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Mozilla UX: Save For Later (why bookmarks are broken and how to fix it)

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Re: Mozilla UX: Save For Later (why bookmarks are broken and how to fix it)

#71

Post by kbrosnan »

derleth wrote: post #47
kbrosnan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you trust the cloud Mozilla's client side encrypted sync service will do this. If you want simple and dirty. 1. Create a backup of your bookmarks using the import and backup button on the Library window on each machine 2. Pick your favorite scripting language 3. merge the two json backup files using your script Import the resulting json file in a clean Firefox profile.

> Create a backup of your bookmarks using the import and backup button on the Library window on each machine I've tried this. The tags are not in the JSON dumps. The Mozilla people apparently believe that backing up your bookmarks means to back up everything except the tags. A corollary: The only way to actually back up your bookmarks is to back up the places.sqlite file. Nothing else contains all the relevant data.

Tags are in the bookmark backup JSON.(Storing tags was one of the primary reasons for moving from bookmarks.html.) Search for "root": "tagsFolder" anything that is a parent of that is a tag.

Re: Mozilla UX: Save For Later (why bookmarks are broken and how to fix it)

#72

Post by derleth »

damncabbage wrote: post #54
derleth wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Create a backup of your bookmarks using the import and backup button on the Library window on each machine I've tried this. The tags are not in the JSON dumps. The Mozilla people apparently believe that backing up your bookmarks means to back up everything except the tags. A corollary: The only way to actually back up your bookmarks is to back up the places.sqlite file. Nothing else contains all the relevant data.

Wow. Okay, thanks for the information. Is there an open bug for this already? :(

Apparently, I was wrong:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4716258

Re: Mozilla UX: Save For Later (why bookmarks are broken and how to fix it)

#73

Post by derleth »

kbrosnan wrote: post #71
derleth wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Create a backup of your bookmarks using the import and backup button on the Library window on each machine I've tried this. The tags are not in the JSON dumps. The Mozilla people apparently believe that backing up your bookmarks means to back up everything except the tags. A corollary: The only way to actually back up your bookmarks is to back up the places.sqlite file. Nothing else contains all the relevant data.

Tags are in the bookmark backup JSON.(Storing tags was one of the primary reasons for moving from bookmarks.html.) Search for "root": "tagsFolder" anything that is a parent of that is a tag.

Hey, thanks. Looking at a pretty-printed JSON file with that little piece of info cleared it up for me.

Re: Mozilla UX: Save For Later (why bookmarks are broken and how to fix it)

#74

Post by zemanel »

mbreese wrote: post #67
zemanel wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool in itself, wasn't aware, but dependent on a thirdy party service and indexing/searching seems to happen online? A browser builtin local solution could be best

I don't know... I'd prefer an online option, so that I could have the same bookmarks searched from multiple devices (desktop, laptop, tablet, etc...)

Yes you have a point and according to the Opera link above, the indexes seem to smalish

Re: Mozilla UX: Save For Later (why bookmarks are broken and how to fix it)

#75

Post by [deleted] »

mbreese wrote: post #67
zemanel wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool in itself, wasn't aware, but dependent on a thirdy party service and indexing/searching seems to happen online? A browser builtin local solution could be best

I don't know... I'd prefer an online option, so that I could have the same bookmarks searched from multiple devices (desktop, laptop, tablet, etc...)

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla UX: Save For Later (why bookmarks are broken and how to fix it)

#76

Post by antidoh »

srean wrote: post #12

I am one of the worst offenders of the "keep the tabs open variety". I have several hundreds of them open for months on end. For this rather unusual browsing habit, no other browser other than FF works for me. FF does fine even on my 512MB Pentium-M laptop, Chrome for instance will make such a box unusable . Am somewhat relieved/piqued to see that this behavior is not unique. I have been asked to defend my habit many…

Yeah, context, especially how you got there. I've been wishing for that for years. Also what your other tabs were doing for any particular tab/bookmark.

I leave a lot of tabs open too, all related to each other. There are usually two or three groups of related tabs. TreeStyleTab addon helps a lot with that, since the vertical tab list shows parent/child tab relationships and lets me move things in and out of hierarchies.

I don't even use FF's bookmarks anymore, which is a shame because I miss the address bar integration. I just use pinboard, which is basic but works.

Re: Mozilla UX: Save For Later (why bookmarks are broken and how to fix it)

#77

Post by cpeterso »

nnethercote wrote: post #36
lukifer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same habit, but the opposite experience: that Firefox gobbles RAM+CPU and Chrome handles them elegantly. (Admittedly, I haven't given FF a new chance in about a year.) Was there a particular upgrade that addressed process management and/or memory leaks? I also wonder if it's an OS thing (I'm on OS X).

That's curious. I'm quite used to hearing conversations where people have wildly different performance experiences with Chrome and Firefox. But people with 100s of tabs almost universally say that Firefox handles them ok and Chrome fails miserably. As for Firefox improvements -- FF7 (September 2011) fixed some big memory problems in the browser, and FF15 (August 2012) prevented a very common kind of leak caused by ad…

What is Chrome's bottleneck with hundreds of tabs? The resource load from hundreds of processes? IPC overhead for the browser process to managing the content processes?

Re: Mozilla UX: Save For Later (why bookmarks are broken and how to fix it)

#78

Post by StavrosK »

corin_ wrote: post #70
StavrosK wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woohoo, I made that. Have a free premium month as a thanks for the recommendation (what's your username)?

I'm a paying user of yours so I don't have any specific problem with you or historious, but I don't like that you're offering a free month here. I'm sure it won't really have any impact, but in theory by rewarding people who say "have you tried " in a HN comment you're incentivising people to make those comments, essentially offering people the chance to use a referrals scheme without it going through referral links.

That's true generally, although it doesn't really apply in this case. I don't usually give free months to people who mention historious, I was just happy to see a mention and gave a freebie.

Arguably, the free bookmarks you get through referrals are more useful, since they don't expire...

Re: Mozilla UX: Save For Later (why bookmarks are broken and how to fix it)

#79

Post by yason »

I hit Ctrl-D and later search for something of resemblance by typing into the url bar and letting results flow in from bookmarks.

I'd much rather just minimize tabs into a staging area than bookmark. And then type things into the url bar and finding pages. Or browsing the staging area visually, much like an eternally long strip of tabs. And tabs preserve context unlike bookmarks.

THe only thing that prevents me from saving too many tabs is that browsers get crashy/laggy when I do that and I have no way to stash the saved tabs to some place where they don't clutter my desktop visually.

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