When you find a Web page you might like to visit again, do yourself a favor: Bookmark it. Bookmarking a site adds it to a list of favorite sites so it’ll be easy to find again later.
Actually, “a list of favorite sites” isn’t quite accurate; Safari actually offers three places to store your bookmark listings. There’s a Bookmarks menu. There’s the Favorites bar (a horizontal gray bar of buttons for your favorite favorites). And there’s the master list, the Bookmarks list in the Sidebar; as you can see by (a) in Figure 12-6, this list lets you further categorize your bookmarks by putting them into folders.
Because bookmarks are such an important part of browsing the Web, Apple gives you a bunch of different ways to create one. For example:
Press ⌘-D, or choose Bookmarks→Add Bookmark. As shown by (d) in Figure 12-6, Safari offers to add this Web page’s name (or a shorter name that you specify for it) into the Bookmarks menu, into one of your Bookmarks folders, or onto the Favorites bar (b). The next time you want to visit that page, just select its name in whichever location you chose.
Drag the tiny Web-page icon from the address/search bar directly onto the Favorites bar. As shown by (c) in Figure 12-6, you’re offered the chance to type a shorter name for your new Favorite.
Figure 12-6. Here’s “Bookmarks: The Missing Manual.” (a) The Sidebar lets you see and organize your bookmarks. (b) Drag your super-favorite bookmarks here, for one-click access. (c) Drag any Web site’s logo directly to the Favorites bar to install it there. (d) When you press ⌘-D, Safari wants to know what to call this new bookmark. (e) You can create and file a bookmark in one step.
You can remove a button from the Favorites bar just by dragging it down and away.
Tip
You can also drag a link from a Web page (not just the tiny Web-site logo) onto your Favorites bar. In fact, you can also drag a link directly to the desktop, where it turns into an Internet location file. Thereafter, to open Safari and visit the associated Web page whenever you like, just double-click this icon.
Better yet, stash a few of these icons in your Dock or Sidebar for even easier access.
Hold down your cursor on the
button (e) to view the pop-up menu of places you can file your new bookmark; you can see the effect in Figure 12-6.
The 
button on the toolbar opens the newly enhanced Sidebar, the left-side panel shown at left in Figure 12-6. (You can also choose Bookmarks→Show Bookmarks, or choose View→Show Bookmarks Sidebar, or press Control-⌘-1.) Here, on the tab, you can really go to town with bookmark management. For example:
Create a folder by clicking the
at bottom left. Type a name for the folder, press Return, and then start filling it up by dragging existing bookmark names onto it.To delete a bookmark, right-click (or two-finger click) its name. From the shortcut menu, choose Delete.
To edit a bookmark’s name, right-click (or two-finger click) it, or hold your cursor down in it. From the shortcut menu, choose Rename Bookmark.
To edit the Web address that a bookmark opens, right-click (or two-finger click) its name. From the shortcut menu, choose Edit Address.
While you’re poking around, you might notice two special folders that were here before you arrived. The Favorites Bar folder lists the bookmarks you’ve installed on the Favorites bar described below; it’s just another way to see, choose, and organize those same items. The Bookmarks Menu folder performs that same function for the Bookmarks menu; it gives you an easy way to organize what’s listed there.
Before the slick new Sidebar came along, there was an earlier way to organize bookmarks: the bookmarks editor. You can open this special, spreadsheety window by choosing Bookmarks→Edit Bookmarks or by pressing Option-⌘-B.
In the bookmarks editor window, drag the bookmarks up and down to rearrange them. You can edit a bookmark’s name or underlying address by clicking it. Delete one by clicking it and then pressing Delete. There’s a New Folder button at lower left, whose function should seem obvious.