Hello, Rob.

Unfortunately this is confusing because of the different means which we must use to get the job done in Chrome and Firefox.  I just reviewed section 5.5 of the Help Book, which is what you see when you click the round "?" button in the upper right hand corner of the Manage Browser Add-ons window, and agree that the Toolbar Buttons and Menu Items are too hard to find info about.  A bug has been filed to fix that for the next version.

You can also see section 5.5 online, here…

http://sheepsystems.com/bookmacster/HelpBook/browserAddons

In section 5.5, under the third bullet point, are two screenshots.  The first one, captioned In Firefox, shows the two Menu Items that appear in Firefox after you click the relevant Install button in BookMacster's Manage Browser Add-ons window.  The second one, captioned In Google Chrome and related browsers… shows the Toolbar Button that similarly appears in Chrome.

These features are used when you Use BookMacster Directly, has described here…

http://sheepsystems.com/bookmacster/HelpBook/directAddVisit

Using BookMacster Directly is the "other" way of using BookMacster.  Briefly, instead of adding and visiting bookmarks using the Add Bookmark  menu item, and built-in Bookmarks menu in web browsers such as Safari, Chrome and Firefox, you bypass them and bookmark with BookMacster directly.   These Menu Items and Toolbar buttons are two of the five or six methods you have to do that.  Personally, I use BookMacster directly with BookMacster's Anywhere Menu, a global keyboard shortcut, described here…

http://sheepsystems.com/bookmacster/HelpBook/anywhereMenu

Using BookMacster Directly is faster and simpler than using Agents to sync automatically.  There are definitely fewer moving parts.  But I must also export to Safari in order to have my bookmarks on my iPad Mini, so, like many users, I have a foot in both camps.

Rob Lewis wrote on Mar 30^th, 2013 at 4:15pm:
The short answer is syncing.  A slightly longer answer is in the first two  bullet points in Section 5.5.1, which precede those screenshots.

Rob Lewis wrote on Mar 30^th, 2013 at 4:15pm:
That is true for Chrome, Canary or Chromium.  But our Firefox extension no longer needs the Plugin and ignores it.

Rob Lewis wrote on Mar 30^th, 2013 at 4:15pm:
It is, when you install any Chrome, Canary or Chromium extension.

Rob Lewis wrote on Mar 30^th, 2013 at 4:15pm:
So that you can reinstall it in case it appears to be installed but is not working.  Although there are no known circumstances that would cause this, unknown unknown actors are always possible when interacting with other apps and extensions.

* * *

Thanks for the feedback.  It's difficult in this area of browser add-ons to make things "just work" without exposing too much technical details to the user.  For syncing, BookMacster installs add-ons automatically when needed, so syncing users will never need this window except during updates, and that's pretty easy because the default button changes to say Update and beams blue.  The other users, those who  Use BookMacster Directly, are directed to this window knowing that they are looking for Menu Items and/or Toolbar Button.

Life would be much easier if Safari, Firefox and Chrome were designed to a common standard, but that's never going to happen.