5 ms·

And what a loss it is. Now we must split reminders from the documents they remind of, bookmarks from code repos, product photos from product text, emailed desig

by twhb 5y ago

And what a loss it is. Now we must split reminders from the documents they remind of, bookmarks from code repos, product photos from product text, emailed design requirements from design work. It’s enforced organization by format, rather than by subject, and it’s so bad that it’s experienced the ultimate software failure: it’s subconsciously routed around. We copy-paste URLs instead of using bookmarks, we just remember to go back and search for design requirements, we type out document names into our reminders. Personally, I often find myself wholesale abandoning an otherwise excellent program for the sole reason that all its features together aren’t as valuable as simply being able to organize data by subject.

heavenlyblue 5y ago
If I paste a spreadsheet link in Gmail/Slack it will create an excerpt from the document and display it's contents/title in the message I am sending. This works way better than sending files. What's the point of bookmarks if you have URLs? How is not having URL a bookmark in itself?
jbverschoor 5y ago
Not only that. Your work application is used for personal stuff, it's super difficult to share a bunch of information scattered over many applications. What we need is a "file server", and applications that can handle files, instead of saas. SaaS was nice, because of the distribution model. Also because of licensing, but that can be done without servers too. We now have good distribution and update functionality, so we should go back to self-hosted files, where we are better in control over our own data.
dvdgsng 5y ago
> We copy-paste URLs instead of using bookmarks Bookmarks are such a convenient and intuitive way to organize, I'm still baffled how few people actually use them. They exist like forever (1993 according to Wiki), yet there is always someone asking for links to sites/files/Tools/apps they use basically daily.
- have_faith 5y ago
  > Bookmarks are such a convenient and intuitive way to organize Despite bookmarking websites I find interesting occasionally I almost never visit a site from bookmarks. I don't remember if I bookmarked something, I forget what something was called, I expect I didn't file it in a folder that makes any sense etc. I really want to love bookmarks but like so many people I just find myself not using them for various reasons. All browsers give very little thought to the UX of bookmarks and what users need of them. It seems to have boiled down to developers thinking that because bookmarks are technically a nested data structure of folders and links that all they need to do is give the ability for the user to manually manage this tree structure and call it a day. I think there's a wealth of missed opportunity with bookmarks but this comment would get very long if I carried on babbling.
  - Bayart 5y ago
    I've been essentially using my start up page and tabs as bookmarks for fifteen years. It's terrible but at least it's _under my nose_ and I'm reminded of those links' existence through my regular habits, which is something bookmarks do not do, out of the way as they are.
  - arantius 5y ago
    I rarely click on my bookmarks, but I use them very frequently. It's a way to pin an important thing into the personal search engine that is my (Firefox) address bar.
    - kortex 5y ago
      The part of the bookmark UX flow I dislike is having to organize them. Especially on mobile chrome. The UX there for folder org is so bad I just have a "log" folder and basically everything goes in there, like a sightly more durable and focused history. I use the exact same trick - just let the search bar index it. What I really want is a system like a personal search engine. Bookmarking starts a flow which downloads the page, strips out all the garbage, indexes it in something like Elasticsearch or Bleve, tags some metadata, and organizes it by facets. Google is decent at getting back to places I once found, but there are still 404s that Archive misses. There's also sites like stackexchange where it's easy to get drowned out by irrelevant results. It would be nice to have a more personally curated view into it.

by twhb 5y ago

heavenlyblue 5y ago

If I paste a spreadsheet link in Gmail/Slack it will create an excerpt from the document and display it's contents/title in the message I am sending. This works way better than sending files. What's the point of bookmarks if you have URLs? How is not having URL a bookmark in itself?

jbverschoor 5y ago

Not only that. Your work application is used for personal stuff, it's super difficult to share a bunch of information scattered over many applications. What we need is a "file server", and applications that can handle files, instead of saas. SaaS was nice, because of the distribution model. Also because of licensing, but that can be done without servers too. We now have good distribution and update functionality, so we should go back to self-hosted files, where we are better in control over our own data.

dvdgsng 5y ago

> We copy-paste URLs instead of using bookmarks Bookmarks are such a convenient and intuitive way to organize, I'm still baffled how few people actually use them. They exist like forever (1993 according to Wiki), yet there is always someone asking for links to sites/files/Tools/apps they use basically daily.

have_faith 5y ago
> Bookmarks are such a convenient and intuitive way to organize Despite bookmarking websites I find interesting occasionally I almost never visit a site from bookmarks. I don't remember if I bookmarked something, I forget what something was called, I expect I didn't file it in a folder that makes any sense etc. I really want to love bookmarks but like so many people I just find myself not using them for various reasons. All browsers give very little thought to the UX of bookmarks and what users need of them. It seems to have boiled down to developers thinking that because bookmarks are technically a nested data structure of folders and links that all they need to do is give the ability for the user to manually manage this tree structure and call it a day. I think there's a wealth of missed opportunity with bookmarks but this comment would get very long if I carried on babbling.
- Bayart 5y ago
  I've been essentially using my start up page and tabs as bookmarks for fifteen years. It's terrible but at least it's _under my nose_ and I'm reminded of those links' existence through my regular habits, which is something bookmarks do not do, out of the way as they are.
- arantius 5y ago
  I rarely click on my bookmarks, but I use them very frequently. It's a way to pin an important thing into the personal search engine that is my (Firefox) address bar.
  - kortex 5y ago
    The part of the bookmark UX flow I dislike is having to organize them. Especially on mobile chrome. The UX there for folder org is so bad I just have a "log" folder and basically everything goes in there, like a sightly more durable and focused history. I use the exact same trick - just let the search bar index it. What I really want is a system like a personal search engine. Bookmarking starts a flow which downloads the page, strips out all the garbage, indexes it in something like Elasticsearch or Bleve, tags some metadata, and organizes it by facets. Google is decent at getting back to places I once found, but there are still 404s that Archive misses. There's also sites like stackexchange where it's easy to get drowned out by irrelevant results. It would be nice to have a more personally curated view into it.