18 ms·

Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?

271 points by vapemaster 4y ago

so much of my time is spent in chrome tabs / windows / and searches. someone's average chrome tab count is a badge of honor / horror. Chrome now hides the bookmark bar by default. you can create tab groups for a session, or pin them so that they consume all your bandwidth and memory next time you open your session. But that's not what i want. i want rich bookmark behavior. i want to be able to quickly load common favorite news sites & blogs. or load a window with all my productivity SaaS sites. or pick up where i left off on a research rabbit hole. and i want it to be intuitive, efficient, and a prominent UX feature set. i'm not alone right?

klqpas 4y ago
You are supposed to use Google every time you want to know something rather than engaging in subversive activities like curating your own lists of knowledge! Even in Google-sponsored Firefox bookmarks are less accessible than 15 years ago. We should bring back web rings.
jpozo 4y ago
I'll give raindrop.io a try next week to see if it meets my needs, but I think in the end I'll have to roll my own since there are some features I want that I simply haven't found in any bookmark app or extension. Some of these are -pin bookmarks or folders and sort the rest of bookmarks in that folder -search bookmarks by name or tag in a group of folders -have something like sessions where only a custom groups of folders are visible
caviv 4y ago
I just use an external tool like good old del.icio.us now known as https://yabs.io https://yabs.io
suction 4y ago
This question makes me wonder...what are some examples of "first class citizens in browsers" to you?
pixelfog 4y ago
You are not alone. I found raindrop that meets my needs.
- vapemaster 4y ago
  cool i'll check out raindrop, thanks for the tip! but i just wish there were some talented engineering teams at the leading browser creators (cough couch google, mozilla, MS, apple, etc) that would integrate this as a first class feature. a design goal, not a supported extension.
  - prox 4y ago
    Firefox has a decent bookmark system. What I do usually is star it (one click) and I think you need to click it again to edit it, you can then add tags to it. Search is a lot easier then.
  - mackrevinack 4y ago
    i think if there was any browser to add something like raindrop natively it would be vivaldi. they seem to do a lot things differently than other browsers
    - dfgsdfgwef 4y ago
      Vivaldi don't have tags hence useless when it comes to bookmarks.
      - mynameismon 4y ago
        You can use nicknames as tags, atleast that's what I do. Most of my actual bookmark management is actually done in Zotero though.
        dfgsdfgwef 4y ago
        nicknames cannot be used as tags since it doesn't support auto complete/filter by tag etc. You should really check out FF tag system.Its really awesome.Vivaldi doesn't stand a chance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRIyAu79OrM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRIyAu79OrM
cupachabra 4y ago
There was a product on Product Hunt the other day that solves exactly this. Kid you not, I bookmarked it and then had to hard reset my PC so the bookmark got lost. So very meta this whole thing
- vapemaster 4y ago
  savage. but case and point!
  - OJFord 4y ago
    Not sure if auto'correct' or a mishearing of 'in'->"'n'", but in case the latter just FYI: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/case_in_point https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/case_in_point :)
    - vapemaster 4y ago
      just me typing too quickly for my own brain, thanks for the correction!
teleforce 4y ago
I fondly remember using Delicious extensively for my bookmarking need in 2000s [1]. Now I just print to PDF any websites to bookmark into relevants folder of my local cloud drive and sync them automatically so I can access them later from any of my devices. I think seamless bookmark is a simple case study of local-first software and that it can be a killer application for it [2]. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delicious_(website) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delicious_(website) [2]https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/ https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/
whoibrar 4y ago
I use this extension called one tab (https://www.one-tab.com/ https://www.one-tab.com/) which saves all the currently open tabs into a list which can be given a name! This is the most helpful extension that I've installed on my browser.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- akerr 4y ago
  Somewhat similar to Tab Groups in Safari.
t-3 4y ago
It's really strange how bookmarking capability has regressed. I was using seamonkey for a long time just because it had bookmark folders. RSS sorta kinda achieves the same effect. Qutebrowser sessions and quickmarks are nice, but not quite the same level of ease.
