Bookmarking our favorite websites or something interesting we found on on Internet is a thing all of us do. This feature that all web browsers have has allowed us to get rid of the old text file filled with links and move toward something much more integrated and customizable. We can now organize bookmarks, share them and even Import and Export them to other browsers or computers.
What is a bookmark?
In the olden days, bookmarks were considered anything you could stick between the pages of a book to help you remember what page you were on. Later on, when the age of the Internet came, books were starting to appear in electronic form. The old-school bookmark remained, but not in a physical form, but in the form of an electronic tag that gives you the same information as the real one. Internet bookmarks are in a sense, the same thing, but they do not remember a specific page, but a web address (a URL).
Why are bookmarks important?
Without lingering too much on the obvious reasons, bookmarks allow you to return to a page from the web by remembering its address. They are a great means for keeping information close to you and they eliminate the time required to find a piece of information you have visited in the past.
How to Move Bookmarks Between Computers or Browsers
The process of moving bookmarks from a computer to another and from a browser to another is much more simpler than it used to. If you move from a computer to another, or if you reinstall your OS, then you would like that information to remain. So, developers of web browsers have incorporated the option to Export your bookmarks easily and Import them when need be. Although the process is very similar in all web browsers, I’ll show you how to accomplish this for the most used web browsers on the web.
Google Chrome
Google is known for its multitude of services and for the quality that all of these have. It’s a definite sign that the web giant hasn’t forgotten the needs of its users. And Google’s web browser, Chrome (OS with its own laptops) has a very simple way to do this: automatically! Yes, that is right, Google Chrome automatically syncs all your browsing data, extensions, themes and bookmarks to your Google Account, and upon installation of the web browser, when you log in to your account, they are all there for you to enjoy. Keep in mind that you need a Google Account to accomplish this task. For those of you who do not have a Google Account, or would like to export their bookmarks to another browser, Google has implemented the Export/Import Bookmarks option in their browser. Here’s how to do it: You have successfully Imported or Exported your bookmarks to/from Google Chrome. This method works pretty good, but I prefer the Online Sync option because it eliminates all the hustle and it does all the process and much more completely automatically.
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is one of the best web browsers in the world. With a pretty big reputation, it’s no wonder that many around the world prefer it over the other web browsers. Now, the well known browser has much more to offer than what it used to. For instance, just like Google’s Chrome browser, Mozilla Firefox has the Online Sync and it works just the same as Chrome, so no need to say too much about it. As for the manual Import and Export of Bookmarks, the process is pretty simple, here’s how: It’s that simple! You can see that the process is very similar to Google’s Chrome, and you might of guessed, it will seem similar to the other web browsers.
Opera
Opera, another well known browser, and in my opinion the most user-friendly of them all, offers the same features as the ones before it. The Online Sync option which manages all the information stored on your browser and keeps it safely on Opera’s servers, from where you can Import it at any time just by logging in to your account from the browser. If you are interested in the manual Import and Export of your bookmarks, then follow these steps: From here you can manage which bookmarks you want to export or import, group them and customize your lists as you wish.
Internet Explorer
The world’s best browser for downloading other browsers still has users out there (to my surprise), and for them, the Microsoft Team has developed a pretty strange bookmark manager. Although it doesn’t look like the other managers we have featured here, its inner workings are pretty much the same, but we hope that the new IE will change our minds about this browser. For those who still remain faithful to Internet Explorer (for the love of humanity, WHY?), here is how to Import and Export your bookmarks (or Favorites as they call them), hopefully to a better browser: This is how to (hopefully) Export your bookmarks from Internet Explorer. Although I don’t see why anyone would still use this web browser, there are still lots out there. Good, now, after you have your exported HTML files containing your bookmarks, you can save them to a USB flash drive or upload them to your Cloud Service (remember to have a secure Cloud Account before you add any personal information in it) and when need be, download it and Import them by following the same steps as with the Export process.
