As I've mentioned in the past, my Internet Explorer Favorites list is enormous. I have it all sorted into folders, so most of the time it's manageable. A reader explained how he had used a number of shareware tools to create a "list of links page" that he uses as his start page.
After doing a little spelunking around IE, I discovered a really easy way to turn your Favorites list into an HTML page, which you can then print or use as your start page. Basically you export the Favorites list to an HTML file. Then it's a just a plain old HTML file that you can treat like any other.
To export your Favorites, choose File, Import and Export. (Note that this command is only available in versions 5 or later.) Next, follow the wizard to export all your favorites or just certain folders. You can then choose the location of your HTML file, which by default is named bookmark.htm. The export creates a somewhat non-descript looking file, but if you open it up in your favorite HTML editor, you'll see that the HTML is dead simple and easy to edit if you want to beautify it.
As an aside, I recently found a great shareware HTML editor. It's called TextPad from Helios Software Solutions. You can try it out for free by downloading it from http://www.textpad.com. To register it and get rid of the "nag" screen, it costs $27.
Anyway, after you have your HTML file with your Favorites, you can then make it your start page in Internet Explorer. In IE, choose Tools, Options and then under Home Page, browse to find your Favorites HTML file on your hard disk. Now, every time you open IE, links to your favorite pages will be right there as soon as you start browsing. And whenever you click the Home button, you can go back Home to find all your favorite places again. You also can print the Favorites list just by choosing File, Print as you would for any other page. If you want to see the actual links themselves, after choosing Print, click the Options tab and click the Print table of links option.
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