Easy PC Tips

Del.icio.us is one of those web services that at first glance I struggled to work out what kind of void it filled. Now I’m a del.icio.us user, and have been for a few months, I’m really starting to see the benefits. I think you just might want to take a look at this one…

Simply put, del.icio.us is a storage facility for bookmarks or favorites. Just like you’d add a bookmark/favorite in your browser, instead you can save it to del.icio.us.

Why would you bother?

Isn’t your browser’s bookmarks a better place to hold such things?

Well, it is and it isn’t. Here are a few of the benefits of storing your links on del.icio.us:

• You can share your bookmarks with your friends, relatives and colleagues can get at them to see what kinds of sites you find interesting (this is not always a good thing - OK, I’ll admit, del.icio.us does have some drawbacks…)
• Your bookmarks are held in, and can be managed from, the one central location, accessible from anywhere with internet access regardless of the computer you use or the software it has installed, whether it be at work, home, college, the library, an internet cafe or wherever…
• Your bookmarks can be located more easily using tags - you may remember that we touched on tags in Flickr - Sharing your photos online a couple of weeks ago. I told you they would be back!

Getting started

As with everything like this, you need to get yourself an account. Accounts on del.icio.us are, of course, free.

It’s a simple sign up, with the minimal of information required. Choose a Username, enter your fullname, pick a password and there’s not much more too it than that.

OK. I’ve set up my account, now what? Add some bookmarks of course!

Saving your bookmarks

Firefox 102 introduced us to extensions and there is a fantastic Firefox extension for del.icio.us that makes saving, and tagging your bookmarks a breeze via the ‘TAG’ button that appears in your toolbar. Step 2 of the registration process prompts you to add a couple of useful buttons for Firefox, making tagging and saving your links so much quicker and easier.

Once installed (and you’ll need to restart your browser once you’re done), you should now have two extra buttons available on your toolbar. Once is the del.icio.us icon itself, taking you to your del.icio.us links (see ‘Accessing your bookmarks’ below). The second is the TAG button. Think of this as your save bookmark equivalent.

If you’ve installed the extension, restarted your browser and come back to this page click the TAG button now.

Clicking the TAG button brings up a dialog box with several fields to fill in:

• URL - the website address - this will be pre-populated with the address of the page you were on when you clicked the button in this case, it will be the URL for this page on EasyPCTips.com
• Description - This is the title of the page you were on - change this if you like to something that means more to you
• Notes - Add some notes to make it easy for you to see why you bookmarked this page - this step is optional
• Tags - without this section, del.icio.us would be infinitely less useful. Think of tags like keywords that describe the page to you. Enter as many as you like with each one separated by a space. For example, for this article on EasyPCTips.com, you might record the 5 tags: “del.icio.us tutorial simple howto beginner”
• IF other people have tagged the same page as you, underneath the tags field, another field appears with the keywords other people have used as suggestions. Simply click on the ones you’d like to use, add more of your own and click Save when you’re done.

Accessing your bookmarks

You can access all of your saved bookmarks by visiting:

http://del.icio.us/usernameyouchoseduringsignup

This is all well and good, but it just gives you a complete list of them all, without much consideration given to the sort order. This is where the tagging comes into its own.

If you are following along, hopefully you’ll have saved a bookmark and can remember one of the tags you used. Right. Now add the tag to the web address like this:

http://del.icio.us/usernameyouchoseduringsignup/nameofoneofyourtags

This will give you a list of only the bookmarks in your collection which have had that particular tag assigned to them. I think you’ll agree this is very nifty and probably the reason why del.icio.us is so powerful.
Have a play with del.icio.us …I’m sure you’ll enjoy it and soon find it to be an incredibly helpful tool for managing your life online.

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