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> So it's a searchable database for bookmarks then. It appears to be that, but it appears also to pull out the content of the web page and index that too, so y

> So it's a searchable database for bookmarks then. It appears to be that, but it appears also to pull out the content of the web page and index that too, so you can (presumably) find stuff that isn't in the "pure" bookmark, which I think of as a link with maybe a title.

nextaccountic 5y ago
I think browsers should download a full copy of each bookmark (so you can still see it when they are taken down) and make it fully searchable. Actually, I've been trying to find Firefox extensions that give a better interface to bookmarks and there doesn't seem to be one. It's like, people don't use bookmarks anymore and accept that it might as well not exist, and use something else. It's telling that Firefox has two bookmark systems built-in (pocket and regular bookmarks) and they aren't integrated with each other; I suppose that people that use pocket never think about regular bookmarks. edit: but my pet peeve is that it isn't easy to search history for something I saw 10 days ago but I don't remember the exact keywords to search.
- phildenhoff 5y ago
  The difference, to me, about Pocket is that I use it specifically as a to-read list. My list is just "sites I want to visit/read/watch later", whereas bookmarks are more of "I want to go here regularly". Also, all the bookmark systems I've ever used treat links as files that can only be in one folder, whereas Pocket at least has tags so links can associate with multiple topics.
  - forgotpwd16 5y ago
    >at least has tags so links can associate with multiple topics This has applied since ever to regular bookmarks as well. Basically you can just throw everything in unsorted and use tags only.
  - cassepipe 5y ago
    Firefox has bookmark tags
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- forgotpwd16 5y ago
  >I think browsers should download a full copy of each bookmark [...] and make it fully searchable. This, outside a browser, could be implemented as a server/client self-hosted solution with a back-end taking care of downloading/searching and an extension acting as client. Maybe it could even be made entirely as extension?
  - berkes 5y ago
    That would miss all the personalized content, all the content behind authorization and so on. At the very least, it would need to be able to get the content pushed to it by the client, the way the client has it at moment of bookmarking, making the download/scraping kindof superflous. Indexing and doing search, however, is hard, but solved. Hard in the sense that it is not something a firefox addon could do very well. I presume a (self)hosted meilisearch would suffice, though.
    - huanwin 5y ago
      You and GP might find ArchiveBox to have overlap with what you're describing? https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox Edit: here's the description from their repo "ArchiveBox is a powerful, self-hosted internet archiving solution to collect, save, and view sites you want to preserve offline. You can set it up as a command-line tool, web app, and desktop app (alpha), on Linux, macOS, and Windows. You can feed it URLs one at a time, or schedule regular imports from browser bookmarks or history, feeds like RSS, bookmark services like Pocket/Pinboard, and more. See input formats for a full list. It saves snapshots of the URLs you feed it in several formats: HTML, PDF, PNG screenshots, WARC, and more out-of-the-box, with a wide variety of content extracted and preserved automatically (article text, audio/video, git repos, etc.). See output formats for a full list."
- joshuaissac 5y ago
  Older versions IE used to have something like this. "Favourites" had a "Make available offline" box that could be ticked to keep an offline copy of the page. But they were not searchable.
- asdff 5y ago
  Pocket isn't for bookmarks. It's a reading list. Safari and Chrome have this feature too.
  - medstrom 5y ago
    If you don't categorize bookmarks anyway, Pocket and equivalent might be all-around better than bookmarks.
    - asdff 5y ago
      ehh they only work well with articles that do well to having their adware stripped off and just raw article text displayed cleanly. Not really great for websites that are more interactive or graphical.
  - rhizome 5y ago
    A reading list...with tags, which those browsers don't have, and while I don't have Safari, if it's like Chrome it's just a flat list. I mean, Firefox's bookmarking isn't perfect by any definition, but they're the only browser (I'm aware of) that has put any effort into helping you use the web in the future. Other browsers seem to say, "if you're trying to use our browser to do something other than use the web at the present moment, we don't care about that. Enjoy taking 8 clicks to do anything other than stare at the viewport."