- weikju 4y ago
  I've noticed that a lot of people I know, even people who work in IT, have regressed on this point - they do not know how to use bookmarks, they just search for something and hope they land on the right page, and if they can't find it they ask someone else to send them a link... The regression of bookmarks in browser is probably partly related to this regression in user behavior (and associated telemetry)
  - BuckRogers 4y ago
    I suspect this is Google’s influence through Chromium. They want us searching again, not saving. Some pages are difficult to find again as time goes on though, so I’m a heavy bookmark user myself. I used Firefox for 20 years and it’s better for bookmarks. Edge is only acceptable at best. My time resisting Chromium was over though. Time to give up that hill for me.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  It's interesting how many different things in desktop computing have regressed over the last 20-something years. It's not just bookmarks.
nextaccountic 4y ago
My go to solution for bookmarking is https://github.com/sienori/Tab-Session-Manager https://github.com/sienori/Tab-Session-Manager (Available for Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-session-manager/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-session-m... and Chrome https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-session-manager/iaiomicjabeggjcfkbimgmglanimpnae https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-session-manage...) It understands whether a bookmark should be opened as a pinned tab, and the tree structure of tabs saved together as a window if you use tree style tabs (in Firefox). It also saves the history of the tab, so going back on history works It can even open the tab session window in a tab instead of the small tooltip, by clicking on the expand button in the corner. For me this is a killer feature The only issue is that it is oriented towards saving whole windows (or even whole sessions) rather than a single tab. There is UI for saving just a tab at once but it's a bit hidden. But for your intended use cases, its workflow is perfect > i want to be able to quickly load common favorite news sites & blogs. > or load a window with all my productivity SaaS sites. Saving a whole window at once is much better for this > or pick up where i left off on a research rabbit hole. Saving whole windows at time is much better for restoring your working memory, specially if you use tree style tabs. Anyway the author has a patreon https://www.patreon.com/sienori https://www.patreon.com/sienori (no affiliation, I'm just a fan/user)
mrb 4y ago
You can already do all the things you ask for, in Chrome. Control+shift+B is the shortcut to hide/unhide the bookmark bar. If you unhide it, it remains visible, even next time you restart chrome. You can create bookmark folders. Then right click on the folder -> "Open all" or "Open all in new window". Etc. It's intuitive, efficient, and prominent ("Open all" is literally the FIRST item in the right-click context menu on a bookmark folder).
- crazygringo 4y ago
  This 1,000%. Also you don't even need to know a magic keyboard shortcut. On Mac at least, literally the first menu item under "View" is "Always Show Bookmarks Bar". (You can right-click on the bookmarks bar as well for a menu to keep it always visible, also intuitive.) There's literally an entire Bookmarks menu, both in Chrome's menu and in the Mac menu bar. The third item is "Bookmark all tabs..." and below that is the list of all your bookmarks. You can also bookmark all tabs by right-clicking on the empty area of the tab bar. Bookmark functionality is all over Chrome. It's there in every new tab page. Heck, a recent update brought a brand-new Bookmarks sidebar to Chrome as well. Sometimes it's a legitimate complaint that features are too hidden... but in this case it seems like the poster hasn't bothered to even glance at the interface. This post makes utterly no sense.
- Rackedup 4y ago
  You can do it in Firefox too
  - degrees57 4y ago
    This recently changed. Firefox will turn it off for you, but the same keystroke does not turn it back on. In other words, it _used_ to be a toggle, but now it switches in one direction only. There is a fix; add in about:config an item "browser.toolbars.bookmarks.2h2020" set as boolean False.
2143 4y ago
> Chrome now hides the bookmark bar by default I haven't used Chrome in a while, but doesn't the bar show up when you open a new tab (and hides when some site is on the tab)? I thought it was a nice intuitive behavior for most people. > i want to be able to quickly load common favorite news sites & blogs. > or load a window with all my productivity SaaS sites You can move those sites into a folder, and one-click-open that folder.
thaumasiotes 4y ago
> i want rich bookmark behavior. > i want to be able to quickly load common favorite news sites & blogs. > or load a window with all my productivity SaaS sites. That is behavior that Firefox had more than 15 years ago, and still does. I used it frequently, until I learned about RSS, which is a vastly superior solution to the same problem. Is it really necessary to post weird e. e. cummings-style art pieces about how you long for functionality you already have?
realitysballs 4y ago
Session manager that saves all pages during session and chrome tab/tab grouping states is way to go
readonthegoapp 4y ago
i've had a couple of bookmark-type extensions built over the years but quality was usually garbage, including the ones i wrote from scratch, so they all eventually got abandoned. i still am able to do much of what i want natively - def not all. like, i have a 'News' tab that i right click to open 32 media sites that give me all the ways the world is prob going to end today. i have a bunch of 'search engine and site search' shortcuts that get me to all sorts of places - right click the location/url bar and go from there. google/chrome type-ahead/lookahead pulls up a few of the sites i like to go to. i've recently gotten better about opening the bookmarks with a shortcut and then searching for a keyword for some bookmark i want. last time i built my own bookmark extension, i had 8,000+ bookmarks, i think. prob never looked at most more than once. maybe google is just too good?
