Suggestions for Browser Bookmark Management? 126
slashdot_commentator asks: "My bookmark collection has hit a few thousand at this point. Anything that looks interesting, or may be of interest in the future, I tuck away.
I group them in roughly 30 different subfolders based on topic. I've decided I consume too much effort in organizing them, and need to find a better solution. I've looked at radically different systems like del.icio.us, but its not for me. I'm even toying with writing a plugin/replacement to the current built-in bookmark manager. Can anyone recommend a plugin or package? Or alternately, features they would like to see in a 'bookmark manager'?"
might want to give del.ico.us another shot (Score:5, Interesting)
delicious [mozdev.org] for Firefox rocks, by the way.
Re:might want to give del.ico.us another shot (Score:2)
BBPS (GPLed, PHP & MySQL) (Score:5, Interesting)
It's called BBPS and its GPLed.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bbps/ [sourceforge.net]
You can see a demo of it on my website:
http://edmz.org/bbps/ [edmz.org]
If you like it, consider donating some code to the project instead of starting your own. I've been on other projects and haven't had the time to update it. (But don't worry, it works as it is)
Re:BBPS (GPLed, PHP & MySQL) (Score:2)
Re:BBPS (GPLed, PHP & MySQL) (Score:2)
Re:BBPS (GPLed, PHP & MySQL) (Score:2)
FURL (Score:2, Informative)
A feature I'd like to see (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like to see a feature that will automatically consult an automatic database (similar to CDDB) to get "kosherized" titles for web sites that I bookmark.
For instance, instead of bookmarking, "Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that Matter", it should just add "Slashdot" to my bookmarks. And instead of bookmarking, "MSNBC - Today's News from MSNBC Front Page", it should just bookmark it as "MSNBC".
Even more annoying are site titles containing promotional garbage such as, "GEICO Car Insurance. Get an auto insurance quote and save today. Free online motorcycle quotes as well." What fucknut (other than some marketing schmuck at GEICO) wants THAT whole text to appear as a bookmark?
I get really sick of having to hand-edit all the site titles to be sane and utilitarian. Someone should harness the collective power of the net to solve this.
Re:A feature I'd like to see (Score:5, Interesting)
This fits much better in my bookmarks than the current title "Mozilla - Home of the Firefox web browser and Thunderbird e-mail client".
Re:A feature I'd like to see (Score:1)
why would you need a meta tag or a CDDB-like thing
for the odd occasion that a site has a domain name that isn't what you want on your bookmark, you could hand edit.
Re:A feature I'd like to see (Score:2)
That only works for sites that have their own domain name. What happens when I want to bookmark some useful information at www.example.edu/~joe/blah/something.html?
Most sites don't have an entire domain name dedicated to them.
Re:A feature I'd like to see (Score:1)
Re:A feature I'd like to see (Score:1)
Re:A feature I'd like to see (Score:1)
Re:A feature I'd like to see (Score:1)
Re:A feature I'd like to see (Score:2)
Maybe if search engines didn't weight page title so heavily people wouldn't keyword stuff it. Surely it would be better to base results on the content of the page that users actually look at. How often do you actually look at the page title? I don't look often, I look at the page body. If the page body text were used as the primary source of keywords, and the text <Hx> tags given appropriate weightings (H1 more heavily than H2 &c) then that might be more useful as it would use keywords that th
Re:A feature I'd like to see (Score:2)
Re:A feature I'd like to see (Score:1)
And usercontrib favicons for everything that doesn't have one. (Or it has, for example, the default Drupal ones.)
I was going to say 'categories', but anything that requires an opinion is probably going to overcomplicate everything.
