Luckily, a Firefox add-on called Wired Marker can help you permanently mark text and other website content so you don’t have to do anything else. Even after closing the browser, the add-on will “remember” what you highlighted in a specific website and will be visible the next time you visit. After installing the add-on, you will notice a new button, “Wired Marker,” in the browser’s Menu bar. This is a drop-down menu to access all options and controls for the add-on.
You can then start highlighting text on any website. Simply drag the cursor over the text you want highlighted, then right click on your mouse. You will see an option for Wired Marker. Select this, then select a marker color from the next box that appears. Colors are labeled by Marker 1, Marker 2, and so on.
After selecting the color you will see a pop-up box allowing you to change the title of the highlighted portion – this can be anything that will help you remember the content of the highlighted text. Click the OK button when done.
If you want to remove the highlights from one portion of the site, you can right click on that area and select Wired Marker, then click on “Clear this marker.” Additionally, if you want to remove all highlighted portions within the page, you can click on “Clear all markers in this page” instead.
Another great thing about Wired Marker is that it makes its own directory of all highlighted text you’ve done. To access this directory, you can click on the Wired Marker button on the menu bar, or press Alt-X. A sidebar will open to the left of the browser window. Here, you’ll see folders for each marker color.
Clicking on these folders will show a list of highlighted text using that color. In the example below, Marker 1 (red) was used for highlighting a Wikipedia entry on dyslexia – which I renamed to “dyslexia in children.” When you click on this entry, the browser will take you to the page where you highlighted the said text. Note that it doesn’t just reopen the web page, but brings you to the highlighted text itself. Although it takes a bit of practice to understand how it works, Wired Marker can be a very useful and indispensable tool. It’s ideal for those who need to take note of numerous information from different web sources. It’s easier to track than bookmarks and takes less time to manage. It does take a bit of technical know-how to use, but it’s well worth the effort when it means being able to save time and retrieve information as quick as possible.