- tgflynn 4y ago
  I'm currently working on a bookmark extension for Chrome, initially targeting my own needs, but I hope to make it available to others eventually. I'm wondering if there are any insights you could share about what factors led to the quality issues you mentioned.
  - readonthegoapp 4y ago
    sometimes i just outsourced stuff to people who were not technically capable enough. even good-ish devs can have trouble with the javascript event loop / promises / etc. outside of that, i think quality can tumble when a solo dev starts to lose interest -- i.e. burnout.
binarynate 4y ago
For quickly loading bookmarks, I made an extension that lets you open or add a bookmark by typing a keyword for it into the address bar: https://github.com/binarynate/omnibookmarks https://github.com/binarynate/omnibookmarks I use it constantly (probably hundreds of times per day) to load common pages I use for running by business and living my life.
- Rovoska 4y ago
  This looks useful! Thanks for linking
  - binarynate 4y ago
    You're welcome, and thanks for your kind words!
oxff 4y ago
Beats me. Browsers should have something like Zotero directly built into them.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
adaml_623 4y ago
I thought it was a commonly held thought that Google didn't want Chrome users using bookmarks because it directly competed with their search (and advertising).
- atoav 4y ago
  Why click on a bookmark if you can make your users google it?
  - cma 4y ago
    And if the user is wanting to visit something like Ford.com, Google can charge Ford millions over time to be the first result, pitting them in a bidding war against Chevy for the top result (with tiny ad disclaimer) for a search for "Ford".
    - hk__2 4y ago
      > And if the user is wanting to visit something like Ford.com, Google can charge Ford millions over time to be the first result, pitting them in a bidding war against Chevy for the top result (with tiny ad disclaimer) for a search for "Ford". That’s not how it works. If you own the website Ford.com, Google won’t charge you millions to bid on the keyword "Ford". They _will_ do it if you are Chevy and are bidding on Ford.
      - corobo 4y ago
        Apparently it is how it works if you go by Basecamp's words https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016 https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016 I'm making an assumption we're all talking about the ads above the results, as afaik you can't pay to shuffle the real results
        redhedgehog12 4y ago
        You can't pay to shuffle the organic results. As for how much you pay for a click on any specific keyword, it isn't fixed and depends on two main things. I am simplifying here. 1. How related (google thinks) your page and ad copy is to the intent behind the keyword. More related = (generally) lower cpc 2. The reserve price that google sets for that keyword. It used to be a second price auction in that you'd only ever pay 1p above the second highest bidder. It has now changed in that there is a reserve price for each keyword based on your page, ad copy and google's valuation of that keyword. This reserve price can be lowered or raised depending on how good and related Google thinks your page and ads are. It can fluctuate lots depending on your input but if google's valuation is high you'll never get it to pennies per click. Insurance for injury claims for example will always be more than £10 per click no matter how good your page or ad copy is. Google just knows that those conversions are worth tons so people WILL pay high cpcs for them. So in the Ford Chevy example, Ford's page is much more related to someone searching for Ford, Google knows the intent is likely to find a ford page so ford would pay FAR less than Chevy. Chevy's page likely isn't matching the intent that google assumes the user has so their reserve price and hence final cost per click would be much higher. Competitor bidding on google search is expensive. Brand protection - bidding on your own brand terms - is (in my 7 years experience doing this) always incredibly cheap, 1 or 2 pence per click.
neoe 4y ago
see RSS
pmontra 4y ago
In Firefox Android I pin the most used sites in the home page that opens when I touch the URL bar (and hides when I touch outside it) or the tabs button. I use my phone to routinely check those sites so I don't bookmark them on desktop. When I want to access them there I click the URL bar and type the first letter of the URL, n for this site. The browser remembers the full URL. On Firefox desktop I also enable the bookmarks toolbar. I put there the links to the documentation of languages and frameworks I use most. I also got hundreds of bookmarks collected since forever but I ended up not using them anymore. I park pages in tabs. One browser window per customer (different virtual desktops) and a couple of them for me.
