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Ask HN: Do you still use browser bookmarks?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you still use browser bookmarks?

#82

I use them in three ways: My most used bookmarks live on my bookmarks bar in Firefox with the text removed, so they are just icons of the favicon.gif from the server, screenshot example here[1]. The lesser used ones live in the "Folders" folder under a tree style arrangement. The third method is via the "ReadLater" folder which contains links I didn't have time to fully read right away, and acts as a sort of manual v…

I'm the same way. I use bookmarks constantly and have all of the tools I use for work displayed with no text so they are all just favicons. I also have folders which contain infrequently used links (pretty much never).

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use browser bookmarks?

#83
I use browser bookmarks frequently, but have few of them. I tend to use them primarily for utilities and other sites that I visit somewhat regularly. Basically the two main cases are 1) sites I visit so often that it's handy to get there with a single click as opposed to a couple of characters in the address bar, and 2) sites with strange urls and/or ones that I access repeatedly but infrequently, so might not remember where to find.

For anything I want to remember for later, or keep for reference material, I clip it to Evernote instead. Find that much more useful, as normally when you're looking for a piece of reference material it's going to be able to remember some keywords from it than the title or where you filed the bookmark. Also means you can easily reference it even if the page is missing or changed in the future.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use browser bookmarks?

#84
I use bookmarks, but rarely for clicking from the bar. Chrome and Edge promote bookmarked sites in the nav bar suggestions when I'm typing. I usually use descriptive names of the content so I can find stuff I liked or go to often by typing a couple letters.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use browser bookmarks?

#88
I'm a little surprised that the majority of the answers here are Yes!

I help my parents and my kids work with bookmarks but I have none myself; and I was beginning to think that bookmarks were primarily used by non-technical people. I guess I was wrong!

Everything I need is a simple URL (like, my bank: usaa.com - why would I bookmark that?) or a quick Google search away. If I come across a deep link that's so important that I want to keep it, I email myself the link along with maybe a short description, and it will be searchable forever.

My lack of bookmarks fits with the rest of my "online personality". I have 14,183 threads in my work email inbox and I do not file emails into folders like most of my colleagues. I do not have the desire or the time to manage email folders or browsing bookmarks.

Also, the fact that I browse in a "clean" browser instance in SELinux that saves no history from instance to instance probably contributes to my lack of bookmark use.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use browser bookmarks?

#90

Definitely! I still keep the bookmarks bar visible on Chrome and Firefox to have quick access to my favorite and most visited pages. All of the links have abbreviated names to fit more on the bar. #1 is Hacker News, of course. I also still 'star' interesting links and categorize them into folders. Very handy to have Chrome sync the bookmarks across all of my machines.

>All of the links have abbreviated names to fit more on the bar. I started deleting the names entirely and it was life-changing. Text wastes so much space on the bar and you can memorize the favicons very quickly.

I completely agree it's easy to memorize without text. I even lump them into logical groups using the vertical separator favicon from this site: http://separator.mayastudios.com
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