You’ve probably discovered that colored, underlined text is often a clickable link that will send BumperCar to another web page. They aren't always colored and/or underlined, as page authors can change their look to match the aesthetics of the page. Links can also be images. But no matter what a link looks like, you can still tell it's clickable: when the mouse cursor is over a link, it changes to a hand.

In BumperCar, URLs are also often represented as icons. What the icon looks like will tell you something about the URL.

This is the default icon for a URL. We call it the zap.

BumperCar displays this icon to indicate that the web page associated with it may have been dynamically generated by the server -- meaning that if you go back to the same URL, you might not get the same page.

If a URL in your bookmarks has this icon, double-clicking it will open it as another bookmarks window.

A lock icon superimposed on a URL icon indicates that the URL is for a secure website (one that uses the encrypted HTTPS protocol to ensure that the data you exchange with it is kept safe from prying eyes).

URL icons are normally blue or graphite - but if you use BumperCar's bookmark change checking feature, they might change color. A green icon indicates that there have been changes to a bookmarked web page since you last visited it. A red one indicates that the page was not reachable the last time BumperCar tried to contact the site. If it stays red through a number of checks over a period of days, the page on the server may no longer be available.

Topic folders that you create in your bookmarks list have folder icons. A folder can have a URL associated with it (in addition to having bookmark URLs and other folders placed inside it), causing it to have a URL icon superimposed on the folder icon.

BumperCar allows you to do a number of things with URLs via drag and drop. Wherever you see a URL - be it an icon, a clickable link, or selected text - in BumperCar or in another application, you can drag it to do something with it:

• Drag a URL onto BumperCar's application icon in the Dock to open it.
• Drag a URL into an BumperCar window to follow it in that window.
• Drag a URL to your bookmarks window or drawer to save it for future reference.
• Drag a URL to the Dock or Finder to create an icon that can be clicked later to follow the URL.
• Drag a URL to any place you can type text to insert a textual representation of the URL.
• Hold Option before starting to drag a URL or link and BumperCar will create a new window with that location, which follows your mouse as you drag.
• Double-click a zap icon to have that URL open in a new window.

  Next: Saving Text and Graphics

  Previous: About Bookmarks

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