How to Save Your Spot When Reading Online Fiction

I've mentioned before the problem with using bookmarks when reading blog fiction. The term "bookmark" is the terminology we use to refer to the concept of "saving" a webpage for later. I believe the Netscape coined the term for their original web browser - and it is something I may never forgive them for doing.

Even though we use the same word to describe saving our spots in books and on the internet, we use those "bookmarks" very differently. When I use a bookmark in the physical world, I am saving my place only until I get back. When I return to the book, I remove my bookmark, read and continue reading from where I was. The old "bookmarked" spot no longer exists. In cyberspace when we "bookmark" something we are usually saving it either permanently or at least "until further notice". We use our bookmark to jump back to a spot, but we do not remove the bookmark.

So why is this a problem? It's a problem because now I don't have the vocabulary to describe a "real" cyber bookmark. That is, a temporary bookmark that is erased when I open it. Well, for now I'm just going to refer to it as "temporary bookmarks". Now that my mini rant is done I come to the point of my article. I have found 2 bookmarking services that work like temporary bookmarks instead of permanent bookmarks.

The first service is a firefox add-on called "taboo". The idea behind "taboo" is that not only does it bookmark a page, but it saves any text you've entered into the page as well as how far down the screen your scrollbar is. It also takes a visual snapshot so that when you look at all of your "taboos" you see a nice preview of the page you saved. The service add 2 buttons to your browser. One is a button that will bookmark or "taboo" your spot. If you click it on a webpage that already has a saved taboo a little box pops up that allows to either change the name or description of the taboo and to move the taboo to the current spot on the webpage or you can just remove it. This makes removing a taboo very simple. Load a page, click taboo, click "remove". All of this without using any menu options.

The second button, as you may have guessed shows you all of your "taboos". If you click the button it will open up a firefox tab that shows all the thumbnails of the taboos you've saved. It lists them in the order that they were saved so you can see your latest bookmark -err... taboo- of each website you've visited if you have more than one taboo. Another quicker option is a little arrow next to the "show taboo" button will show a little popup of your latest taboos so you can quickly go back to a page you were reading.

Another bookmarking option I found was called dogear. This service is a little harder to describe. It places less emphasis on the time you saved a page than taboo does. However, the service works with all web browsers because all the information is saved on their webserver.

Here's how it works, when you want to start using it, you click a bookmark called "dogearit". What that does is create a frame at the top of your browser and the rest of the webpage in a frame below it. Then, when you want to "dog-ear" a page, you highlight the text you want to come back to and then left click it. That create's your dog ear. If you highlight other text on the page and then left-click it, it will move the dogear to that text.

To retrieve your dogears you have another bookmark. That takes you to a webpage(assuming you're logged in) that lists all of your "dog-eared" web pages. Then you can click them like any other hyperlink and you'll goto that webpage, scroll to where you left it, and the dogear frame will be at the top of the page.

So, which of these services works best? Hands down "taboo" is a lot better. I use it to read the archives of blog fiction and it works out great. The dogearit service is too slow. When the frame is on the page, it seems to almost quintuple my page load times. Unlike taboo, it is not as easy to remove a dogear you no longer want. Plus it seems I'm always getting logged out of the service so I waste time trying to log back in.

There are a couple things that dogear does better than taboo. First of all, any browser can use it. So if you use Internet Explorer, Safari, or Chrome dogear is pretty much your only option. The second thing is how the services handles saving your spot in a page. Taboo only remembers how far down the page you scrolled. That means if the page changes by adding content to the top, your scrollbar will not be in the same place. Dogear remembers by keeping track of the text you highlighted. Dogear will take you to that portion of the page regardless of where it is. So, if dogear ever solves the speed issue, it might become as good, if not better, than the taboo firefox add-on. Until the speed issue is resolved, however, I would recommend using firefox and taboo if you're looking to use temporary in-page bookmarks.

While taboo and dogearit solves a couple of the problems with reading online fiction it does not resolve them all. For instance, if you're not reading in a chronological order (which is definately a possiblity with blog or any online fiction) you can't keep track of what you have and haven't read. It does however, solve 2 big problems. It allows you to do an in-page save - this is especially helpful if you're reading multiple blog posts on a single archive page(i.e. all August posts). Also you can remove a temporary bookmark easily so you don't have 3 dozen bookmarks on the same webpage.