Places Feature Cut From Firefox 2

segphault writes "Apparently, the new bookmark and history system (called 'Places') scheduled for inclusion in Firefox 2 has been removed from the roadmap and disabled in the builds. An article at Ars Technica discusses some of the implications: 'Since Firefox 2 (and all alpha builds from here on out) will use the conventional bookmark system, those of you that have been using Firefox 2 alphas (the Gecko 1.8 branch) will have to export your bookmarks to HTML in order to preserve them. As a Firefox user and a software developer, I am personally very disappointed with the removal of this innovative feature.'" Update: 05/01 01:16 GMT by Z : Ars link updated.

Cut from Firefox2, but "removed from the roadmap"?

[Glonk]

This feature was cut from Firefox2 because it was unpolished and unacceptably buggy still. It is now on the "trunk" for inclusion in Firefox3, so it's still on the roadmap.

In fact, it remains enabled on the Trunk nightlies for Firefox3.

Bad URL

[evilviper]

Only one number off. So close, and yet so far.

Features cut from Firefox 2:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060430-6701 .html [arstechnica.com]

Corrected arstechnica link

[Nate Fox]

The correct arstechnica link is here: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060430-6701 .html [arstechnica.com]

Re:Ouch...

[Glonk]

The alpha automatically imported all data from the old bookmarks.html into the Places system. Firefox converted from IE to Mozilla's bookmarks.html already.

The later builds of the Alpha (last week or so) all included an Export functionality to dump your Places DB into a bookmarks.html file again for this next build. You can still download those builds if you need to export your Places DB to the old Bookmarks.html format.

Places discussion

[rayver]

In case someone is looking for more information about the actual implementation of the "places" concept: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Talk:Places:Design_Overvie w [mozilla.org] http://wiki.mozilla.org/Places:Design_Overview [mozilla.org]

Take a leaf out of Epiphany's book

[MoogMan]

I really like the way Epiphany handles bookmarks with it's "Smart Bookmarks" features... Basically, you just tag your bookmarks with arbitrary tags e.g. "Work", "Sport", "Geek", and you can search for them dynamically.

I would like to see an extension of this (and I know work is in progress)... With meta-tagged files. God knows why browsers do not store bookmarks as files in a "Bookmarks" folder.

Re:fork a new branch

[Myen]

Because forking it won't get code written any faster? It's not as if forking magically gets stuff done...

Their official reason for disabling Places amounts to "either we kill this, or no new Firefox for everyone". They chose to release something with the other changes rather than wait.

Re:So what are we missing?

[WWWWolf]

Basically, in Netscape 4, bookmarks were stored in a quasi-HTML file, and history in a DB file.

In Mozilla, bookmarks are stored in a XML-that-almost-look-like-HTML format, while the history is stored in the most insane file format ever devised by mortal mind. It's called MORK. Remember that name. Remember it well. (Seriously, take a look at your history.db. It's a text file. It really is. Or it might look like one from a good distance.)

While in the new grand concept, everything is stored in a SQLite database - simple, well tested, portable, efficient, doesn't make Firefox much bigger than it already is, and above all, programmer-friendly file format that isn't causing peoples' brains to ooze out of their ears when they try to figure it out.

Not really removed feature...

[MTO_B.]

- Places is still in the roadmap, just not for v2.0. (maybe 3.0 if not earlier)
- Places was too buggy to work with. Nightly testers report far "too many" bugs with it... even if they were fixed, imagine all those bugs that would be uncovered if used by the masses (nightly tester build bugs are a good indication of how many bugs will be found if open , it's somewhat proportional).

More to read at MozillaZine [mozillazine.org]

Re:Bad URL

[(H)elix1]

Adblock lets you nuke things at the domain level. I have *.falkag.*, *.tacoda.*, and *.google-analytics.* in my filter list mostly due to other sites. You can also use your wildcards to take out js files as well (and a mess of other stuff if you are clever with your regex) if there is something on the domain you want to see.

Re:Firefox has the wrong focus

[OzRoy]

Here is a blog post by Ben Goodger discussing the descision to remove places. Basically it's so they can focus on making Firefox "Safer, Faster, Better"

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/010115 .html [mozillazine.org]

If you RTFA...

[Hachey]

...you might see that Ryan Paul wasn't just turning his nose up at FireFox:

"As a Firefox user and a software developer, I am personally very disappointed with the removal of this innovative feature. With over 1,000 bookmarks to keep track of, I was really looking forward to being able to leverage the SQLite database engine for bookmark organization and management. That said, my disappointment is tempered by my capacity to appreciate the rationale for such a delay. In the world of software development (both open and proprietary), such delays are common and they typically result in software that is more polished and reliable. As long as inclusion of the feature isn't delayed indefinitely, the consequences of this particular decision will most likely be positive ones."


It is early adoption folks. It's an alpha. Not a big deal.

Re:So what are we missing?

[EvanED]

Agreed. It also makes it possible to open your bookmarks file in another browser.

Re:Bad URL

[Columcille]

It's probably reasonable to say that those who block ads are those who never, ever respond to ads. They are an annoyance and intrusive to me, and I can't recall when I've ever clicked one on purpose, certainly I've never spent money as a result of an internet ad. There are those who do, enough that people are able to make money from them. I never respond to ads and I'm sick of seeing them. Adblock has become something I cannot live without.

Re:Not just Firefox

[rho]

I wanted to add weight to this argument. I once put together a system for somebody using a 486 and an old Adaptec SCSI card. This was when Pentiums (and the Pentium Pro) were cutting edge. Running Slackware, it made a seriously nice system. Quirky, but stable and useful.

I have an old Thinkpad 760, but it won't run any of the new distros. I used to be able to run OpenBSD 2.something on it with acceptable speed, but XFree86 made point revision and it stopped being reasonably snappy. Running Firefox on any modern distro, BSD, Linux or otherwise, is painful.

However, I can run Win98 on it with little trouble. Is that a good thing? I don't think so.

Re:Bad URL

[Firehed]

I don't think you need to use adblock to disable javascript entirely, but it would be great if there was a "from originating site only" option as per "Load Images" and cookies. A blanket ban on JS will kill navigation on many sites, as js menus aren't uncommon (regardless of what fancy crap you can do with CSS or whatever).

For the record, though, Filterset.g updater combined with Adblock (Plus) pretty much eliminates every ad in existance. Plus has the bonus of letting you whitelist sites so you can support them by giving them ad views. An earlier verson had a "load then hide" behavior which was nice, but that seems to be gone now.

Re:Differentiation

[zerocool^]

Especially since right now (in firefox 1.0.7, which is what i'm running, stfu) you can middle click on the tabs and close them anyway. Adding an x on the tabs accomplishes nothing.

Why do people not use the middle click in firefox? Middleclick link = open in new tab, middle click tab = close. I go through a page like fark, and middle click on the links I want to read, then they're all there waiting for me in tabbed glory when I'm done and ready to digest.

~W

Re:Bad URL

[lonecrow]

The webmaster didn't read the Google instructions. If they placed their Analytics script at the bottom of the page just above as Google instructs them to, then their visitors would not have to wait before viewing the page. Just another case of they shoulda RTFM.