Suggestions for Browser Bookmark Management?

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'?"

Comments

might want to give del.ico.us another shot

[rebug]

Personally, it took me about ten tries before I "got it." Maybe we're both dense, I don't know.

delicious for Firefox rocks, by the way.

BBPS (GPLed, PHP & MySQL)

[edmz]

Around 2002 (or 2001) I wrote a PHP and MySQL bookmark managing app that also uses tags to store information.

It's called BBPS and its GPLed.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bbps/

You can see a demo of it on my website:

http://edmz.org/bbps/

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)

FURL

[enigmae22]

check it out FURL

A feature I'd like to see

[c0d3h4x0r]

Or alternately, features they would like to see in a 'bookmark manager'?

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

[mattbrundage]

Perhaps what we need is a new meta tag to handle this bookmark title:

<meta name="bmtitle" content="Mozilla.org" />

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

[fm6]

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.

Have you looked at the titles in CDDB? They're a mess! Not an argument for letting strangers name your bookmarks. Easier to just take a second and edit them yourself.

What I do...

[Anonymous Cumshot]

is I just upload my bookmarks.html (from firefox) to a webserver. Then when I need them on the road, I just visit the URL. And since firefox keeps them in html-format, you can just view your bookmarks as a webpage. It works well. Try it!

Re:What I do...

[unapersson]

Epiphany does this, you define a number of keywords and when you add a bookmark you choose which keywords should be applied to it.

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/

Packratitis

[ApharmdB]

The real way to solve your problem is with "delete."

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

[LazyBoy]

I agree. Toss 'em. Here's my list of "bookmark" sources.

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

[ciscoguy01]

The real way to solve your problem is with "delete."

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 invariably amazed when I send them my bookmarks on the subject.

Re:Packratitis

[Twylite]

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.

search and bayes

[asa]

If a browser had a rock-solid non-volitle cache, then your history and your bookmarks could manifest out of that. Imagine that every page you've visited was stored in some reasonably light-weight database in the browser and then both auto-catagorized based on some combination of metadata grouping and bayesian analysis as well as available in a type-down filtering/auto-completing searchlike tool or tools.

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

[DavidTC]

Slogger can save every page you visit, in quite a lot of formats. I have two modes set up.

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 recorded in whatever format you can invent.

Indexing the saved pages, you ask? I point you to Google Desktop. ;)

Also, for google desktop, there is a plugin called Kongulo (Find in the standard place for plugins.) that a web spider, and they look just like they're in web browser history...a click, by default, goes and the current page, but you can go to the cached local copy instead.

I want

[dJCL]

What I want, and have not looked for yet, is something that keeps my bookmarks the same between all my browsers on all my os, on all my systems.

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

[ogre57]

Parent: Look at Firefox Extensions >> Bookmarks, maybe try eg Bookmarks Synchronizer 1.0.1, 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.

Don't bookmark

[A nonymous Coward]

I used to have hundreds, if not thousands, of bookmarks, but even before Google, I realized that 90% of them could be found again by a search. The added benefit is that if the site moves, or a better site comes along, the search automatically finds them too.

Re:Don't bookmark

[smahesh]

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.

<offtopic to OP>
Anyone else notice that queries to google now need to be appended with "-ebay -this -that" and not just simple keywords to restrict junk results?
</offtopic>

What about Favicons?

[tommertron]

Why oh why can't I change the favicons, either on my linkbar or my bookmarks? I'm a really visual person, and I find favicons the best way to browse through my links. It's annoying when a site doesn't have one, if they have one I don't like, or when they apply a random one (Netscape icon on the Toronto Star page???) What I'd really love is a plugin that would allow me to change the favicons on my linkbar and in bookmarks. Also visual bookmark folders would be really nice too - like an icon for sports sites, one for school sites, one for games, etc

Re:What about Favicons?

[hemebond]

Did you look at all? I found this with one Google search: http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index.php?showtopic =617

Re:What about Favicons?

[tommertron]

You're a better searcher than me. That's why I "ask slashdot" all the time. :)

Too many bookmarks

[digitect]

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:

1. Try not to bookmark links.
2. If you must, keep them in one of 15-20 categories.
3. Never have more than 50-60 total. Refactor constantly.

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.

Tabbed browsing

[MarkusQ]

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:Del.icio.us is not a bookmarks manager!

[mc_barron]

Or just go to del.icio.us/tag/xxx (assuming you're not at work) ;)

There are several services

[gozar]

There are several services online that allow you to do this. Off the top of my head:

• Backflip.com
• Bookmarks.yahoo.com
• My Bookmarks.com
• Flyrt.com
• mURL.com

Take your pick.

Re:Dead Link Checker

[schnits0r]

THere is a program (google for it) called AM-Deadlink. It will check for dupes and dead links, and redirection pages too. It also works for Firefox, Mozilla, Opera and IE.

chipmarks

[jkakar]

https://www.chipmark.com/Main

It's pretty cool... there's a plugin for firefox... take your bookmarks anywhere. Might be what you're looking for.

If you decide to go with online bookmarking...

[Tamerlan]

You may want to check out online bookmark services comparison chart. Most of them will import/export your bookmarks from all popular browsers.

SiteBar - End-user and enterprise level bookmarks

[mindslip]

SiteBar is the most powerful, and yet simple, bookmark manager out there. (I know because I started the project and handed it off to a brilliant programmer!)

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>