Re:A feature I'd like to see (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A feature I'd like to see (Score:2)
Re:A feature I'd like to see (Score:1)
Re:A feature I'd like to see (Score:2)
What I do... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What I do... (Score:2)
Which infact is not a bad idea i just had , have you ever used itunes , well imagine bookmarks with metadata
im sure someone must of already come up with this , but couple a meta-data search with bookmarks that are tagged by site, genre , importance , catogry etc.
and you have an easy clean way to browse for relevant info that you have acumulated.
if anyone knows a project like this then i would be glad
Re:What I do... (Score:3, Informative)
Then when you type a keyword into the address bar, it lists all links that match those keywords. It will also automatically add search urls to the dropdown if you've put a %s in the relevant place in the URL.
http://www.gnome.org/projects/epiphany/ [gnome.org]
Re:What I do... (Score:2)
this is an insanely usefull feature that i am ammased hasn't been taken on by every browser out there
ok if your managing a previous set of bookmarks then this could be a large 1 time pain the behind , but for starting a new colection this is just excelent
honestly having a look through the list of features i am highly impressed with how far epiphany has come since i last used it
Re:What I do... (Score:1)
The Epiphany system can become unwieldy once you have either a large number of topics or a large number of bookmarks.
There is a patch to build a hierarchical menu of bookmarks automatically by taking into account the bookmarks where a user selected two or more topics. It needs users to test it though.
http://www.dsl.uow.edu.au/~harvey/code_epiphany.sh tml [uow.edu.au]
Re:What I do... (Score:1)
I tend to follow a "if you don't miss it you didn't need it" policy for most data, keeping a reachable backup if i decide i need it later.
Time tends to sort things out better than anything.
Packratitis (Score:5, Insightful)
But since you probably don't want to do that, a function that checks bookmarks for viability would help you a lot. I bet a lot of those sites you saved are long gone.
Re:Packratitis (Score:3, Insightful)
Things I type (and complete with the browser history). It's faster than moving the mouse anyway.
A couple of dozen items on my MyYahoo home page.
Google.
Re:Packratitis (Score:2)
Re:Packratitis (Score:2)
Checking bookmarks for viability is already out there. Its called spidering.
Oddly enough, those long gone sites are not really a problem. Out of my 3K bookmarks, I'd guess at least 95% are viable, and perhaps another 10% need to be relocated.
No, I want to automate the organizing, and perhaps an alternate interface to quickly retrieve the link. Transferring the bookmarks into a relational database probably would really help. Save a bookmark, add a few
Re:Packratitis (Score:3, Insightful)
But since you probably don't want to do that, a function that checks bookmarks for viability would help you a lot. I bet a lot of those sites you saved are long gone
You mean like there was in Netscape 4.77? Fantastic bookmark manager. Could search inline, check for dead links, etc. Firefox has nothing, IE is much worse.
Having historical bookmarks are VERY USEFUL, I have had people IM me and say "what do you know about 'this'". They are invariab
Re:Packratitis (Score:5, Informative)
I've suffered from the billion bookmarks problem too, and I believe "delete it" is sound advise.
For some background, take a look at the book "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. You'll realise that having so many bookmarks doesn't assist you in any way. There are too many to be used for reference material, and too many to consult regularly.
Instead, try to do the following:
1. Have a list of "TO DO" bookmarks. Those sites you want to take a closer look at, articles you want to read, etc. When you have spare time, work over this list. Once handled the bookmark must be moved off this list.
2. Have a list of "Regular" bookmarks. These are sites you want to visit regularly. You could subcategorise them as daily, weekly, monthly (or hourly for Slashdot ;) ).
3. Have a list of "Reference" bookmarks and criteria for adding new ones. Carefully choosing your criteria is important. I suggest that you never put a bookmark directly into reference, but put it into "TO DO" first so that you review it at least one at a later time before deciding on its importance. Then omit any bookmarks to information that can be easily found by searching. Then ask yourself "would I use this as reference if I printed it out and filed it in a cabinet?" If yes, then it makes it in as a reference bookmark.
You'll suddenly find that you have a managable amount of reference material, and can categorise it easily according to your needs.
Re:Packratitis (Score:2)
A year old isn't really that long ago. To have a few thousand, the user likely has links much older than that.
search and bayes (Score:5, Insightful)
You could just start typing any content or matching metadata from the site in the urlbar and it would filter on that and present options in the auto-complete pop-up list, maybe with additional ranking based on recency, frequency and user tweaking. Alternately, you could see various views of the auto-catagorization, a la iTunes, with a few simple sorting and flagging tools. Combining recency and frequency, plus user "nudging" of entries (possibly based on a simple TiVo-style thumbs up/thumbs down model) you would be able to find what you're looking for at the top of various folders/menus/treelists with more ease than today's common bookmark managers and it wouldn't require the forethough that you might one day want to find it.
