BookIt 3.2
Everyday Software
Price: $12.00
http://www.everydaysoftware.net
Do you surf both from a Desktop Mac and a PowerBook? Do you run multiple Web browsers? How do you keep your Internet bookmarks (also known as favorites) straight? Most people in these situations end up with different bookmarks on different browsers or different computers. Even worse, most OS X uses don’t even know where their various bookmarks/favorites files are located, let alone try to manage different ones!
BookIt 3.2 is Everyday Software’s application for comprehensive bookmark management. This slick little app lets you synchronize bookmarks between multiple web browsers, on one or more computers. Currently, BookIt 3.2 supports Internet Explorer, Camino, Mozilla, OmniWeb, Opera, and Apple’s Safari. That list covers the waterfront (unless you use Lynx)!
Using BookIt 3.2 is easy, although a quick pass through the Help file (accessed through the Apple Help system) before your first run sets forth the basic concepts of bookmark synchronization. The user designates one browser as the default browser, and BookIt compares all other selected bookmark files to the default browser’s bookmarks. Surprisingly, you can do multiple comparisons at once.
For example, I designated Internet Explorer as my default, and Safari and OmniWeb as the other browsers to be synced. Safari was on my PowerBook, and OmniWeb was on the desktop G4. BookIt 3.2 quickly compared the two bookmark files, and displayed a list of those bookmarks in Safari and OmniWeb NOT in Internet Explorer.
Once the list of bookmarks missing in the default browser is displayed, the user can drag and drop any or all of the missing bookmarks into the default browser’s bookmark list. BookIt 3.2 supports bookmark folders, so you can drop new bookmarks into any folder.
BookIt 3.2 has full bookmark editing capability, so you can rename bookmarks, move them between folders, and check to see if the underlying web address is still valid. Checking my own IE bookmarks, I was dismayed to find several of my oldest bookmarks pointed to dead web sites.
Once the default bookmarks are all synced, edited, and checked, click the Write button to write the default bookmark file to any browser you choose. The next time you launch a browser, whose bookmarks have been edited, you’ll see the new bookmarks.
Most PowerBook owners have synchronization software to help keep their desktop and laptop files up to date. But merely syncing a bookmark file between two machines WILL NOT do what BookIt does. Copying a bookmark file from one Mac to another simply overwrites the old file with the new; BookIt lets you copy individual bookmarks from one bookmark file to another. BookIt allows you to work with the contents of the bookmark file itself.
With BookIt, Everyday Software includes BookIt Menu, and BookIt Dock Menu. These allow you to access your default browser’s bookmarks from either the Dock or the menu bar.
So, if you are now having fun using Safari, but Explorer is still your trusty default web browser, BookIt 3.2 will help you keep a consistent set of bookmarks for both browsers.
My requests for improvements would include a printable Help file and a list of bookmark file locations for all supported web browsers. This would be helpful for PowerBook users who need to specify bookmark locations on a remote volume.
Conclusion If you need it, it’s worth the $12 shareware fee. Highly recommended.
MacMice Rating: 4.5 out of 5
David Weeks
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