clutter my desktop background with a host of icons. Yeah, I have a few, but not the armada of icons that some people have. I suppose if you’re in that position, then the Q&D Desktop Bookmark trick might not work best for you, but it remains an interesting and useful option.
