I wish there was a way to have useful bookmarks, I generally find history easier to use to find pages I want to reopen.
Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?
31–40 of 270 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?
#32I bookmark very aggressively when I browse. I use Firefox and have search suggestions turned off. So, when I start typing in the bar Firefox instead suggests from my bookmarks. I wish that worked slightly better, since it only searches titles. Would have been cool if some key words were distilled from the page when bookmarked. In Utopia the browser would crawl a bit from the bookmark to make a completely personal sea…
Does it not even use the 'tags' feature? I don't use them but often think I should come up with some rough scheme and start tagging them all, but if they're not used in search...
Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?
#33There is a feature I am not sure enough people know about that makes this slightly better.
On Firefox you can add tags (ctrl D to bookmark plus comma separated tags). If you then type the tag in the search bar it will show all the bookmarks with that tag.
I found it incredibly useful to find bookmarks, instead of a polluted bookmarks bar or a strictly organized tree of bookmarks.
Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?
#34It's really strange how bookmarking capability has regressed. I was using seamonkey for a long time just because it had bookmark folders. RSS sorta kinda achieves the same effect. Qutebrowser sessions and quickmarks are nice, but not quite the same level of ease.
I've noticed that a lot of people I know, even people who work in IT, have regressed on this point - they do not know how to use bookmarks, they just search for something and hope they land on the right page, and if they can't find it they ask someone else to send them a link... The regression of bookmarks in browser is probably partly related to this regression in user behavior (and associated telemetry)
I suspect this is Google’s influence through Chromium. They want us searching again, not saving.
Some pages are difficult to find again as time goes on though, so I’m a heavy bookmark user myself.
I used Firefox for 20 years and it’s better for bookmarks. Edge is only acceptable at best. My time resisting Chromium was over though. Time to give up that hill for me.
Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?
#35I bookmark very aggressively when I browse. I use Firefox and have search suggestions turned off. So, when I start typing in the bar Firefox instead suggests from my bookmarks. I wish that worked slightly better, since it only searches titles. Would have been cool if some key words were distilled from the page when bookmarked. In Utopia the browser would crawl a bit from the bookmark to make a completely personal sea…
Even if you have search suggestions on, using "*" at the start will limit the suggestions to your bookmarks.
"^" does history which is almost indecently useful.
Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?
#36This is actually a big reason why I use Firefox despite the weaker security: the bookmark ergonomics are just that much better.
When I'm browsing, I don't want links in the top bar to tempt me to context switch, so my bookmark bar is off and my left hand rests next to my keyboard. If I want to navigate to a site, I either type in the URL if I remember, or hit Ctrl+B to pull up my bookmarks. I put the bar on the right hand side so it doesn't move the starting position of page text, and select using topic based folders (usually within a top-level folder). The whole process is very comfortable. Often I'll be lazier than that and just prefix with a * to directly pull up the link via search.
Its honestly so far ahead of everything else, I feel like I'm on another planet when people say they prefer Chrome for productivity.
Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?
#37Personally, I think it is because search is a important revenue stream for the browsers. It makes little sense to put too much effort in to a feature that will limit the usage of the thing that earns them the most.
At Opera Software, where I worked for a decade, both speeddials and bookmarks was important streams of income, but it was nothing compared to the income from searches.
Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?
#38I 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 think that's venturing into tinfoil hat territory. More likely telemetry told them that some percentage > 50 always toggle the bookmark bar off and they decided to make it the default. It's still there on new tabs after all. Companies like Google are long term greedy, they don't make unpopular UX decisions for scraps.
Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?
#39There was a product on Product Hunt the other day that solves exactly this. Kid you not, I bookmarked it and then had to hard reset my PC so the bookmark got lost. So very meta this whole thing
savage. but case and point!
Not sure if auto'correct' or a mishearing of 'in'->"'n'", but in case the latter just FYI: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/case_in_point :)
Re: Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?
#40It's really strange how bookmarking capability has regressed. I was using seamonkey for a long time just because it had bookmark folders. RSS sorta kinda achieves the same effect. Qutebrowser sessions and quickmarks are nice, but not quite the same level of ease.
It's interesting how many different things in desktop computing have regressed over the last 20-something years. It's not just bookmarks.