I have about a million Netscape bookmarks on my computer. Is there a way to bring them with me when I work on a computer other than mine?

Of course there is. The techniques explained below are useful for students who like to browse the web from computers in public labs, for professors who have Internet access both in the office and at home, or for anyone who wants to have access to the same set of Netscape bookmarks on more than one computer. (Note: If you need background information on what bookmarks are and how to create them, see the document "Navigating the World Wide Web - A Quick Start.")

The secret to bringing your bookmarks with you is: your bookmarks are stored in their own web document, kept on your computer, called bookmarks.html on Macs and bookmark.htm on the PC side. Here's what you do with it:

• Step One: Locate the "bookmark.htm" or "bookmarks.html" file. Usually, you can find this file in your Netscape Navigator folder. If you have difficulty locating it, use the "Find File" command (under the "File" menu in Macintosh's Finder or Windows 3.1x's File Manger; or under the "Start" menu in Windows 95). Search for "bookmark.htm" and the file should appear.

• Step Two: Copy the bookmark file to a floppy disk. You can do this by locating the file (in Finder on a Macintosh, in File Manager in Windows 3.1x, or under "My Computer" in Windows 95) and dragging the icon for bookmark.htm or bookmarks.html to the icon that represents the floppy drive.

• Step Three: Take the floppy disk with you to the new computer. After you insert the disk, locate the icon that represents the floppy disk (in Finder, File Manager, or My Computer) and double click it to open a window for that disk. You should now see the bookmark file. Double click on the icon for this file, and Netscape Navigator should launch. The page that pops up should be a list of your saved bookmarks. (Note that under the "Bookmarks" menu you can find the bookmarks that were originally on the second computer; they will not be lost.)

• Step Four: Click on a bookmarked link and surf away! If you want to go back to your page of bookmarks, you can use the "Back" button or the "Go" menu in Netscape.

Two important things to remember:

• Since you are using a copy of your original bookmark file, any new bookmarks added while working on the second computer will be added to that computer's bookmarks, not to your own file.

• To avoid accidental loss of bookmarked links, do not copy your bookmark file from a floppy back to the hard drive, and do not attempt to edit the bookmark file yourself.

Some variations on the above technique:

If you are more or less comfortable with the above procedures, you may wish to try the following:

• If you add a description to a bookmark on the first computer (done from Netscape's "Bookmarks" window), the description will appear on the bookmark web page when you load it on the second computer.

• If you have two computers and you would like them to have exactly the same bookmarks on them, you can replace the bookmark file on the second computer with the bookmark file from the first. Remember: if you do this, any bookmarks that the second computer has that the first one didn't will be lost.

• If you have access to a networked drive or folder, you can use this account instead of a floppy disk. Members of the Wesleyan community, for example, can store the bookmark file in their home folders on the NetWare file servers (FS3 or FS4) and launch the file from there.

• If you want, once you've called up your bookmark file on the second computer, you can create a bookmark on that computer for your bookmark file, allowing you to access it from the second computer's bookmark menu any time the appropriate disk/drive is available.

• You can also open your bookmark file by dragging and dropping the file's icon into an open browser window, or by entering the file's location into the "Location" box of the browser.