Manage web favourites quickly and easily

Open your web browser and in the Address Bar type www.aignes.com/deadlink.htm and press Enter to access the AM-Deadlink website. Scroll down to the download section and click the Download button. If prompted, choose Save and save dlsetup.exe to the Windows Desktop. Once downloaded, double-click dlsetup.exe. Click Run followed by Continue if prompted, then click Next. Read and accept the licence agreement and click Next again. You’ll be prompted to install the program on your PC’s hard disk or a portable USB Flash memory drive (for use on more than one computer). Make your choice and click Next, then follow the steps in the installation wizard.

If you don’t opt to launch the program automatically you can either double-click its Desktop icon (it’s blue and sports an upside-down capital ‘T’) or open it from the Start menu by clicking Start, selecting All Programs and then expanding the AM-Deadlink folder by AM-Deadlink. The first time you run the program you’ll be prompted to select your choice of language – English is selected by default, so in most cases just click OK to continue.

If you’re not a Firefox 3 user, jump to Step 4. Firefox 3 uses a new system for organising bookmarks, which isn’t compatible with AM-Deadlink. There is, however, a way around this, which involves exporting your bookmarks into a file that AM-Deadlink can read. To do this, close AM-Deadlink and open Firefox. Choose Organise Bookmarks from the Bookmarks menu to open the Library window. From here click the ‘Import and Backup’ button and select Export HTML from the dropdown menu. Save the file to the Desktop. Close the Library window and quit Firefox, then reopen AM-Deadlink.

By default AM-DeadLink will display your list of Internet Explorer Favorites. If you use Firefox 2 or Opera, click the down arrow next to Internet Explorer and pick your browser from the list. Firefox 3 users should select Firefox from the list and then choose Open from the File menu. Browse to the Windows Desktop and open the bookmarks.html file created in Step 3. The bookmarks or favourites should appear as a single list. To check for dead links and duplicates, click the Check Links button (the green tick).

Each link is checked in turn – these checks can take some time (because the program is using the internet to determine whether or not a site still works), so be patient. The status bar at the bottom of the AM-Deadlinks window tells you how many links have been checked, and the program will play a short sound when the test is complete. As the test progresses, you’ll see a number of different status messages appear. To help you go through the list, open the Bookmarks menu and choose ‘Sort Bookmarks with errors to the top of the list’.

Any questionable links will now appear at the top of the list. Click the Internal Preview button on the AM-Deadlinks toolbar (it’s the second icon from the right, next to the Recycle Bin). This opens a split-screen view, with a miniature browser window at the bottom. Double-click the first entry in the list to verify that it doesn’t work. If the web page appears or you have reason to believe that the site is only temporarily offline, right-click the entry and choose ‘Set status to OK’.

If the page shows an error message, you have a number of choices. If you think the site has been permanently taken offline, delete the entry from the list of bookmarks by right-clicking it and choosing Delete, selecting Yes when prompted. If you know the site address has changed (use Google to search for the site to see if it exists at another location), you can change the web address yourself – right-click the entry and choose Properties, then change the URL field to match the correct site address before clicking Change.

AM-DeadLinks can also search a bookmarks or favourites folder for duplicates, enabling lists to be streamlined still further. To do this, open the Bookmarks menu and choose Find duplicates. A list of all duplicates will appear – click the ‘Select all duplicates but one’ button, which will automatically highlight all of the duplicate entries. All that’s needed now is to right-click one and choose Delete followed by Yes when prompted to remove them, leaving just a single copy of all of your links.

Some websites use special shortcut icons called favicons, which appear next to the site’s name in the browser’s Address or Location bar, as well as in your list of bookmarks. These icons should be automatically added when you add a site to your Favorites or bookmarks, but not always. AM-Deadlinks can check your links for favicons and add any missing ones easily – just open the Favicons menu and select ‘Check Bookmarks and Download Favicons’. You can keep any existing favicons or choose ‘Override existing favicons’ to replace them with the latest versions before clicking Start and letting AM-Deadlinks do all the hard work.

Once the checks are complete and you’ve downloaded any desired favicons, open the File menu and select Save to make your changes permanent. Firefox 3 users should reopen Firefox and again select Organise Bookmarks from the Bookmarks menu. You’ll need to delete all existing bookmarks – expand All Bookmarks in the left-hand menu and delete all folders and bookmarks by selecting them in the right-hand pane and pressing the Delete key. Once it’s empty, click the ‘Import and Backup’ button and choose Import HTML. Select the bookmarks.html file created in Step 3 and click Open to import the amended bookmarks back into Firefox 3.