rasz 4y ago
Why bookmark when you can "just" google? says google while paying wads of $$$ to browser vendors.
roschdal 4y ago
Google.
n8cpdx 4y ago
Others have commented that Chrome does this already. Edge also does all or almost all these things. Bookmarks bar might be disabled by default, but iirc it is a right-click away, and only has to be configured once. Safari also supports everything here. The “Tab Groups” feature in combination with the bookmarks bar (which safari also supports) makes it super easy to maintain persistent tab sets or just keep certain things separate (the research rabbit hole use case). Tab groups persist between sessions and sync across devices. I think safari tab groups are intuitive, efficient (no performance impact that I can see), and super prominent.
- yosito 4y ago
  After a year of using an open source and self hosted ecosystem, I recently went all in on the Apple ecosystem. My main concern was avoiding trusting Google and other companies with advertising-based business models. I think Safari is really the best browser out there these days in terms of avoiding ad tracking, plus it has the most efficient energy usage of any browser on my M2 Mac. I've been pleasantly surprised by the tab groups feature, especially how seamlessly it syncs across devices and persists across sessions. It's everything I've ever wanted from browser bookmarks. I also like that when I try to open a website that's already open in another tab, it switches me to that tab automatically. I'd be more comfortable if I could easily export the tab groups to a text, yaml, json or xml format that I could convert to bookmarks in another browser, but other than that, it's perfect.
- jve 4y ago
  > Edge also does all or almost all these things I'm not a heavyweight user of bookmarks. But I do love vertical tabs and grouping, which can be collapsed. Moreover, they can be saved to collections (to get rid from tabs) and collection can are restored as groups. Notes can be added to collections or entries, tho I don't use it Anyway, not that there would be some kind of search for collections - not even the URL bar detects items in there. https://www.ghacks.net/2021/07/02/tab-groups-in-microsoft-edge-work-better-thanks-to-vertical-tabs/ https://www.ghacks.net/2021/07/02/tab-groups-in-microsoft-ed...
mg 4y ago
I don't know about Chrome, but in Firefox: Chrome now hides the bookmark bar by default Not sure if it is the default, but my Firefox bookmark bar is always visible load common favorite news sites & blogs or load a window with all my productivity SaaS sites. Shift+Click on a bookmark folder does that pick up where i left off on a research rabbit hole Right-Click on one of the open tabs, click "select all tabs", right-click it again and click "Bookmark Tabs" i want it to be intuitive, efficient, and a prominent UX feature set I'm a heavy user of bookmarks, and I am pretty happy with the state of bookmarks in Firefox. What I do miss is a way to back them up from the command line. Firefox has a nice "Export Bookmarks to HTML" function, but it seems only available from the GUI, so there is no way to automatically backup the bookmarks in this nice format. I tried for a while to extract them from the SQLite DB FireFox stores them in, but the layout of that DB is pretty complex and bloated. Even after a bit of fiddling, I wasn't sure I really correctly got the data out.
- alin23 4y ago
  I actually had to do this yesterday for a small fuzzy search through bookmarks thing I’m building for myself. It was something like: SELECT url FROM moz_places WHERE id IN (SELECT fk FROM moz_bookmarks) You can find more info on that database here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Places/Places_SQL_queries_best_practices https://wiki.mozilla.org/Places/Places_SQL_queries_best_prac...
  - mg 4y ago
    That only gives you the urls though. You lose the names, the folder structure, the order and the keywords. The HTML format FireFox can create is so nice, that for now I am willing to manually book them up to get that. Until someone can come up with a way to automate it.
    - alin23 4y ago
      You can get names, folder, and ordered by date added in a nice JSON format: sqlite3 -json /tmp/places.sqlite '\ SELECT p.url, b.title, (SELECT f.title FROM moz_bookmarks f WHERE fk IS NULL AND f.id=b.parent) AS folder \ FROM moz_places p \ INNER JOIN moz_bookmarks b ON b.fk=p.id \ ORDER BY b."dateAdded"' The full folder structure might be a bit more complex to get, I only have them on the top level and can’t experiment. Not sure what the keywords, never used such a thing. I only rely on the title, and I’ll extract the text content of the link for a full text search through it because usually I’ll remember something from the contents and will try to search that instead of something from the title. I can’t predict what I’ll remember.
dmje 4y ago
Shout-out for raindrop.io. by far the best bookmarks manager I've ever used and damn I've tried em all
- kamilm 4y ago
  > I've tried em all _shameless plug_ Have you tried websktop.com?
