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Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?

#101

Post by forgotpwd16 »

mg wrote: post #28

I don't know about Chrome, but in Firefox: Chrome now hides the bookmark bar by default Not sure if it is the default, but my Firefox bookmark bar is always visible load common favorite news sites & blogs or load a window with all my productivity SaaS sites. Shift+Click on a bookmark folder does that pick up where i left off on a research rabbit hole Right-Click on one of the open tabs, click "select all tabs", right…

>so there is no way to automatically backup the bookmarks in this nice format

Firefox automatically backs up current bookmarks in lz4-compressed json under $profiledir/bookmarkbackups ($profiledir by default being like ~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxx.default). Can also autoexport to an HTML file by setting the following about:config prefs:

    browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML => (boolean) true
    browser.bookmarks.file => (string) "/home/user/bookmarks.html"
If later pref is omitted then file will be $profiledir/bookmarks.html.

An issue with depending on this functionality is the backup happens when closing the browser.

Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?

#103

Post by Curzel »

jamespetercook wrote: post #88
Curzel wrote: post #68

I swear I don't understand of some people seems to be using browsers... Let me know if the following sound weird to you, this is what I usually do... I have 3 browser windows: - Chrome window with personal Google Account and 2-5 tabs - Chrome window with company Google Account and 2-5 tabs - A third browser window as a media player ( https://github.com/curzel-it/pipper ) Bookmark bar is set to always visible, and I h…

This sounds a lot like how I work too. If I have to open a bunch of tabs it’s usually temporary and I’ll want to get rid of them again at the earliest opportunity.

Exactly!

Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?

#104

Post by MasterScrat »

adaml_623 wrote: post #23

I thought it was a commonly held thought that Google didn't want Chrome users using bookmarks because it directly competed with their search (and advertising).

I definitely feel like autocompletion in the omnibar is getting worse and worse, especially when the URL i'm looking for is bookmarked. The "this is just to make me google it again" thought does regularly crosses my mind.

Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?

#105

Post by taskforcegemini »

jhoelzel wrote: post #86

personally I have switched to a plugin called "OneTab" in all my browsers. its super nice because it just adds a button to your browser to store all open windows in OneTab, which basically is just and endless html page on which i can search on. This leads to me saving all open tabs onto it when im rebooting and later on just removing those that i dont like quickly by window instead of one by one. It has import and ex…

the plugin is probably more comfortable, but I think "bookmark all open tabs" chrome and firefox have. something I recently learnt is that in firefox you can search all open tabs by starting with % in the adressbar

Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?

#106

Post by alin23 »

mg wrote: post #63
alin23 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually had to do this yesterday for a small fuzzy search through bookmarks thing I’m building for myself. It was something like: SELECT url FROM moz_places WHERE id IN (SELECT fk FROM moz_bookmarks) You can find more info on that database here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Places/Places_SQL_queries_best_prac...

That only gives you the urls though. You lose the names, the folder structure, the order and the keywords. The HTML format FireFox can create is so nice, that for now I am willing to manually book them up to get that. Until someone can come up with a way to automate it.

You can get names, folder, and ordered by date added in a nice JSON format:

    sqlite3 -json /tmp/places.sqlite '\
        SELECT p.url, b.title, (SELECT f.title FROM moz_bookmarks f WHERE fk IS NULL AND f.id=b.parent) AS folder \
        FROM moz_places p \
        INNER JOIN moz_bookmarks b ON b.fk=p.id \
        ORDER BY b."dateAdded"'
The full folder structure might be a bit more complex to get, I only have them on the top level and can’t experiment. Not sure what the keywords, never used such a thing.

I only rely on the title, and I’ll extract the text content of the link for a full text search through it because usually I’ll remember something from the contents and will try to search that instead of something from the title. I can’t predict what I’ll remember.

Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?

#107

Post by jeroenhd »

plaguepilled wrote: post #73
jeroenhd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "despite the weaker security"? Did I miss something about a security hole?

Firefox's sandbox is a little underwhelming on Linux: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...

Interesting, thanks for sharing. I will stick with Firefox despite all this because I don't trust Google and Microsoft with my data but this is good to know.

With how many exploits Google needs to patch each release it's a little surprising how many security measures seem to get bypassed regularly for them to have any effect.

Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?

#108

Post by mackrevinack »

i would love if bookmarks would act more like outliners such as dynalist or workflowy.

i would like to able to focus in on one folder on the sidebar and have nothing else showing. currently when you have things organised in folders and subfolders, the 1st level of subfolders are indented, the 2nd level are indented even more and eventually you have to scroll sideways to see things.

and having shortcuts to get back to frequently used folders, or at least be able to search for a folder in the sidebar. at the moment firefox only searches for bookmarks, not folders

being able to edit bookmark names and links directly without having to open separate editing window. vivaldi's sidebar does a pretty good job of this and also has a note section which can be very useful to remind your future self in a few years why you bookmarked something

Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?

#109

Post by buro9 »

My browser home page is a page of bookmarks I originally made in 1998 and it's still going strong: https://david.kitchen/bookmarks/

I update it occasionally (last updated the HTML to XHTML 1.0 in 2000, but last edited the bookmarks a month or so ago)... but these are my frequently used bookmarks.

I also use Pinboard ( https://pinboard.in/ ) for the long tail of bookmarks where I can search the full text of the bookmarked page. If I see something half interesting it goes to Pinboard, and later I can find something with just a remembered keyword or two.

For me, bookmarks remain my primary entry into the web, and is how I open every browser and new tab... it's my personal curation of how I perceive the web and how I launch into it.

I used to rely on the browser bookmarks back in Netscape. But it feels like it never improved and with every browser since it's just been relegated and gone downhill a fraction more. I still use the Bookmark Toolbar in Firefox, but really just for ephemeral things which I keep for a week or so before either deleting or moving to Pinboard or my home page. I consider browser bookmarks impermanent, partly because I use a mix of browsers for different purposes but partly because the discovery is terrible and it may as well be a black hole.

Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?

#110

Post by dugite-code »

mackrevinack wrote: post #48
mg wrote: post #28

I don't know about Chrome, but in Firefox: Chrome now hides the bookmark bar by default Not sure if it is the default, but my Firefox bookmark bar is always visible load common favorite news sites & blogs or load a window with all my productivity SaaS sites. Shift+Click on a bookmark folder does that pick up where i left off on a research rabbit hole Right-Click on one of the open tabs, click "select all tabs", right…

tab stash is a pretty decent extension for quickly saving tabs and then restoring them later with one click https://github.com/josh-berry/tab-stash and unlike some other tab management extensions, it uses native bookmarks to store things which means you can still access the stashed tabs if you sync them to firefox mobile

Oh Damn, that's actually quite useful. I really like it so far
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