How can I sort my Firefox bookmarks the way IE does?

February 9, 2004 8:59 PM

Firebirdfox question. I've been trying to find a browser I like, and after playing with Opera, Mozilla, and Firebird, I settled on firefox. Now I can't figure out how to make it feel familiar, the way IE does. For starters, I would really like my bookmarks to sort the same way, directories listed first a-->z, followed by links stored in the top level also sorted a-->z. It doesn't appear to care if an imported bookmark is a directory or an actual link, and it really annoys me.

I would use opera, which I love, but using the scrolling region on my synaptics touchpad is such a big part of my workflow that I am unwilling to accept its loss. To date, I've not found a way to enable this in Opera, though installing the generic driver from synaptics fixes the same bug in Mozilla and all java based applications (for some reason dell's version of the driver doesn't like java). If anyone knows how to fix this, I'd switch to Opera in a heartbeat.

posted by Grod to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Hmm. Mozilla has a very flexible bookmark sorting tool in its bookmark manager, but Firefox doesn't have that particular feature. You could give the Mozilla Bookmark Sorter extension a try.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 9:06 PM on February 9, 2004

Careful with the Bookmark Sorter, it murdered my Personal Toolbar Folder/
posted by signal at 9:09 PM on February 9, 2004

Response by poster: OK. Gave it a try. Sorted everything nice and alphabetical. The problem is that firefox doesn't treat directories as such.
For example, in IE I have my favorites dir. In that dir I have a bunch of url's. I also have several subdirs.

Favorites
| -------- |Foo
|                 |Link1
|                 |Link 2
|                 |Link n
| ---------|Bar
|                 |Link A
|                 |Link B
|
random link 1
random link 2
random link n

Now in IE these are sorted just as directories and files are sorted in Windows Explorer, and I like that. How can I duplicate it short of manually moving little pictures of folders up and down the tree in the bookmark manager in firefox?
Thanks.
posted by Grod at 9:22 PM on February 9, 2004

Response by poster: Sorry about that, it didn't look like that on preview.
posted by Grod at 9:23 PM on February 9, 2004

This claims to be a fix for the synaptics/opera issue (and, if that doesn't work, I'd suggest asking on the opera forums).
posted by kickingtheground at 9:53 PM on February 9, 2004

Response by poster: kickingtheground,
Thanks, that works--ain't perfect, but I think I ca fix that. I still want to use Firefox, though now I'll be using Opera as well, so my original question still stands.
posted by Grod at 10:10 PM on February 9, 2004

Response by poster: Hmm, as long as I'm asking firething questions. Is there anyway to add a browse up 1 level type button like what is available in the google toolbar?
posted by Grod at 10:17 PM on February 9, 2004

googlebar.mozdev.org is where the Google toolbar for Firefox lives, and it clones all of the IE Google toolbar's functionality. You'll also want to get the Luna skin, which looks like IE.
posted by anildash at 1:50 AM on February 10, 2004

Avant browser is a 'wrapper' for IE which adds a lot more flexibility, of course it uses IE as it's engine, but if that's not an issue it's worth a look.
posted by snowgoon at 4:22 AM on February 10, 2004

Does the browser support middle-clicking opening a link in the background? I'd love to switch, but so far only Avant has given me that functionality...
posted by oissubke at 9:27 AM on February 10, 2004

It does, Oissubke. Middle-click to open a link in a new tab in the background - I live by that feature. I can't find the place in the settings where you enable it, but it's definitely in there.
posted by wanderingmind at 12:31 PM on February 10, 2004