- All4All 4y ago
  Second for raindrop! Having a dedicated app outside of any browser was initially what pulled me over. Simple UI that does just enough, without trying to tack on endless features that I would never use (like many alternatives do). The webpage archive feature itself has also saved me a handful of times.
black_knight 4y ago
I bookmark very aggressively when I browse. I use Firefox and have search suggestions turned off. So, when I start typing in the bar Firefox instead suggests from my bookmarks. I wish that worked slightly better, since it only searches titles. Would have been cool if some key words were distilled from the page when bookmarked. In Utopia the browser would crawl a bit from the bookmark to make a completely personal search engine.
- OJFord 4y ago
  Does it not even use the 'tags' feature? I don't use them but often think I should come up with some rough scheme and start tagging them all, but if they're not used in search...
  - black_knight 4y ago
    I usually attach a few tags, but it’s not practical to tag to the fine grained level I would like to search by.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  Even if you have search suggestions on, using "*" at the start will limit the suggestions to your bookmarks. "^" does history which is almost indecently useful.
  - FranklinMaillot 4y ago
    And "%" to search in your open tabs. I also use @wikipedia or @amazon quite often.
    - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
      I have set about 100 keyword searches too. Though I wish to use either Albert or Rofi for richer "as you type" suggestions and results.
peter_retief 4y ago
I wish there was a way to have useful bookmarks, I generally find history easier to use to find pages I want to reopen.
mejutoco 4y ago
There is a feature I am not sure enough people know about that makes this slightly better. On Firefox you can add tags (ctrl D to bookmark plus comma separated tags). If you then type the tag in the search bar it will show all the bookmarks with that tag. I found it incredibly useful to find bookmarks, instead of a polluted bookmarks bar or a strictly organized tree of bookmarks.
plaguepilled 4y ago
This is actually a big reason why I use Firefox despite the weaker security: the bookmark ergonomics are just that much better. When I'm browsing, I don't want links in the top bar to tempt me to context switch, so my bookmark bar is off and my left hand rests next to my keyboard. If I want to navigate to a site, I either type in the URL if I remember, or hit Ctrl+B to pull up my bookmarks. I put the bar on the right hand side so it doesn't move the starting position of page text, and select using topic based folders (usually within a top-level folder). The whole process is very comfortable. Often I'll be lazier than that and just prefix with a * to directly pull up the link via search. Its honestly so far ahead of everything else, I feel like I'm on another planet when people say they prefer Chrome for productivity.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  What do you mean by "despite the weaker security"? Did I miss something about a security hole?
  - plaguepilled 4y ago
    Firefox's sandbox is a little underwhelming on Linux: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...
    - jeroenhd 4y ago
      Interesting, thanks for sharing. I will stick with Firefox despite all this because I don't trust Google and Microsoft with my data but this is good to know. With how many exploits Google needs to patch each release it's a little surprising how many security measures seem to get bypassed regularly for them to have any effect.
- imaginaryNumb3r 4y ago
  there's many other browsers which simply don't have their own engine. For my taste, Vivaldi is the best choice for power users.
Quai 4y ago
Personally, I think it is because search is a important revenue stream for the browsers. It makes little sense to put too much effort in to a feature that will limit the usage of the thing that earns them the most. At Opera Software, where I worked for a decade, both speeddials and bookmarks was important streams of income, but it was nothing compared to the income from searches.
tmcdos 4y ago
There is nothing better than the boomarks manager in Opera Classic 12. Nested folders/categories, quick search/filter, additional notes/description for each bookmark, "recycled bin" for deleted bookmarks. Vivaldi tries to replicate it but still missing some features. Opera Classic was the best browser but sadly died. The source code is available on Internet (probably a leak) but it's a huge effort to change the rendering engine.
narag 4y ago
You're not alone, I want even more: or load a window with all my productivity SaaS sites. I want to open a tab with a page that's an index consisting of the bookmarks of some folder in the bookmarks bar. That's obvious to me: when I'm researching some topic, I drag the interesting finds onto a folder in that bar. Once I have a list for consulting later, I would like that list to be presented as a list of links, much like Hacker News front page, not as a menu. Menus are BAD ui for links. Of course I'd like to add icons, re-order, save, nest, group by month, etc. I've found that Firefox saves all bookmarks (and history) to a sqlite database, so it must be easy to program a little tool to do most things I want.
