Most SharingLinks users tell me they really like the thumbnail preview that appears when you hover over a bookmark. But a few have told me it drives them CRAZY! Not wanting to harm anyone’s mental health, we have now made this feature optional. So those of you who don’t like it, can simply edit your profile, and turn these previews off.

Another change I have wanted for awhile was opening the bookmarks in a new window. When I am using SharingLinks to research new topics, I invariably want to go back to the site for more goodies. So we have changed the default behavior to open bookmarks in a new window. But we also made this configurable,so each of you can choose your own default: new window or same window.

Both of the options are found by going to your My Bookmarks page, then looking in the right-hand column for “Edit My Profile.” If you make no changes, the default will be to display thumbnail previews and to open bookmarks in a new window.

Like these new features? Let me know.

Although we’ve been busy adding features to SharingLinks, it’s been awhile since I sent out email update. Some of these features are many weeks old, but I figure if you haven’t started using them yet, then they are still new to you! Here goes.

1) My Tags ButtonSince your tags are so important, we’ve added a My Tags button on the navigation that will take you directly to a list of all your tags. If you are new to tags, and are more accustomed to sorting your bookmarks into folders, you can think of these tags as your folders. But tags are more versatile, because a bookmark can easily have multiple tags, where it would be impossible to be in multiple folders (without creating duplicate bookmarks.)

Now your favorite fifth grade math links can be tagged both “math” and “grade 5″. For more on using the boolean + (and) with your tags, read this blog post Combing Tags ( http://blog.sharinglinks.com/combining-tags/52/ )

2) New Search Options

In the drop-down box for the search function, we have added a “tag” search. Now options include searching your bookmarks, your tags, all bookmarks and all tags. This will give you an easy way to jump directly to a tag page.

Keep in mind, the “search bookmarks” function will usually return more results than “search tag” because it also looks for the search phrase in titles and descriptions. Here’s two examples searching for “thanksgiving”:

For example, the search for Thanksgiving is:
http://www.sharinglinks.com/search/all/thanksgiving

And the list of bookmarks tagged Thanksgiving is:
http://www.sharinglinks.com/tags/thanksgiving

3) View All Tags

One of the best ways to discover new sites, is to click on users that have interesting bookmarks. For example, if something from user wildnis catches your attention, you can click on his username (his profile reveals that he is a he!) and find:

http://www.sharinglinks.com/bookmarks/wildnis

From here, you might notice the tag “photography” and if you click on it, will bring up all of wildnis’s photography bookmarks

http://www.sharinglinks.com/bookmarks/wildnis/photography

But what if you want to explore the tag “photography” from all users, not just wildis? That’s what the “View All: photography” link in the orange header bar is for. It means viewing the tag for all users (not just the current user you are browsing).

Clicking on it will take you to:
http://www.sharinglinks.com/tags/photography

4) Bookmarks Sorted by Popularity

Right at the top, in addition to sort by Date, Title, or URL, we’ve added Popularity. This sorts bookmarks by how many members have the exact same one. I have already gotten questions about why two seemingly similar URLs are not counted as the same. The answer is that (for or for worse) our program considers “domain.com/index.htm” different from “domain.com”.

Although there are a few more new features, I think this post is already way too long. Your comments welcome below.

Getting started with Sharing Links is as simple as 1-2-3.

Register for a free Sharing Links account.

Transfer Your Existing Bookmarks from your browser.

For one-click bookmarking, install the Sharing Links Toolbar (for Internet Explorer or Firefox). Other browsers can use the Sharing Links Bookmarklets instead.

More of a visual learner? Video help is available for steps 2 and 3 as follows:

2. Transfer your bookmarks:
• From Internet Explorer
• From Firefox

3. Install Toolbars:
• Internet Explorer Toolbar (for Windows Only
• Firefox Toolbar (for all systems, including Windows and Mac)

Or Install Bookmarklets:
• For Browsers without a Sharing Links Toolbar

Sharing Links is a community, and we want to know a little bit about you.  Tell us by updating your Profile.  You will find your profile, by logging in, and going to the My Bookmarks page.  Scroll down and look in the lower right corner for “Profile.”  Click on it to update your name, add a URL and description, and upload a photo.  You can also change your password or email  address here.