Gary Hover wrote asking how to back up his Internet Explorer Favorites to a CD.

First it's helpful to understand what an "Internet Explorer Favorite" is. It's a link to a website's URL (universal resource locater). In other words, it's an Internet address (such as http://www.pcdon.com) and is called a link because an underlying HTML (hypertext markup language) code causes it to connect to a site automatically when clicked. These links normally have a shortcut name, such as Don Edrington's Music Pages for: http:/www.pcdon.com/page90.html.

Historically, such links appeared as underlined blue text. More recently, however, they often appear without underscoring and in different colors. Some links even appear as an image. In any case, it's a link when your mouse cursor changes from an arrow to a pointing finger.

A "Favorite" (which is called a "Bookmark" by Google Chrome and Firefox) is simply a link that has been saved in a special folder to make it more easily accessible. Bookmark and Favorite folders are built into the various browsers and come with Import/Export options that let you copy their contents into a folder on your Desktop, as well as onto an external storage device such as a CD or a flash memory drive.

Internet Explorer users click File>Import and Export> and follow the prompts to copy their favorite links to another location. Firefox users click Bookmarks>Organize Bookmarks>Import and Backup>Export HTML for this purpose.

Click the following link for info on importing and exporting Favorites & Bookmarks to and from Google's Chrome Browser.

An Easier Way

Personally, I find all the above unnecessarily complicated. When I run across an interesting site I simply drag its URL icon onto my Desktop. When I subsequently want to access the site I double-click the icon.

Beyond that I've created a few Desktop folders into which I drag these links. (Right-click your Desktop and choose New>Folder. These folders are easily dragged and dropped onto an external storage device for backup purposes and/or for being copied to another computer.

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