 There are a plethora of great tools for bookmarking links these days (del.icio.us, diigo to name a few). But what if you're surfing along and you want to come back to a page later without committing to a long-term relationship with it?
What if you don't want to bury it in your already overflowing bookmark “family,” but keep it within easy reach -- temporarily -- to go back and read it and then cut it loose, the two of you heading your own separate ways? Many of us leave these sites open for later use by keeping them in new windows or tabs which not only clutter up the screen but run the risk of being obliterated if the computer or browser crashes.
This week I'll suggest 2 tools that can help you take control of your "temp-sites." Both are free add-ons for your Firefox browser. The first one is called Taboo. Install it, restart Firefox and you're ready to go. You'll notice when you open Firefox back up that you have 2 new icons up in the toolbar. The first looks like a “plus sign” and the other looks like a capital “T.” Let's start with the first “plus sign” icon. When you're at a site that you want to collect, simply go up to this icon and click it. If you're observant, you'll notice that the “plus sign” was red on white background before you clicked. After you click it, you'll notice that the “plus sign” is now white on a red background. This lets you know that you've collected the page. Clicking it again will reverse the colors, and “un-collect” the site.
Clicking on the “T” icon will now open up a new page/tab in your browser, showing you a grid of tiny thumbnails of all the pages you've collected. If you're frustrated with how small the thumbnails are, you're able to zoom in on them (button at the bottom). Each thumbnail is titled with the site's name and if you hover your mouse over the thumbnail, you'll see a larger view of the page. Clicking on the thumbnail takes you to the website. To get rid of the thumbnail/site, you click the “X” in the upper right hand corner, but don't worry if you do this by accident. You can go to the “trashcan” in the menu and see all the sites you've deleted (it's here that you would then permanently delete them, or recover them). You're able to quickly search all of your captured pages by typing in keywords in a search box at the top. One of the greatest things about Taboo is that you have the option of looking at all the saved sites by date when you saved them by clicking on the “calendar”. Now your thumbnails are placed within calendar boxes. If you've collected more than one site on that date, Taboo will show you a number of how many. Click on the picture and you'll get a “mini-browser” showing all the sites from that day. In the “Details” menu, you're able to leave comments or information for each site, but why bother? These are temporary, right?
The next tool is WebMynd. This site will also keep sites for you temporarily, but it collects them all for you autmatically. Once you've installed the add-on (and restarted Firefox), you'll observe that the bottom of your Firefox browser has changed to include a very small “WebMynd” button and text. It will either say "WebMynd Recording" or "WebMynd Stopped." Like any recorder, click the button to start or stop the recording. While recording, WebMynd takes pictures of all the sites you surf to. Hitting the green “playbutton” (again, at the bottom of your browser) will now bring up the collection of your recorded history in a new tab. It can either be viewed in a grid (much like Taboo, but prettier) or as a larger “Reel” of “slideable” pages. What's nice is that each domain will only show as one page but house all the pages you viewed there. For instance, let's say you went to the New York Times' website. Only one page will show, but it will have a number in the right-hand corner showing how many pages you viewed there. Clicking on that number will "drill you down" to only see the pages from the New York Times. Like Taboo, you can search your pages by keywords.
So the next time you want to save a page temporarily, or you're trying to get back to a page you recently surfed, you now have a couple of great Firefox add-ons for the job.
 Bob Sprankle
has been a multi-age teacher in Wells, ME for 10 years and has served
as the school's Technology Integrator for the past two years.
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