The Easy Way To Manage A Mac’s Bookmarks?

I have a love hate relationship with the bookmarks on my Mac. I love them because a saved web site is just a click away. I hate them because it may take 20-minutes to find the bookmark in the first place.

Safari’s bookmark management is easy and elegant until you get a few dozen bookmark folders, each with nested folders, each with more bookmarks. Is there a solution? Yes. And no.

The Mac has plenty of bookmark managers, including a feature laden Webbla, which I think I like. Think of Webbla as iTunes or iPhoto for bookmarks.

It’s a standalone Mac utility which manages your bookmarks, features snapshots of web sites, CoverFlow style, a way to categorize and manage bookmarks, and even keep you updated when websites get updated.

Webbla is a bookmark manager on steroids and works with all the major Mac browsers.

The only problem I have is that it’s not all that convenient, especially when bookmarks reach into the hundreds.

Worse, I have a few dozen web sites that I need to log into each day. You know the routine. Find bookmark in browser. Enter login ID. Enter password. That’s too many steps.

So, I’ve come to rely on AllBookmarks more than Webbla. The former is free. The latter costs money.

Even better, AllBookmarks works in concert with one of my favorite paid applications, 1Password.

Instead of sorting through all the nested folders in Safari, or Firefox, or whatever browser, I use the AllBookmarks Menu Bar access. Click on the icon, select the bookmarks, scroll, select, done. You can navigate up and down through however many bookmarks you have.

At this point you’re saving a few navigation steps over Webbla but compared to Safari it’s a wash. Where’s the benefit?

Combined with 1Password, AllBookmarks becomes a one-click automatic login bookmark utility. Not only does it open the web page in Safari, but it also finds the login ID and password fields, and begins the login process.

That saves some time and effort. No typing necessary. That’s all well and good, right? Mostly.

There are some problems with bookmarks. While Safari, and to a lesser extent, Firefox, make browser management far easier than the olden days (last century when I was childless), bookmark management is still cumbersome, with too many utilities to get the job done.

AllBookmarks is nice because it resides in the Menu Bar, which, by the way, is now a high density residential area, a sold out condominium of various and sundry utilities. It’s crowded.

Worse, AllBookmarks claims to open and log in to sites without typing a single character in your keyboard. True, but navigation up and down through nested keyboards is a pain.

All browsers on the Mac manage bookmarks a bit differently, so I’d either like them to sync up with a click, or have a master utility which does the more important things (even while segregating bookmarks between browsers).

Easy management of many bookmarks. Easy, one click access to bookmarks. And, that click, if to a web page with a login ID and password requirement, fills it in automatically. Easier said than done.

I love 1Password. I truly adore AllBookmarks’ near elegance, even in a crowded Menu Bar. I want Webbla to do everything those two don’t. As it is, I’ve got four or five bookmarking utilities to do what should be done by one.

Managing a lot of categorized, nested, and valuable bookmarks should not require that much effort.