Create a Firefox bookmarks Library shortcut

Something I have always lamented is that browsers never seem to really appreciate the importance we may place on our collection of bookmarks and favourite resources. The bookmarks or favourites list is generally housed in a browser menu or, slightly better, in a popupable frame, but still within the browser necessitating the browser rather than your bookmarks is your first port of call.

I find this annoying as, although I consistently leave my Firefox open all day after its first launch I often wish to sort through and organise bookmarks without necessarily loading them.

Mozilla’s Firefox browser does improve on this by allowing its bookmarks library to be opened in a separate window via Show All Bookmarks at the top of the Bookmarks menu but this is still three-step manoeuvre to get at them—go to browser, bring menu down, load library, or still a double-step if you have customised your toolbars with a Bookmarks button to load a tab in the browser listing them. Can I not just have a separate icon to launch my Firefox bookmarks Library?

Fortunately, creating a shortcut to open the bookmarks Library separately from the browser is easy to achieve.

Creating a Firefox Library shortcut

Create a new shortcut and point it to the location of your Firefox browse--usually Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe. The path will be listed in the Target field in the New Shortcut wizard and enclosed in double quotes.

To the end of this append (outside of the double quotes) a space character and the following argument: -chrome chrome://browser/content/places/places.xul

Leave the Start in field as-is, which will still be set to the path of the Firefox executable and complete the shortcut wizard.

The created shortcut will open the Firefox Library separately and whether the Firefox browser is open or not. If Firefox is your browser of choice and you like to more options organising your bookmarks I hope you may find it useful.

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Tags: Firefox, Mozilla.