- cratermoon 5y ago
  > I think browsers should download a full copy of each bookmark Have you tried Zotero?
  - totetsu 5y ago
    Zotero is great for this. set up a webdav docker container and you can sync it easily too
    - smcnally 5y ago
      https://www.zotero.org/ https://www.zotero.org/ also allows sync
  - stevenicr 5y ago
    not op.. I used to use zotero for exactly that, about 3 computers ago. Sitting here thinking, why am I not using it now. I guess it's just easier to not install an extension and right-click, save page as.. and move on with life. I can't remember if zotero was that simple - it may have been. I enjoyed using it back when. I can't recall if there was a good backup/export system with it back then. currently it's easy for me to have docs/webpagesaved auto backed up to an external drive, which gets me through. I may revisit zotero as I liked the idea behind it and the extra category / sorting stuff that was available / optional. I think I went through a phase where ffx really bogged down with lots of open tabs (20 versions ago maybe?) then I tried disabling extensions, auto-sleeping-tabs-extension, stuff like that .. and soured on some extensions no longer working with newer ffx, and some concern about spyware and such, and never went back to all the addons / personalizations once enjoyed back in the day..
    - cratermoon 5y ago
      There's an extension for Zotero that allows you to just click and save. What Zotero does in addition to creating a snapshot of the page is generating a reference entry in the user's Zotero library. If you have a good way to catalog and search all the web pages you've saved, then maybe Zotero doesn't gain you all that much. Personally, I find the search capabilities in the app sufficient. You can also export your Zotero DB to any number of formats and throw it into your favorite search tool. I export as bibtex and use pandoc to weave references into my writing. The academic uses of Zotero lean heavily on the metadata schema is uses, which is tailored for research and publishing. Things like DOI, ISSN, metadata about the publication, etc, might not be terribly useful for anyone outside academia.
- nojito 5y ago
  Safari reader list does this and it’s awesome.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  In Firefox, File -> Save Page As... lets me do this. Local search tools should be able to index such archives (if they can index Word documents, they should be able to index HTML). Seems a fairly solved problem if it's something you need?
- bmn__ 5y ago
  > I think browsers should download a full copy of each bookmark (so you can still see it when they are taken down) and make it fully searchable. Opera v9.5 (released 2008) up to v12 does this.
j1elo 5y ago
An eternity ago I used a fantastic Firefox extension named "ScrapBook", which was like having your own internet archive: instead of just bookmarking a site, the extension would scrap and download the whole contents (or just sections) from the page you were visiting. Its website seems to still be up to this day! http://www.xuldev.org/scrapbook/ http://www.xuldev.org/scrapbook/ This extension didn't survive the days of breaking API compatibility that Firefox went through (sigh). However, seems like some replicas exist that aim to provide the same or similar functionality, such as ScrapBee https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/scrapbee/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/scrapbee/
- jhoechtl 5y ago
  Zotero, while a full-fledged citation software, can download whole web pages and provides full text search in this archive. Provides a Firefox plugin, saving pages is just a click away https://www.zotero.org/download/ https://www.zotero.org/download/
  - j1elo 5y ago
    Wow that's amazing, I had seen Zotero mentioned in other 4 comments but still hadn't yet triggered me to do a search for it. Seems like a great way to create a personal archive! Will be checking it out, thanks
msravi 5y ago
I use nb https://github.com/xwmx/nb https://github.com/xwmx/nb for both bookmarks and notetaking. nb <link> downloads a copy of the link and stores it along with the bookmark. All notes (and consequently bookmarks and their contents) are stored as plain-text markdown files - so there's no dependency on a proprietary format, and all the content becomes searchable. If you're a vim-user, you can also get the notational-fzf-vim plugin (https://github.com/alok/notational-fzf-vim https://github.com/alok/notational-fzf-vim) and point it to the notes/bookmarks folder, and have full fuzzy search over all the content.

