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BookMacster can manage the bookmarks within different web browser applications, and other Clients, including locally installed (“desktop”) apps such as Safari, Chrome and Firefox, and web (“in the cloud”) apps such as Delicious and Google Bookmarks. It also provides indpendent storage of bookmarks content in one or more Bookmarkshelf documents, which you can access from any browser. You can regularly and seamlessly import from and export to the Clients, as well as add bookmarks directly to a Bookmarkshelf while browsing the web. Finally, with the help of an Online File Syncing Service, such as a free Dropbox™ account, BookMacster can keep your bookmarks in all these browsers synchronized among multiple Macs, and BookMacster exports to Safari are compatible with iCloud, so that your managed bookmarks are available in Safari on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.
When you first launch BookMacster, you’ll be prompted to create a Bookmarkshelf and import into it the bookmarks content from one or more Clients, and optionally create an Agent or two to keep your bookmarks organized automatically. Most users will keep all of their bookmarks content in a single Bookmarkshelf, but some will prefer multiple Bookmarkshelves, for example, to keep bookmarks content from different Clients separated from each other.
After the Import, you may want to do some reorganization, then re-save and, if desired, export the content to the web browser(s).
A decision you need to make is: Do you want to sync the built-in bookmarks in your web browser Clients, or do you want to instead access bookmarks from BookMacster, as a central repository? The former is more familiar, but the latter is cleaner and more predictable. We call these different Usage Styles and, although BookMacster allows you to do it either way and switch at any time, during the initial setup you’ll have to choose the left or right path in this diagram:
If you chose to Keep bookmarks in your Client web browsers (the left-hand path in the diagram above), the next step is to Export to those Clients. Before exporting, please review your Content carefully, because after you export, this is the Content you will see in all of your Clients, and an Export is not undoable. So, after you’re sure everything looks good, click in the menu Bookmarkshelf ▸ Export.
After the Export completes you may wish to examine the built-in bookmarks in these Clients and verify that all was exported as expected. For example, in Safari, click in the menu Bookmarks ▸ Show All Bookmarks. Because the structure of Client browsers varies, not all bookmarks may be where you expect. Advanced users can adjust the mapping of bookmarks to change this.
If you want the built-in bookmarks in these Clients to be kept synchronized automatically, you may now (or later) activate appropriate Agents. To do that, click the tab Settings ▸ Agents, then the subtab Simple.
Checkboxes 1 and 3 will activate local syncing among your client browsers on this Mac. For normal, two-way syncing, tick both of them ON. If you want your bookmarks sorted (kept in alphanumerical order in each folder), also switch on checkbox 2.
Checkbox 4 is for syncing from your other Macs. We recommend letting BookMacster sync your bookmarks for a while on one Mac, to make sure you are satisfied with the organization, before syncing multiple Macs.
Agents are activated silently by Mac OS X and launch a little Worker process to do their syncing work invisibly. Therefore, you may now quit BookMacster. But if you want to see the syncing being done, you can leave the Bookmarkshelf open. When a Worker sees this, it will signal BookMacster to do the work instead.
To test syncing, add a built-in bookmark to one of your Clients. For example, in Safari, you would visit a web page and click in the menu Bookmarks ▸ Add Bookmark. After some minutes, the Agent will activate, and that new bookmark will appear in your other browser Clients.
After you’ve got all your bookmarks the way you want them on your first Mac, you can sync your bookmarks among multiple Macs. However, we recommend that you bookmark for awhile on one Mac, just to walk around a little in the new world before running up into the cloud. You may decide to reorganize your bookmarks or change some settings in BookMacster.
If you chose the right-hand path in the diagram, please jump to Use BookMacster Directly to learn how to visit bookmarks and create new bookmarks using BookMacster’s the Status Menulet, Dock Menu, Bookmarking Widgets, and/or BookMacsterize Bookmarklet.
One reason we call BookMacster The Bookmarks Master for your Mac is because, depending on how you count, it’s actually several apps in one. To give you a quick start, we’ve identified three typical Usage Styles.
Usage Style 1. You use only one web browser, such as Safari or Firefox, but you wish to add capabilities such as sorting, finding duplicates and verifying bookmarks to its built-in bookmarks storage.
Usage Style 2. You use multiple web browsers (Safari and Firefox, etc.) and wish to keep their built-in bookmarks synchronized with each other.
Usage Style 3. You want a more full-featured, cross-browser and portable replacement for the built-in bookmarks storage in your web browser(s); you may have liked URL Manager Pro and want an app like it which can support today’s browsers.
In this style, you’ll create a single Bookmarkshelf. You may add Agents to keep your bookmarks sorted, alert you of duplicates, and perform periodic verification. Although the interface in BookMacster has many advantages, you may add, delete and reorganize bookmarks in either the web browser or in BookMacster, because they will be kept synchronized whenever you open or save your Bookmarkshelf by the actions of Auto Import and Auto Export. What you see in the Bookmarkshelf is what you get in the web browser, minus whatever attributes are not supported by the web browser. Attributes supported by BookMacster which are not supported by all web browsers include Tags, Comments, Verify Results, Last Visited, Visit Count, and Shortcuts.
You use more than one web browser regularly. For example, you use both Safari and Firefox. You realize that each browser has its own built-in bookmarks which gets added to when you Add Bookmark. You can live with the limitations of each browser’s built-in bookmarks and would simply like to see bookmarks created in one web browser propagated to the other(s) within a reasonable time. You’re not too fussy about Safari’s Bookmarks Menu vs. Chrome’s Other Bookmarks and other subtleties. So you’ll create a Combined Bookmarkshelf which will Import changes detected from browsers you have listed among its Clients. This can be done either manually, or triggered by Agents. After an Import, in the Bookmarkshelf, you may want to move bookmarks, delete bookmarks and/or perform other maintenance operations such as sort, find duplicates, and verify. Then, again either manually or in an Agent’s Commands, you’ll Save the Bookmarkshelf and Export to all the browsers.
You recognize that, although some web browsers have more better bookmarking capability than others, it’s better to let the browser stick to browsing and allow BookMacster to store your bookmarks. You generally don’t use the browser’s built-in bookmarks. After the initial Import from your web browser(s), you add bookmarks directly to your single Bookmarkshelf while browsing using a bookmarking widget or BookMacsterize Bookmarklet, and visit bookmarked sites directly from BookMacster. To visit a bookmark, in addition to keeping a Bookmarkshelf window open in the background and doubleclicking on a bookmark, you can also use BookMacster’s Status Menulet or its Dock Menu. This is actually the simplest of the three styles, since you have no concern with synchronization and remapping between different bookmarks storage formats. You Import only once in a lifetime, and never Export.
The examples shown above are typical, but arbitrary and in fact you can mix, combine, and switch Usage Styles. For example, a variation on Usage Style 1 is to use more than one web browser and keep each browsers’ bookmarks in a separate Bookmarkshelf. Or you can wake up one day and decide to combine all of your bookmarks into a single Bookmarkshelf, in effect switching into Usage Style 2. Or, even if you have chosen Usage Style 3 and no longer even look at the built-in bookmarks collections in Safari or Firefox, you can at any time Export your all or part of collection to a web browser, or to a loose bookmarks file which you can send it to a friend.
If you’d like to know what a control does or what a label means, hover your mouse over it for a few seconds and the answer may appear in a yellow box called a tooltip.
The content items in BookMacster’s tables and outlines have contextual menus, which provide access to many of the commands pertaining to an item. To access the contextual menu for an item, click the item using a secondary click.
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