1. Tree view in a sidebar; can open/close with a hotkey.
2. Human readable data format; if one syncs data btw. different machines, the bookmark file should be able to be synced to/from and when you open the browser, it just works without having to import/export.
3. Able to navigate the tree as well when saving new bookmarks.
4. Remember the last save-to folder.
5. A special folder for bookmarks (and folders) to appear on the (horiz.) bookmark toolbar.
6. Any other special function folders such as "recently visited," "favorites," or what have you should be able to be collapsed and not get in your face if you don't want to use them.
All of the above can (almost) be done in Firefox. Here's some ideas to make it better:
A. Make it possible to break up the description text into multiple fields; then make a column header thingy like in a file manager, so you can click the headers to automatically sort the view of the bookmarks by field, up or down. The column headers and sorting system must obey the tree hierarchy! Ie., if you can have folder "Ugh" sorted by the first field, and folder "OhNo" sorted by the second. You should also be able to move the fields on the column header bar on a folder by folder basis. This should just affect the mapping of stored fields to displayed field order. The actual fields encoded into the file remain as defined by the user.
The point of this might be: I tag some music video bookmarks with a "grade". I may want to sort them by grade today, to see my favorite ones. However, I also tag them with another thing: symbols *, #, or $ to indicate if I downloaded them already, as both .mp4&.mp3, just .mp3, or just .mp4 respectively. Tomorrow I may want to sort them by that field. See where I'm going with this? Not being able to sort by fields causes headaches, often resulting in time wasted hand editing the damn things again to try to work around the browser's limitations, to no avail.
Also, indiv. bookmarks could have a little '+' to expand/collapse the view of additional, detailed description text. This should be able to be collapsed with a hotkey and/or menu entry.
A good selection of menu options to expand/collapse all, selected folders, sub-descriptions, etc. would be killer.
B. For Pete's sake, make it possible to edit a bookmark description by simply pressing or something, instead of having to right click, "Properties". Most functionality should be reachable by using arrow keys, function keys, hotkeys, etc.
C. Be able to select groups of folders or indiv. bookmarks (as in a file manager) and selectively save just the selected ones to a file with a new name. (Some approximation to file manager style bookmark management is in Firefox, using the "Library" window. It has some very awkward and counter-intuitive behavior, however. If an additional window is needed for re-organizational tasks, then it should operate much like a file manager.
D. Don't take away the bookmark from one folder if I re-bookmark it to another!
E. The Search capabilities of Firefox for bookmarks are crappy. It throws away the tree view when a search is done. WTF? I want to know where in the tree the target is, not a list of 1000 hits with organizational context lost.
F. Finally - Some sort of SYMLINKS! E.g. I have a Shopping/Amazon/Tools and also a Mechanical/Tools. Hmm. This leads to the problem that hierarchical organization sometimes cannot adequately express the organizational relationships needed. Symlinks could greatly help this.
Some of this might seem bizarre to casual www users. But when you have 10000s of bookmarks as I do, many of which are critical sources of products and information related to real work, limitations in being able to implement sophisticated levels of organization result in more headaches.
It is the same sort of limitations that make it almost impossible for me to use Windows any more, since I simply cannot function without both the simplicity of the Linux filesystem (no unnecessary abstractions) and its sophistication (powerful symlinks).
Just some ideas. Hopefully not totally pointless to have responded to an A.C.