- littlecranky67 4y ago
  You can do mostly that in Firefox itself. Bringing up the bookmarks side pane (CMD+B on a mac). Right click on any folder -> "Open all bookmarks" will open the full folder. Creating folders and subfolders is as good as categorizing will get, so you could organize your bookmarks by month by creating folders per month. I also recommend using Firefox Containers (mostly for privacy and security reasons), and then you can also reorder you open tabs by container.
  - narag 4y ago
    Thank you, but that's not what I meant. I don't want to open all bookmarks. I want to list them in HTML, like the front page of this very site. Actually that was how Firefox used to export bookmarks, as one HTML page with clickable links. Edit: I've just checked and Firefox still can export the whole bookmarks collection. What I would love is the option to export just a folder, not the entire database. Edit2: Now, if I just want to export a folder, I must export the whole thing, open the result in a text editor and paste the html in some of my "launcher pages".
    - littlecranky67 4y ago
      I don't see a big difference with having them in a HTML page, vs. the side bar. You get a full list of your bookmarks with icons in a vertical-sorted way, including search. What difference does it make?
jbverschoor 4y ago
Bookmarks don't work. What does work is saving a snaphot of the page, including content (and maybe the trail path). There is no way of 'archiving'. This is why I like pocket.. The rabbithole is a trap btw..
- yborg 4y ago
  Firefox has several extensions that do exactly this and don't sell your data.
  - jbverschoor 4y ago
    Too bad I really can't stand the UI / behavior
  - hk__2 4y ago
    > Firefox has several extensions that do exactly this and don't sell your data. Pocket is owned by Mozilla.
zorrolovsky 4y ago
I think firefox has everything you need already. I use librewolf in linux but any firefox on a desktop OS should behave in the way I describe below. > i want rich bookmark behavior. This points needs specifics. What do we mean by rich? what are the outcomes we're trying to achieve? > i want to be able to quickly load common favorite news sites & blogs. > or load a window with all my productivity SaaS sites. This can be easily achieved through folders in a bookmarks toolbar. For example I have a folder called 'News' with my top 4 sites. When I open the browser, I just right-click on the 'News' folder, click on "open all bookmarks" and those sites open on a tab each. One click and half a second... very efficient! > or pick up where i left off on a research rabbit hole. > and i want it to be intuitive, efficient, and a prominent UX feature set. In a rabbit hole window with X tabs -> right click on the tabs area -> select all tabs -> bookmark tabs -> then from there you can create folder 'rh 17 August' Next time you open a browser, just right click on that folder and open all. When done, just delete the folder. Once you learn this, it's a one or two second process so it's very efficient in my view. You might argue that this option could become a one-click thing (ie a right-click menu item called 'save all tabs as bookmarks' and use an automated name) but that brings a whole new range of problems (cluttered interface for users that don't want this, and therefore decrease in overall UI efficiency) > i'm not alone right? No, many people like me relies on bookmarks. I share the frustration others shared around the bookmarks toolbar being hidden by default. However, by using standard behaviour I manage to make bookmarks work in a pretty efficient way.
- raisin_churn 4y ago
  > This can be easily achieved through folders in a bookmarks toolbar. For example I have a folder called 'News' with my top 4 sites. When I open the browser, I just right-click on the 'News' folder, click on "open all bookmarks" and those sites open on a tab each. One click and half a second... very efficient! Even more efficient, you can Ctrl left click the bookmark folder, or even more even more efficient, middle click. Of course, this requires you properly curate your bookmark folders, my News folder has some two dozen bookmarks, and I definitely don't want to open all of them. But this "open all" behavior isn't recursive, so you can just put stuff you don't want to open every time in subfolders.