nextaccountic 5y ago

I think browsers should download a full copy of each bookmark (so you can still see it when they are taken down) and make it fully searchable. Actually, I've been trying to find Firefox extensions that give a better interface to bookmarks and there doesn't seem to be one. It's like, people don't use bookmarks anymore and accept that it might as well not exist, and use something else. It's telling that Firefox has two bookmark systems built-in (pocket and regular bookmarks) and they aren't integrated with each other; I suppose that people that use pocket never think about regular bookmarks. edit: but my pet peeve is that it isn't easy to search history for something I saw 10 days ago but I don't remember the exact keywords to search.

phildenhoff 5y ago
The difference, to me, about Pocket is that I use it specifically as a to-read list. My list is just "sites I want to visit/read/watch later", whereas bookmarks are more of "I want to go here regularly". Also, all the bookmark systems I've ever used treat links as files that can only be in one folder, whereas Pocket at least has tags so links can associate with multiple topics.
- forgotpwd16 5y ago
  >at least has tags so links can associate with multiple topics This has applied since ever to regular bookmarks as well. Basically you can just throw everything in unsorted and use tags only.
- cassepipe 5y ago
  Firefox has bookmark tags
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
forgotpwd16 5y ago
>I think browsers should download a full copy of each bookmark [...] and make it fully searchable. This, outside a browser, could be implemented as a server/client self-hosted solution with a back-end taking care of downloading/searching and an extension acting as client. Maybe it could even be made entirely as extension?
- berkes 5y ago
  That would miss all the personalized content, all the content behind authorization and so on. At the very least, it would need to be able to get the content pushed to it by the client, the way the client has it at moment of bookmarking, making the download/scraping kindof superflous. Indexing and doing search, however, is hard, but solved. Hard in the sense that it is not something a firefox addon could do very well. I presume a (self)hosted meilisearch would suffice, though.
  - huanwin 5y ago
    You and GP might find ArchiveBox to have overlap with what you're describing? https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox Edit: here's the description from their repo "ArchiveBox is a powerful, self-hosted internet archiving solution to collect, save, and view sites you want to preserve offline. You can set it up as a command-line tool, web app, and desktop app (alpha), on Linux, macOS, and Windows. You can feed it URLs one at a time, or schedule regular imports from browser bookmarks or history, feeds like RSS, bookmark services like Pocket/Pinboard, and more. See input formats for a full list. It saves snapshots of the URLs you feed it in several formats: HTML, PDF, PNG screenshots, WARC, and more out-of-the-box, with a wide variety of content extracted and preserved automatically (article text, audio/video, git repos, etc.). See output formats for a full list."
joshuaissac 5y ago
Older versions IE used to have something like this. "Favourites" had a "Make available offline" box that could be ticked to keep an offline copy of the page. But they were not searchable.
asdff 5y ago
Pocket isn't for bookmarks. It's a reading list. Safari and Chrome have this feature too.
- medstrom 5y ago
  If you don't categorize bookmarks anyway, Pocket and equivalent might be all-around better than bookmarks.
  - asdff 5y ago
    ehh they only work well with articles that do well to having their adware stripped off and just raw article text displayed cleanly. Not really great for websites that are more interactive or graphical.
- rhizome 5y ago
  A reading list...with tags, which those browsers don't have, and while I don't have Safari, if it's like Chrome it's just a flat list. I mean, Firefox's bookmarking isn't perfect by any definition, but they're the only browser (I'm aware of) that has put any effort into helping you use the web in the future. Other browsers seem to say, "if you're trying to use our browser to do something other than use the web at the present moment, we don't care about that. Enjoy taking 8 clicks to do anything other than stare at the viewport."
cratermoon 5y ago
> I think browsers should download a full copy of each bookmark Have you tried Zotero?
- totetsu 5y ago
  Zotero is great for this. set up a webdav docker container and you can sync it easily too
  - smcnally 5y ago
    https://www.zotero.org/ https://www.zotero.org/ also allows sync
- stevenicr 5y ago
  not op.. I used to use zotero for exactly that, about 3 computers ago. Sitting here thinking, why am I not using it now. I guess it's just easier to not install an extension and right-click, save page as.. and move on with life. I can't remember if zotero was that simple - it may have been. I enjoyed using it back when. I can't recall if there was a good backup/export system with it back then. currently it's easy for me to have docs/webpagesaved auto backed up to an external drive, which gets me through. I may revisit zotero as I liked the idea behind it and the extra category / sorting stuff that was available / optional. I think I went through a phase where ffx really bogged down with lots of open tabs (20 versions ago maybe?) then I tried disabling extensions, auto-sleeping-tabs-extension, stuff like that .. and soured on some extensions no longer working with newer ffx, and some concern about spyware and such, and never went back to all the addons / personalizations once enjoyed back in the day..
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    There's an extension for Zotero that allows you to just click and save. What Zotero does in addition to creating a snapshot of the page is generating a reference entry in the user's Zotero library. If you have a good way to catalog and search all the web pages you've saved, then maybe Zotero doesn't gain you all that much. Personally, I find the search capabilities in the app sufficient. You can also export your Zotero DB to any number of formats and throw it into your favorite search tool. I export as bibtex and use pandoc to weave references into my writing. The academic uses of Zotero lean heavily on the metadata schema is uses, which is tailored for research and publishing. Things like DOI, ISSN, metadata about the publication, etc, might not be terribly useful for anyone outside academia.
nojito 5y ago
Safari reader list does this and it’s awesome.
throwawayboise 5y ago
In Firefox, File -> Save Page As... lets me do this. Local search tools should be able to index such archives (if they can index Word documents, they should be able to index HTML). Seems a fairly solved problem if it's something you need?
bmn__ 5y ago
> I think browsers should download a full copy of each bookmark (so you can still see it when they are taken down) and make it fully searchable. Opera v9.5 (released 2008) up to v12 does this.

j1elo 5y ago

An eternity ago I used a fantastic Firefox extension named "ScrapBook", which was like having your own internet archive: instead of just bookmarking a site, the extension would scrap and download the whole contents (or just sections) from the page you were visiting. Its website seems to still be up to this day! http://www.xuldev.org/scrapbook/ http://www.xuldev.org/scrapbook/ This extension didn't survive the days of breaking API compatibility that Firefox went through (sigh). However, seems like some replicas exist that aim to provide the same or similar functionality, such as ScrapBee https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/scrapbee/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/scrapbee/

jhoechtl 5y ago
Zotero, while a full-fledged citation software, can download whole web pages and provides full text search in this archive. Provides a Firefox plugin, saving pages is just a click away https://www.zotero.org/download/ https://www.zotero.org/download/
- j1elo 5y ago
  Wow that's amazing, I had seen Zotero mentioned in other 4 comments but still hadn't yet triggered me to do a search for it. Seems like a great way to create a personal archive! Will be checking it out, thanks

msravi 5y ago

I use nb https://github.com/xwmx/nb https://github.com/xwmx/nb for both bookmarks and notetaking. nb <link> downloads a copy of the link and stores it along with the bookmark. All notes (and consequently bookmarks and their contents) are stored as plain-text markdown files - so there's no dependency on a proprietary format, and all the content becomes searchable. If you're a vim-user, you can also get the notational-fzf-vim plugin (https://github.com/alok/notational-fzf-vim https://github.com/alok/notational-fzf-vim) and point it to the notes/bookmarks folder, and have full fuzzy search over all the content.