- A
Re:search and bayes (Score:3, Informative)
I have a button to turn on logging and get the text of every page saved in different text file, (And the URL saved in a seperate XML file.) for when I'm doing research I'll need later.
And I have a button that saves the whole page intact automatically, with graphics in a directory.
But if you have infinite disk space, you can easily do the latter on every page, with a handy toolbar button for a toggle. And all URLs re
Re:search and bayes (Score:1)
I want (Score:3, Interesting)
Something that plugs into firefox/mozilla, modifies the links for ie and messes with opera. All of this stored on my server using webdav would be best, but someone else's system is fine for me.
I just want to bookmark a site at work, so I can waste time at home browsing it, and leave work time for work.
I currently just copy the cool urls to a wiki I installed for testing a while back and never took down... hundreds of links in there, most useless really...
Re:I want (Score:1, Informative)
You could try portable firefox, basically it goes on a usbpen or similar device and can be used on as many machines as you want as far as i remember.
Another alternative would be to use the import/export function in firefox normally, save a few days worth of bookmarks, export tehm and import them at home.
Re:I want (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent: Look at Firefox Extensions >> Bookmarks [mozilla.org], maybe try eg Bookmarks Synchronizer 1.0.1 [mozilla.org], etc.
Article: Wish list item. Over the years I've accumulated bookmark files from Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konqueror, and Lynx. I would like something that would reconcile these various files and formats into a single file, ask/delete duplicates, etc. These duplicates would include "Hey dummy, you have the same url in 3 different folders. Do you want to delete ..". Mentioned elsewhere, also some easy way to scan, verify, find, and ask/delete dead links.
Re:I want (Score:2)
Re:I want (Score:1)
Re:I want (Score:1)
KevG
Re:I want (Score:1)
Simple answer for me, might be scripting something myself. I already use have webdav setup for my mozilla calendar client to save online, so saving another xml file to webdav would be nothing, making that file formatted as an rss feed would allow me to set it up as a mozilla/firefox(maybe ie...) bookmark that auto updates. Then I just need some glue that updat
Re:I want - and... (Score:2)
Dead Link Checker (Score:1)
I hate clicking on a bookmark, and finding out the page has been moved.
Re:Dead Link Checker (Score:1)
I had the same problem. I have used "Xenu's link sleuth" link checker for validating my bookmarks file. But it is available only for windows - may have changed since I last checked.
Re:Dead Link Checker (Score:2, Informative)
Preferred method. (Score:1, Funny)
It's more fun to rediscover the web, rather than just visiting the same sites all the time.
Don't bookmark (Score:5, Insightful)
Tabbed browsing (Score:3, Funny)
Tabbed browsing has really reduced my need for bookmarks. Instead of bookmarking things, I just open them in another tab.
When the tabs get too small to see the icons I just open another window.
When there are too many windows to keep track of, I just switch to a new desktop.
I would recommend investing in a good UPS if you plan to adopt this system though.
--MarkusQ
Re:Tabbed browsing (Score:2)
Re:Don't bookmark (Score:2, Informative)
I used to keep bookmarks and then switched to using google/yahoo search engine technique you mentioned. But of late, I am switching back to keeping bookmarks because the quality of search results from the search engines seems to have deteriorated. Earlier the relevant results would appear in the first couple of pages. Now, I have to dig through the list of junk results before hitting the relevent page. To save me the hassle the next time around - I just bookmark the site.
Re:Don't bookmark (Score:2)
I use History Hound [stclairsw.com] on the Mac, I'm sure there's something similar for Linux/Windows.
Re:Don't bookmark (Score:1)
Depending on what I'm searching for, I'll often use "-com", which usually yields some interesting results. The top link will generally be a .edu or .org domain.
.co.uk and .co.nz, but they are much lesser in number, and usually further down the list.
Of course you still get results from domains like
Re:Don't bookmark (Score:1)
I use bookmarks mainly not for finding sites but for remembering to check the sites in the first place. Basically, the only bookmarks I use other than as a reminder are those few I have in the toolbar, and they are the ones I visit enough that one click is much better than typing a google search.
