The new computers teachers receive this year are PCs and, consequently, won’t feature Safari as the main web browser. The problem is that many teachers have a number of bookmarks saved in Safari and want them to travel with them to their new computer. This post suggests 2 solutions.
First a quick primer on browsers. The 3 most popular browsers are IE, Firefox, and Safari. My personal favorite is Firefox because you can use something called “addons”. What’s an addon? A way to make your browser do anything you want. Want Firefox to become a music player? A photobook? A sketchpad? Walk your dog and make dinner? There’s an addon for everything. Firefox can be download (both for mac and pc) at www.firefox.com.
Our new teacher computers come with IE. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to import your safari bookmarks into IE. There are easy ways to import bookmarks into Firefox. The second solution I present will allow you to (with an added step) get book marks from safari, to firefox, and then to IE if you want.
1st Solution: Simple export and import.
- While using your Mac, start Safari. At the top of the Safari window select the Filemenu, and click Export Bookmarks.
- Transfer the file to your new computer (you can save it in your “documents” folder of you mac and then transfer it during the data migration. Or you can save it to a USB drive, disk, etc.)
- On your new (pc) computer, download and install Firefox. Once installed, start Firefox. At the top of the Firefox window, select the Bookmarks menu, and select Organize Bookmarks…. The Library window will open.
- In the Library window, click on , and click Import HTML…. The Import Wizard for bookmarks will open.
- Select From an HTML File and click .
- You can then select the file you saved from Safari.
That’s it! Safari bookmarks are now in your Firefox bookmarks.
2nd Solution: Using Delicious
You can follow the same steps in the 1st solution and then add Delicious. Or you can download firefox on the Mac, add delicious, and not worry about the 1st solution. Regardless of your choice, this solution walks through using Delicious.
What is Delicious? It’s a social bookmarking program that allows you to save bookmarks across many computers using 1 account. It’s VERY HANDY for saving bookmarks and I highly suggest using it.
To install delicious on your firefox:
- Open Firefox
- Go to: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3615
- Click “add to Firefox” and then “install now”.
- Restart Firefox
You’ll need to create an account on delicious before you can use it, but the steps are pretty straight forward. To use delicious in Firefox, you have 2 main buttons.
Tag Button: This is the button you hit when you’re on a website you want to save. When you click on it you have the option of adding “tags”. Tags describe the website (i.e. “teaching” “education” “sports” etc.).
Bookmark Button: Click this button and all your bookmarks will appear on the side of your browser!
