Norm's Links Pages Intro

What they are

My links pages are my bookmarks, over 3000 in an outline structure, of sites I or anyone else may need to get information more quickly than a search engine will do. If in my research I find a useful site I may need again, I keep it. Small business, Internet, Public Resources, Web publishing, Earth Sciences, Living History, and Scotts sites are strongly represented, with almost no spectator sports (but cross country and hiking are here).

Why

I frequently need to locate some information quickly, without searching through the dozens of sites from a search engine, so when I find a useful site, it gets catagorized and bookmarked. As a result, I know the site existed, and the type of information availble. Since I know my site, and MacColin, almost no links to them exist.

How they are created

I wrote a program which processes my bookmark file, producing one outline file with all the headers and links to the pages of related links, and pages of related links (2nd level headers down) which I try to keep to 64K or less for speed. Extra information kept by bookmarks are removed (created, last visit, folder status). Tags re inserted for quick jumping to some subjects (i.e. REF09.HTM#Weather). A header with a "*" has a tag, while on a site it means it is the very useful site in the catagory.

How to use them

The outline page has all headers to make it easier to find a subject, which may be where you would place it in the outline or not, so an Edit|Find can speed the search. Some items have comments (i.e. cookie greedy, ad laden, comprehensive). All links in the links pages, other than to the sites, are reletive, so the set Links Outline (OTLN.HTM, REF??.HTM - 01-16) can be downloaded and used- far faster.