In the past several years, my browser bookmarks list has ballooned to more than 200 links. I wanted to purge the dead and duplicate links from my list, but manually opening each link seemed just too time consuming. Luckily, I found AM-DeadLink. Despite its quirks, AM-DeadLink does a good job of detecting dead and duplicate links on your Internet browser bookmarks or favorites list. This handy freeware application works on Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 Server and supports Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera, and Firefox. You can even double check AM-DeadLink's results with the application's internal preview feature.
Check out our AM-DeadLink gallery. This collection of 39 screenshots gives you an even more in-depth look at this handy tool. This article is also available for download as a PDF.
Download, setup, and installation
You can download AM-DeadLink from TechRepublic's Software Library. At 1.06 MB, AM-DeadLink's installation file is a quick download. The setup and installation took less than 5 minutes. When run for the first time, AM-DeadLink will prompt you to choose a language. There are a host of languages to choose from, including Arabic, Basque, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Estonian, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Latvian, Polish, Spanish, Turkish, and many others. After selecting a language, AM-DeadLink immediately read my Internet Explorer 7 Favorites file and displayed the links. AM-DeadLink's main window lists links from the currently open bookmarks/favorites file, as shown in Figure A.
Figure A |
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| AM-DeadLink main window |
Selecting your browser and configuring settings
As I use Firefox almost exclusively, my first task was to switch from the IE 7 Favorites file to my Firefox Bookmarks file. Using the drop-down box in the main window's top, shown in Figure B, left-hand corner, you can select one of the four browsers AM-DeadLink supports--Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox, and Opera. Once I selected Firefox from the drop-down list box, AM-DeadLink asked me to specify my bookmark file's location. It took a little searching, but I eventually found the file.
Figure B |
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| Select your Internet browser. |
Wow! I didn't know that I had 204 bookmarks. You can sort the bookmarks in ascending or descending order on any of the column fields--Name, URL, Error, Status, Absolute Path, and Folder. I sorted the bookmarks by clicking the Name column heading, as shown in Figure C.
Figure C |
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| Sort the bookmark list by name. |
Using AM-DeadLink's toolbar, shown in Figure D, you can quickly perform the following tasks:
- Check Bookmarks
- Check Bookmarks and download FavIcons
- Abort [the the scan in progress]
- Sort Bookmarks with errors to the top of the list
- Find duplicates
- Open with Browser
- Internal Preview [view the select bookmark]
- Delete [the selected bookmark(s)]
Figure D |
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| AM-DeadLink toolbar |
You can customize how AM-DeadLink checks each bookmark. The default settings, shown in Figure E, worked well during my tests. Through the Settings tabs you can also configure a proxy server, if required, specify Mozilla, Firefox, and Opera bookmar file locations, indicate a FavIcons directory for IE and Opera, and specify a location for the bookmarks/favorites backup files AM-DeadLink can create.
Figure E |
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| Customize AM-DeadLink's Check settings. |
Running a check
When you run a check, AM-DeadLink attempts to access each bookmarks. Figure F shows a check running with the default 10 simultaneous connections. The Status column shows the check result for each bookmark. You can track the progress of the check at the bottom of the AM-DeadLink window. I ran several checks and each took between 2 and 5 minutes. Most Web sites took no more than a second to check, but there were always one or two sites that seemed to have trouble. By default, AM-DeadLink will try to access problem bookmarks twice. You can increase the number to three if you want. A sound plays to alert you that the check has finished.
Figure F |
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| AM-DeadLink is checking my 204 Firefox bookmarks. |
Sorting and double-checking
After running the check, I resorted the bookmarks, moving those with errors to the top of the list. AM-DeadLink shows you the error code and text status of each problem bookmark, as shown in Figure G.
Figure G |
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| Sort the bookmarks with an error to the top of the page. |
Using AM-Deadlink's Open with browser feature, you can view each bookmark. In Figure H, I am double-checking the first bookmark that AM-DeadLink reported with a 404 error. This link is indeed bad. AM-DeadLink has a built-in Google search link that can help you replace a broken bookmark. The Google search results are shown in AM-DeadLink's internal browser.
Figure H |
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| Check broken bookmarks with AM-DeadLink's internal browser. |
Falsely labeled "404 File not found" bookmark
During my test, AM-DeadLink performed well, but wasn't perfect. The application mislabeled some bookmarks, like the one in Figure I, with 404 errors. When I opened the link with AM-DeadLink's internal browser, I found the link was still active, but the site required authentication. AM-DeadLink should have recognized that this site required authentication and noted it accordingly. It did so for other sites that required authentication.
Figure I |
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| Falsely labeled "404 File not found" bookmark |
Falsely-labeled "redirected, OK" bookmark
AM-DeadLink also labeled several sites as "redirected, OK" when they no longer pointed to the original bookmark. The bookmark, shown in Figure J, pointed to a story on http://www.tomsnetworking.com, which now redirects to http://www.smallnetbuilder.com. AM-DeadLink returned at least three falsely-labeled "redirected, OK" bookmarks.
Figure J |
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| Falsely-labeled "redirected, OK" bookmark |
AM-DeadLink Help and HTML error codes
AM-DeadLink has a small help file that provides limited, but helpful information. If you ever wondered what the different HTTP standard response code error messages were? AM-DeadLink provide the information, shown in Figure K.
Figure K |
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| HTTP standard response code error messages |
Find duplicate bookmarks
AM-DeadLink can also locate duplicate bookmarks. I had bookmarked the page, shown in Figure L, twice in two separate folders.
Figure L |
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| Find duplicate bookmarks |
Delete dead bookmarks
AM-DeadLink does a good job of detecting dead links. However, I strongly recommend you double-check the bookmarks you choose to delete. You can use Ctrl-click to select noncontiguous bookmarks or Shift-click to select blocks of bookmarks. Once your ready to delete the broken bookmarks, click the Delete icon from the toolbar. AM-DeadLink will prompt you to confirm you decision, as shown in Figure M.
Figure M |
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| Deleting bookmarks |
If you deleted any links, when you exit the application, AM-DeadLink will offer a reminder that you changed the bookmarks/favorites file and ask you to save the changes. If you click No, the deleted links will still exist within the bookmarks/favorites file. Even after confirming that you want to save the changes to the bookmarks/favorites file, you must ensure that your browser is closed before exiting AM-DeadLink and writing the changes. I tried leaving Firefox open when exiting and the deleted bookmarks were still there. I had to go back into AM-DeadLink, rerun the check, deleted the bookmarks again, and then exit the program--confirming my changes and closing the browser. The delete bookmarks were gone. If you make a mistake and accidentally delete a link you want to keep, AM-DeadLink keeps a text log file of all deleted links. You can open that log file with your favorite text editor and bookmark the page again.
See more of AM-DeadLink and take it for a test drive!
With 39 screenshots, our AM-DeadLink gallery gives you an even more in-dpeth look at this handy tool. Download AM-DeadLink from TechRepublic's Software Library, try it out, and tell us what you think of it. If you have similar application that you like better, tell us about it and explain why you think it's a better tool.