I have one bookmarks folder called "bills", which is really a combination of the two. Every week or so I go through this list of bookmarks to the login pages of sites where I pay my bills (my phone company, my st
Re:Don't bookmark (Score:2)
(IE I'm at work and I want to remember to check out that site about the beowulf cluster of hot grits... how will I remember that when I get home?)
Google (Score:1)
What about Favicons? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What about Favicons? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What about Favicons? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What about Favicons? (Score:1)
scrap book (Score:1)
Too many bookmarks (Score:4, Interesting)
This is not intended as a flame, but an observation from my own experience. I used to keep tons of bookmarks on a series of HTML pages. It was pretty simple, and I could reorganize via simple cut and paste. (Know thy text editor.)
But after a while, I realized it was taking some additional effort to maintain them. URLs update, site content gets revised, re-statements elsewhere are more helpful, and my interests change.
I also realized as Google continued to improve (4 years ago?) that half the time I was simple googling what I remembered, not paging through my link collection. If a URL went out of date, I would spend only a minute or so re-finding it, not the hours I imagined.
Which leads me to my current system:
I am always pleasantly surprised at how quickly I can google some long-lost page. Or sometimes, I run across another page that is even better, which may have not even existed the first time.
Link collection is a dangerous hobby because one tends to overlook the hidden maintenance costs.
Re:Too many bookmarks (Score:1)
There's nothing more irritating to me than looking for "that thing about the stuff I saw two months ago" with Google, but I hated having hundreds of bookmarks for sites I may never need to visit again. With del.icio.us, I just bookmark it, tag it, and forget about it. Any time I need a link, it's there, organized in a system that makes sense to me.
My Firefox bookmarks menu is amazingly short now, just stuff I visit regularly.
take a look a cnav (Score:1)
It organizes bookmarks in concepts and allows you to make notes on them. It's very usefull once you get the hang on it.
Wallowing in Ideas (Score:2)
Multiple views of the same mass o' bookmarks would be a great start.
then, keywords from the webpages would be nice, but create keyword categories only if multiple bookmarked pages have those same keywords.
This would save me from having to manually create folders like "linux" "wimax" "python".
Re:Wallowing in Ideas (Score:1)
http://www.dsl.uow.edu.au/~harvey/code_epiphany.s
Re:Wallowing in Ideas (Score:1)
There are several services (Score:3, Informative)
Take your pick.
chipmarks (Score:4, Informative)
It's pretty cool... there's a plugin for firefox... take your bookmarks anywhere. Might be what you're looking for.
Powermarks: Tag-based manager (Score:2)
Powermarks [kaylon.com] is a tag-based (aka keyword-based) bookmark manager.
I love it.
When I'm browsing and find something I like, I press my hotkey and start typing one or more of the many keywords I use to describe URLs to myself. Saving a bookmark takes about 3 seconds, no mouse.
When I want to find a bookmark, I press another hotkey and start typing the domain name or a keyword. The search results are updated with every keystroke with no lag.
Works with Opera and Mozilla.
Re:Powermarks: Tag-based manager (Score:1)
PersonalBrain (Score:1)
Re:PersonalBrain (Score:2)
The nice thing with TheBrain (formerly from Natrificial) is you can link virtually anything to anything without the old file and folder hierarchical system. "Thoughts" in TheBrain can be linked as "child," "parent," "sibling," or "jump" thoughts. Since the last version, everything can be color-coded. Th
Searchability and automatic directories (Score:2)
I'm not sure if this is what delicious does, but I'd like to add a book mark and automatically have that website added to my own private search engine/directory. The directory location would be default to some sane default - for instance, if I add a bookmark which is already in DMOZ, then it'd be added to the same directories as in DMOZ. If it didn't already exist in DMOZ, then I would have to place it somewhere myself, and this would be remembered for others unless I marked the bookmark private.
As for t
Re:Searchability and automatic directories (Score:1)
As for the search engine part, anything I add to my bookmarks file would be automatically crawled on a regular basis
Oh yeah, and this almost goes without saying, but I'd want a cached copy of these pages kept, of course. In fact, while we're at it, how 'bout an archive of every historical version, a la archive.org's Wayback Machine.
