ViewMarks offers an alternative way to organize and use your bookmarks. When you create a bookmark, a preview image is automatically captured and saved. You can then use a web page view of your bookmark folders, navigate through them, rearrange items with drag and drop, move and copy between folders, edit title, url, keywords and description, search items and of course open bookmarks and bookmark folders in the same or a new tab or in a new window. You can open different bookmark folders in different tabs and directly link to them. Missing preview images are automatically captured when opening a bookmarked web page. All preview images can also be copied to the clipboard and loaded from file.
Creating and Editing a ViewMark
You can create a boomark with preview of the web page by clicking on the dropdown arrow of the ViewMark icon in the Navigation Toolbar (or right clicking on the icon in the Status Bar) and choosing "Add ViewMark". A dialog for creating and editing ViewMarks is then displayed. By default, choosing "Bookmark This Page" from the Bookmarks dropdown menu also opens this dialog. Additionally, you can configure the Add-on to open the dialog when clicking on the star menu button in the url bar.
The elements of the dialog are from top to bottom, left to right:
The title of the bookmark.
The bookmarks folder to create the bookmark in. The default is the Bookmarks Menu, but you can choose the folder from a dropdown menu. When editing a bookmark, it can be moved between folders by changing this value.
Opens a new edit field to create a new folder below the current bookmark folder and place or move the newly created or edited bookmark or folder into it.
The preview image of the web page. Initially, the preview starts on a minumum zoom level, but you can zoom in, zoom out and pan around to choose a different clipping. The Add-on tries to detect single-colored rims and to clip them away, but you can always zoom out to see the full width of the page. There is also a growing list of definition rules for some domain names to automatically zoom in on important page elements, e.g. the displayed video on www.youtube.com.
Reload button to recapture the preview image while the dialog is open. This is useful when bookmarking a web page with changing content. A reload is also possible when editing a bookmark of a web page that is displayed at that time.
Delete button to remove the preview image. The image is replaced with a generic placeholder.
Buttons to zoom in and zoom out. When zoomin in or when the web page is higher than the default preview aspect ratio, you can pan around by clicking and dragging the image around. When editing, you cannot zoom or pan an image.
Button to load a image file from disk and replace the captured image.
Button to show an extended dialog. Here you can change and edit the page url, its description and the keywords.
Using and managing ViewMarks
You can open the web page view of your bookmark folders by clicking on the ViewMark icon in the Navigation Toolbar or the Status Bar. The view opens in a new tab. You can open a bookmark in the same tab by clicking on its preview image or open it in a new tab by middle-clicking. A new tab is also opened when you click on the image while holding the Control key (Windows and Linux) or the Command key (Mac OS X). The context menu offers additional options:
open the bookmark in a new window (unless your browser is configured to always open new tabs instead of new windows)
copy the address and preview image to the clipboard
copy or move to another folder
edit or delete the bookmark
You can also rearrange the web page view of a folder by dragging and dropping individual items around.
The header shows a breadcrumb of your navigation through the bookmark folders, where you can click on each folder name to navigate directly to it. You can also click on the breadcrumb separators to show a dropdown list of all child elements for quick selection. Additional elements in the header are:
Button to create a new subfolder in the visible folder.
Button to resize the preview images from 256 x 192 pixels to 32 x 24 pixels.
Textfield to search all bookmark titles, urls, descriptions and keywords.
Add-on Preferences
You can open the preference panes by clicking on the dropdown arrow of the ViewMark icon in the Navigation Toolbar (or right clicking on the icon in the Status Bar) and choosing "Preferences". A preference dialog is shown, consisting of five different panes:
Fetch missing thumnails automatically: A snapshot of a web page is automatically saved when you navigate to an existing bookmark. Get description from web page: A description of a newly created bookmark is taken from the web page's meta information, if present. Get keywords from web page: Keywords for a newly created bookmark are taken from the web page's meta information, if present. Insert new folder before bookmarks: When creating a new folder oder moving an existing one, the new folder is placed before any bookmarks. This way, subfolders group before bookmarks. Allow unnamed Bookmarks and Folder: You normally cannot save a bookmark without title. When checked, folders and bookmarks may be nameless. This is sometimes useful when you only want to show an icon of a bookmark in the Bookmarks Toolbar.
Background: Choose from different backgrounds for the web page view. Show border around Thumbnails Show shadow effect on Thumbnails Show most visited folder: Show a virtual folder of the most visited bookmarks. You can configure the number of bookmarks shown. Show last visited folder: Show a virtual folder of the last visited bookmarks. You can configure the number of bookmarks shown.
Show button in status bar: Show or hide the ViewMarks icon in the Status Bar. Menu "Bookmark this Page" creates ViewMark: Replaces the menu item in the Bookmarks dropdown menu to open the the ViewMarks dialog instead of the original one. This also replaces all other standard menu items for creating bookmarks (page context menu, star button and so on). Star button in address bar creates ViewMark: Creates a ViewMark with preview image instead of a normal bookmark in the Unsorted Bookmarks folder. Open menu for unsorted Bookmarks: A click on the star button normally creates an unsorted bookmark without opening a dialog. When checked, the ViewMarks dialog is opened instead. This is a quick way to create bookmarks. Open new Tabs with: Select a bookmark folder URL, new empty tabs are opened with. Choose the most or last visited virtual bookmarks folder to create a speed dial. You can also enter a URL of your own.
Automatic zoom: The Add-on tries to detect single-colored rims and to clip them away, but you can always zoom out to see the full width of the page. Content recognition: A growing list with detection rules for special web page content, e.g. the video window on www.youtube.com.
Information about the Add-on and its licensing terms.
