1) A bookmark is a thin marker, commonly made from paper or leather, used to keep one s place in a printed work and so be able to return to it with ease at some time in the future.

2) This term is being reused in various modern software applications, such as word processors, and most notably, Internet.

= Bookmarks for books=

As the first printed books were quite rare and valuable, it was determined early on that something was needed to mark one s place in a book without causing its pages any harm. Some of the earliest bookmarks were used at the end of the sixteenth century, and Queen Elizabeth I was one of the first to own one.

Modern bookmarks are available in a huge variety of materials with a multitude of designs and styles from which to choose.

= Internet bookmarks =

Bookmarks are pointers – primarily to URLs – built-in to the various Internet web browsers. Bookmarks have been incorporated into almost every browser since the Mosaic (web browser) browser and are normally stored on the software client. A folder metaphor may be used for organization. Various shareware utilities and server-side web utilities have been developed to better manage bookmarks, yet none has gained widespread acceptance.

The bookmarks within Internet Explorer, created by Microsoft, are called Favorites (or Favourites for those who have chosen the relevant language option). By virtue of the large proportion of people using Internet Explorer, the term Favorite has become virtually synonymous with bookmark in this respect.

Also, in for an example), though this term is not widespread, due to the limited popularity of Mosaic.

The most recent development in internet bookmarks was the introduction of live bookmarks by Mozilla Firefox in 2004. Utilizing RSS, live bookmarks sit in the bookmarks menu or sidebar like any other, but contain a regularly updated list of links to recent articles supplied by a news site or weblog.

=See also=

*Favicon *Rotating bookmark *Social bookmarking

=External links=