Save Page Position in Firefox bookmarks

Bookmarks work the same in every popular browser. You use a shortcut or click on a button in the browser's interface to bookmark a page. The address of that page, its title and related information is then saved in the browser so that you can reopen the bookmarked page at a later time using the browser's address bar, buttons or menus that it makes available to you.

You may also sync bookmarks or import them in other browsers, and they will work just fine in the new programs.

While that is usually more than sufficient, it is not that thorough when it comes to large web pages or particular pieces of information on pages that you are interested in.

Update: The Advanced Bookmarks extension is no longer available. Mozilla changed the extension system in Firefox 57. You may use Bookmark instead, another extension for Firefox, as it is fully compatible with all recent versions of the web browser. It lets you save scroll positions for sites by bookmarking these pages. End

Advanced Bookmarks

The Firefox add-on Advanced bookmarks Add-on extends the browser's native capabilities by saving the page position or location of text as well.

What this means is that you will be taken directly to the position on the page that you were in when you saved the bookmark so that you can access information right away or continue reading from that position on.

Note: The extension states that it requires no restart. I had to restart to make available the extra folder in the bookmarks to access those special bookmarks.

Anyway, the extension adds a single entry to the browser's right-click context menu that you can make use of to save a bookmark that includes position information in the browser.

You can either right-click on the page or highlight text instead and right-click on the selection. Select Advanced bookmarks by position or by select text from the context menu that opens up and the information will be saved to the advanced bookmarks folder in the bookmarks manager.

You can open those bookmarks only from the bookmarks manager menu. This is a serious limitation as it means that it is not possible to open them from the browser's address bar nor move the special folder to the bookmarks bar for faster access.

While this may not be that problematic for some users, it makes the add-on barely usable for Firefox users who open websites exclusively from the browser's address bar.

Closing Words

The add-on can be useful to you if you regularly visit large pages that you need to access again at a later time, or want to bookmark specific passages of websites that you access over and over again in Firefox. The author can increase the appeal tenfold on the other hand if access via the browser's address bar, bookmarks bar and sidebar are added as default features.

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