4 ms·

Show HN: Browser extension to (fuzzy) search bookmarks, history and open tabs

16 points by Fannon 5y ago

SailingSperm 5y ago
Nice looking tool! though personally don't like installing extensions requiring these permissions. Kinda surprised Chrome's newish feature of tab list/search doesn't even do some ultra basic fuzzy search!
- Fannon 5y ago
  Thanks! What permission exactly does trouble you? I guess the tab permission is a bit unusual. However, with the Manifest V3, the extension couldn't make any outside calls anyway without explicit permission to do so (and this isn't the case). The reason for the tab permission is not just to index them, but to also to merge bookmarks and history with open tabs. If you go to a bookmark, you've already opened it will just switch to the tab.
chanpatorikku 5y ago
Looks to be helpful to be able to search history and bookmark.
canada_dry 5y ago
Tried it out. Works well. The key feature I was hoping for was to limit searches by age e.g. less than 6m old, greater than 2y old. Is this a feature that's available or planned?
- Fannon 5y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! How would you define age here? Last time visited? I have thought about introducing a way to increase score based on "recentness". There is one problem with the history in general, though: It's quite expensive to load a big browsing history so the plugin will only get a fixed amount of history for a few days back. This is configurable, but I don't think it would scale back as long ago as you're hinting at.
  - canada_dry 5y ago
    Just filtering on date last visited would be great. But, also having the ability to filter on date added would be useful. This FF addon [i] uses the dateAdded attribute to sort the bookmarks, I wonder if it's at all relevant/helpful? [i] https://github.com/heftig/sort-bookmarks/blob/70ffcbfb0cda732de9005a5db7b35dde5d44bdaf/compare.js https://github.com/heftig/sort-bookmarks/blob/70ffcbfb0cda73...
    - Fannon 5y ago
      Yes. that's interesting. dateAdded is actually part of what the bookmark API returns, so this one would be rather easy to handle. Last date visited is more complicated. This extension only has it because it merges the results from history API with the bookmarks API. But then it can only go back as far as we fetched the browser history and as far as that exists. How would you imagine such a query would look like? Right now, the extension only has "search modes" which limit the search results to certain types of entries.
      - canada_dry 5y ago
        One option might be to just sort the scored items by bookmark/dateAdded so related newest bookmarks float to the top. Another beginning might be to just increase score if the item falls within the range in either the bookmark/dateAdded or the history/lastVisited. This probably covers many useful scenarios e.g. I recall bookmarking (or visiting) a page regarding regex within the last 12mos, so that related item should float to the top. Note: I haven't played around enough - it might just naturally do this anyway if the order being returned is based on how recent the item is in history or bookmarks!
        Fannon 5y ago
        Yes, sorting sounds like a good option. I've just built in some additional scoring that increases points if last visited was recently. This only works for very recent visits (history/lastVisited), within the time frame that history is being fetched, though. For bookmark/dateAdded, it might help to display the date added and to allow sorting by it as you suggest. I'm thinking about it. However, the scope of the extension is rather not being a complete bookmark / history manager replacement. Rather a quick search / navigation tool.

16 points by Fannon 5y ago

Nice looking tool! though personally don't like installing extensions requiring these permissions. Kinda surprised Chrome's newish feature of tab list/search doesn't even do some ultra basic fuzzy search!

Fannon 5y ago
Thanks! What permission exactly does trouble you? I guess the tab permission is a bit unusual. However, with the Manifest V3, the extension couldn't make any outside calls anyway without explicit permission to do so (and this isn't the case). The reason for the tab permission is not just to index them, but to also to merge bookmarks and history with open tabs. If you go to a bookmark, you've already opened it will just switch to the tab.

chanpatorikku 5y ago

Looks to be helpful to be able to search history and bookmark.

canada_dry 5y ago

Tried it out. Works well. The key feature I was hoping for was to limit searches by age e.g. less than 6m old, greater than 2y old. Is this a feature that's available or planned?

Fannon 5y ago
Thanks for the feedback! How would you define age here? Last time visited? I have thought about introducing a way to increase score based on "recentness". There is one problem with the history in general, though: It's quite expensive to load a big browsing history so the plugin will only get a fixed amount of history for a few days back. This is configurable, but I don't think it would scale back as long ago as you're hinting at.
- canada_dry 5y ago
  Just filtering on date last visited would be great. But, also having the ability to filter on date added would be useful. This FF addon [i] uses the dateAdded attribute to sort the bookmarks, I wonder if it's at all relevant/helpful? [i] https://github.com/heftig/sort-bookmarks/blob/70ffcbfb0cda732de9005a5db7b35dde5d44bdaf/compare.js https://github.com/heftig/sort-bookmarks/blob/70ffcbfb0cda73...
  - Fannon 5y ago
    Yes. that's interesting. dateAdded is actually part of what the bookmark API returns, so this one would be rather easy to handle. Last date visited is more complicated. This extension only has it because it merges the results from history API with the bookmarks API. But then it can only go back as far as we fetched the browser history and as far as that exists. How would you imagine such a query would look like? Right now, the extension only has "search modes" which limit the search results to certain types of entries.
    - canada_dry 5y ago
      One option might be to just sort the scored items by bookmark/dateAdded so related newest bookmarks float to the top. Another beginning might be to just increase score if the item falls within the range in either the bookmark/dateAdded or the history/lastVisited. This probably covers many useful scenarios e.g. I recall bookmarking (or visiting) a page regarding regex within the last 12mos, so that related item should float to the top. Note: I haven't played around enough - it might just naturally do this anyway if the order being returned is based on how recent the item is in history or bookmarks!
      - Fannon 5y ago
        Yes, sorting sounds like a good option. I've just built in some additional scoring that increases points if last visited was recently. This only works for very recent visits (history/lastVisited), within the time frame that history is being fetched, though. For bookmark/dateAdded, it might help to display the date added and to allow sorting by it as you suggest. I'm thinking about it. However, the scope of the extension is rather not being a complete bookmark / history manager replacement. Rather a quick search / navigation tool.