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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?

#411

Post by unholiness »

I'm surprised no one's mentioned the chrome feature that's mostly replaced bookmarks for me.

Just like aliasing commands in the terminal, you can alias web pages in Chrome's address bar. So, when I type "je" in my omnibar it has an autocomplete option "Jenkins", and pressing enter will take me to the URL I set for the Jenkins home page.

This feature is poorly named "search engines", and yes, it is extensible to putting extra strings at the end of that URL (which could be registered as a search term within that site), but I've been using it for years, and 99% of my use is simply mapping arbitrary strings to arbitrary URLs. It works amazingly for that. No mouse movement digging into bookmark folders required.

http://lifehacker.com/5815291/create-short-aliases-for-frequ...

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

#412

Post by mrmondo »

More heavily than ever, I have every bookmark in my bookmarks toolbar, all in folders such as 'home' and 'work' for local URLs, 'checkout' for things I've found but not researched, 'git' for URLs to my GitLab / GitHub projects etc... pretty much every fancy bookmark management service or replacement has massively disappointed me, overly complicated or requires running background services (like xmarks) etc... the only reliable one is the built in Firefox sync, then I use a plugin to export bookmarks to HTML on quit which exports to a directory in my Dropbox directory.

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

#413

Post by rwanyoike »

Yes I do, I use bookmarks to save time. I have them organized in different folders, with a few for "temporary" bookmarks that I clear out regularly. I try to limit my bookmarks to landing pages, online tools and references - stuff I know I'll revisit, while I send article/news bookmarks to Pocket or Feedly (RSS).

A problem comes up when searching for bookmarks that don't have keywords in their titles. I use a WebExtension [0] to update my bookmarks with website descriptions, increasing the odds of finding them.

[0]: https://github.com/rwanyoike/bookmark-refresh

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

#416

Post by vinay427 »

kxyvr wrote: post #198

I have hundreds of bookmarks stored across dozens of folders based on topic. I've been burned in the past with Google changing their search algorithm and not being able to find material easily, so I just bookmark everything I want to refer to later now. To that end, I primarily use Firefox and periodically archive them using the "Import and Backup" option from the bookmarks folder. That works alright as it produces a…

Chrome can import the HTML file that Firefox and some other browsers generate. I tried this a few weeks ago. It isn't application-specific.

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

#417

Post by vinay427 »

slowkow wrote: post #310

I use diigo. The free version lets you cache the page, annotate the page with highlights, and tag your bookmarks. The extension for Chrome works very well. They also launched some PDF annotation features, but I haven't tried that. https://www.diigo.com/

Unfortunately it appears that the free version does not include page caching, according to this table: https://www.diigo.com/premium

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

#418

Post by tmaly »

Houshalter wrote: post #76

Of course, and I'm surprised many people don't. Chrome handles bookmarks well, automatically syncing them between different machines you are signed in on. I used to have them nicely organized into different folders but now it's a bit of a mess... It's especially useful to deal with tab explosion. Control+D and you can just save all your tabs in a single folder (and never look at them again.) The biggest problem is li…

I was not aware it syncs, they should market this feature a little better.

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

#419

Post by criddell »

nebabyte wrote: post #407
criddell wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No argument on that from me. The other part of the equation for me is that $1 / month seems like the correct price for a useful service. I think Pinboard has something like 20,000 users. If they are all paying $1 / month (I have no idea if they are), then it feels like a sustainable business.

Other than the archival for $25, I don't see what I'd pay for that my own bookmarks don't already get me. And the archival itself is likely only useful for stuff other people have already archived anyways; in the rare instances I find something I definitely want to ensure I have a copy of, I can usually find a way to get a copy onto my local machine and NAS.

That's a little like saying you don't subscribe to Amazon Prime because you don't shop at Amazon.

Nobody is suggesting you subscribe to a service that provides no value.

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