The Free Website Project

Photo by jurek d.

Thanks to a great deal of power stumbling, my Google Bookmarks account has become a treasure trove of various website and blogging resources. When somebody someone asks for a little web design help I often find it’s a great place to start. The only problem is that with such a long list of bookmarks, copying each URL takes forever. Thankfully, there is a better way:

1. Compose Your Email

Start writing your email to whoever it is that you want to send the list to. Ideally, you will be using Gmail and it will be open in its own window. If not, the steps are the same but you can’t drag and drop.

2. Open Your Bookmarks

Go to your main reading screen in Google Bookmarks. All the tags will be exported on the same page, no matter what you do.

3. Export As HTML

Scroll way down to the bottom of the left sidebar and hit Export Bookmarks. This will generate a static HTML page with links to each site under all your headings, and, as you might imagine, a multitude of other uses.

4. Click And Drag

If you have your email message in a different window from the bookmarks, you can often simply drag them in, otherwise copy and paste will work the same way. I know this works with Gmail and Yahoo, although I’m not sure how POP3 clients will react. If you have an older email client, you might need to right click on the bookmarks, go to view selection source, and copy the HTML code into your email.

5. Send It

Send the email, everything should show up fine. If you are writing to someone with a very old email service, they may see a lot of HTML gobbledygook, in which case you might want to help them update their email client.

Pretty simple and elegant, eh? That’s why I love Google .