Re:Searchability and automatic directories (Score:1)
Re:Searchability and automatic directories (Score:1)
Google! (Score:1)
JUST USE GOOGLE. Chances are that's how you found the website in the first place anyway. Personally, I've only bookmarked websites that I visit every single day. For neato things, I just google for it if I want it again. This conveniently takes care of the problem of URLs changing with your bookmarks not being updated, as well.
Re:Google! (Score:2)
Usually this occurs when I want to locate a particular factoid for a response. Specific keywords, page ranking, and Google index updates is going to affect the ability to find a specific page.
Re:Google! (Score:2)
Re:Google! (Score:1)
Rule #2: At the end of the day, sort all new bookmarks, or they get deleted.
Opera's Notes (Score:1)
Surprisingly useful. I use it a lot more that the traditional bookmarks.
Mozilla Sidebar (Score:2)
It makes a nice little sidebar for Mozilla and FireFox. Regardless of being at home, work or dual booting to a different Mozilla/FireFox profile, my bookmarks are accessable.
Adding groups/subfolders is high on my wishlist.
Scuttle - Online Bookmarks Manager (Score:2)
Seriously all of these tagged systems are much better than a flat hierarchy when it comes to reusing bookmarks. Plus having it in your own database or an RSS feed is quite useful. Select a tagged rss feed and add it to your site to display recently related bookmarks, I dig it. Just the ability to share alone makes the system worthwhile. No more digging through email to find a link someone sent you last year
Bookmarks Synchronizer (Score:1)
its all about hierarchy (Score:2)
the main thing is keeping a max size per folder. i've got 5 folders in root, and 3-8 folders in each of those, and 3-10 items/folders in each of those (and so on).
bookmar file raw [blanketfort.com] and also in a javascript sidebar [blanketfort.com] (mimicing firefox sidebar).
it expands organically. when a folder grows too large, it gets split into subclasses. follow your own naming con
Re:its all about hierarchy (Score:1)
Not really management (Score:1)
Re:Not really management (Score:2)
Sort of. What I "think" I want is some form of bookmark management automation. The ability to quickly store a bookmark, with graphical indexing, rather than tries, and then to be able to retrieve it as quickly. And any other bonuses: Newer easier interface, spidering, replication/transaction mirroring.
If you decide to go with online bookmarking... (Score:2, Informative)
SiteBar - End-user and enterprise level bookmarks (Score:3, Informative)
It's a bookmark *server*, so you don't have to even be at your own computer to have all your bookmarks organized.
It runs in either your sidebar (beautiful in Firefox), main window, a stand-alone pop-up, your menu, an RSS feed, or embedded in any web page.
It's OSS, written in PHP/MySQL (port it if you'd like) so you can run your own server if you'd like
or use one of any number of public SiteBar servers which other people run.
It does link checking, expires old dead links, shows favicons in it's tree, has full users and groups if you want a multi-user setup, and fine granular control over editing/adding/deleting/viewing if you want to run it in your intranet.
You can simply import your current bookmark file (any format!), synch between installs, export to a different bookmark file, or use it from the server itself.
Check it out... let me know what you think mindslip.com>
Re:SiteBar - End-user and enterprise level bookmar (Score:2)
Based on what you've said, you may well be right. What you described in your posting is something I've been thinking about for while; if someone else has developed it already, great!
However, before you get to carried away with your own magnificence, you might want to tell your 'brilliant programmer' friend to work on the website a bit.
From my visit
Resounding support here... (Score:2)
SITEBAR ROCKS!
Works in Firefox, Opera, IE...
Web-based...accessible anywhere, from anything...
You can use it just for yourself, or make it open to the public (or in my case, family and friends can use it if they want, and contribute to the public folder of bookmarks in addition to their own personal folder)
Seriously...give it a look.
Likstash... (Score:2)
Pros:
Re:Del.icio.us is not a bookmarks manager! (Score:2)
*sigh*
-9mm-
Re:Del.icio.us is not a bookmarks manager! (Score:1)
And of course it ges mentioned again, because the truth is, there isn't any better way. Either you deal with crappy browser-based bookmarks or you use a web-based bookmark system like del.icio.us or any number of others. Asking for "a bookmark manager other than del.icio.us" is akin to saying "I am so goddamn picky it will make y
Re:Del.icio.us is not a bookmarks manager! (Score:2, Funny)