Computer Question: What is a Bookmark – Basic Computer Term Explained

This computer question comes from Mahakali Ramesh Kumar, who writes:

“Dear Worth Godwin,

I want to know what is Bookmark in internet or in computers.

Thanking you,
Yours faithfully Mahakali”

TRANSCRIPT BEGINS:
That’s a pretty simple thing to answer. A bookmark is sometimes also known as a favorite, although originally it was known as a bookmark in most web browsers. Those are the programs you use to navigate around on the internet.

It’s really Internet Explorer that refers to them as favorites. I think they did this originally because they were concerned about avoiding copyright infringement. I’m not positive about that. At any rate, a favorite or bookmark is the same thing.

When the web was created in the early to mid ‘90s, the way we thought about it is like pages like pages in a book. If you have a book you’re reading and you want to get back to a page in that book, what do you do? You bookmark it. It’s the same basic idea.

A bookmark is a way of getting back to a page on the internet that is located on some site on the internet. You just want to get back to it, so you bookmark it.

You do this typically by going to the Bookmark menu. Sometimes there may be a button on the toolbar toward the top of the window that has a little plus symbol on the button. Whatever way you do it, you hit the button or go to the menu that says “Bookmarks” and hit the option that says “Add bookmark” or “Add favorite,” in the case of Internet Explorer.

As a side note, I strongly recommend that you do not use Internet Explorer, for security reasons (instead you could use Google Chrome, or Mozilla Firefox for example).
Basically, you click “Add bookmark” or “Add favorite” as the case may be.

It creates some record of where you were. It will put in the name of that page as the description, although you are usually given the opportunity to change it to a potentially more descriptive or memorable name if you want to.

Then it gets added to that menu. In some cases it gets added to a horizontal bar called the bookmarks bar toward the top of your browser window. By going back to the menu or to the item on the bar, you would click it, and it would take you back to the page.

That’s basically what a bookmark is. It’s not a really complicated concept, but hopefully that makes sense and will help you get back to the pages you want to get back to in the future. It’s very useful.

I have found that there is a fairly surprisingly high number of people who do not use bookmarks or don’t know how to use bookmarks. It’s no criticism whatsoever. I hope that helps.

Posted by Worth Godwin Computer Training on Nov 23, 2011 in Computer Question, Computer Questions Answers, Computer Terms, Computer Tips, Computer Training | 0 comments