matt332 4y ago
Aside from everyone pointing out most browsers do everything you ask, there is a new (-ish?) feature in Chrome history called Journeys. It's an interesting approach to solve the 'reasearch rabbit hole' and has been useful for me but would be better if it was exposed in the UI in a better way.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
onion2k 4y ago
The one feature that's missing from browser bookmarks in my opinion is aliases. If I could bookmark a page, and then assign it an alias like "hn" so I could just type "hn" in to the address bar to go to that bookmarked page, that would be so helpful. It's possible to do this in Chrome by abusing the site search feature (add a new site search, give it a name, use a URL but don't put a %s search query in it... now it's an alias[1]), and there are plugins[2], but it could be so much better if it was a proper browser-level feature. [1] https://speedtestdemon.com/productivity-hack-chrome-aliases-visiting-bookmarks-with-just-a-few-keystrokes/ https://speedtestdemon.com/productivity-hack-chrome-aliases-... [2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/alias-bookmarks/oglbhaepiihmmmaipmglkfhbaahhbkec?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/alias-bookmarks/og...
- jpozo 4y ago
  I had this problem due to the massive amount of bookmarks I had, but I found an easy way is to add an unique identifier at the end of the name. For example, for HackerNews I'd add hknws to the end of a bookmark so I only have to write those chars and find it easily. That said, it has to be really unique since browsers usually search for both title and url of the bookmark. I also have the issue that sometimes I want to search in a specific group of folders, so I'm currently working on an extension to scratch that itch.
- karamanolev 4y ago
  When I name a bookmark in Chrome and then type its name (or parts of it) in the address bar, the bookmark shows up. I need an arrow down (or more, in case of more results), which is definitely suboptimal, but it more or less already works.
- knorker 4y ago
  To go to hn i just press ctrl-l to go to address bar, then 'n', and chrome already knows the rest, so i press enter.
- dijit 4y ago
  Firefox used to have this (it probably still does), it was called "keywords"; it wasn't very useful for me honestly.
jmercouris 4y ago
You’re not alone, this is possible in Nyxt. HTTPS://Nyxt.atlas.engineer. You can narrow a list of bookmarks and open them in new buffers in one click. You can also bookmark a set of buffers in one click.
grsmvg 4y ago
Try and get an invite for Arc. It solves these problems. Honestly i thought this post was just a secret marketing plug by one of their employees haha, but no one mentions it in the comments so far.
robga 4y ago
I reckon I’ve just ticked over 10,000 days of web browsing. And I’ve never once used a bookmark. Not even once. Maybe I’m the second class citizen?
- dustractor 4y ago
  Hopefully you're doing ctrl+L. Just as long as you're not clicking in the url bar, selecting and deselecting it multiple times before you press END and then mash the BACKSPACE and then start typing h t t p : / / ...
  - tokai 4y ago
    Ctrl+L?! Surely you mean F6 instead?
HellDunkel 4y ago
You are not alone. I do bookmark a lot an later on don’t find or remember things.
TedShiller 4y ago
google
_trampeltier 4y ago
I think Vivaldi is the only Browser, where I think the bookmark-thing is good. It is on the side, allways open if you like, and you just can drag a site into it. All others have it on top somewhere on a bar and you have to go thru menus to add something.
neilv 4y ago
In Firefox and Tor Browser, I restrict the location bar completion to bookmarks, disable search, which makes a large number of bookmarks very fast to use. Then have some Firefox "query" bookmarks selected by keywords like "g" (Google Search), "gi" (Google Image Search), "gm" (Google Maps), "d" (DDG), "w" (Wikipedia), particular shopping sites, shipping tracking number lookup, etc. (I just realized that this is not so different from my 1996 solution, from when browsers and search engines were much more limited: https://www.neilvandyke.org/webjump/ https://www.neilvandyke.org/webjump/ )
heavyset_go 4y ago
I feel this way about tabs. Mobile browsers get it right by assuming users will have a million tabs open that accumulate over time because they forget to close them. Desktop browsers don't handle that gracefully.
a9h74j 4y ago
Imagine if your word processing program held all documents -- your work product -- in its proprietary database. I have been of the opinion that a set of bookmarks is a work product in the same sense. In that sense opening a browser instance might be matched to intentionally opening a portable bookmarks or comparable file. Why I onload autoformat all my links from a source "links" text file. (I keep an editor tab open to this file, for live maintenance.)
Curzel 4y ago
I swear I don't understand of some people seems to be using browsers... Let me know if the following sound weird to you, this is what I usually do... I have 3 browser windows: - Chrome window with personal Google Account and 2-5 tabs - Chrome window with company Google Account and 2-5 tabs - A third browser window as a media player (https://github.com/curzel-it/pipper https://github.com/curzel-it/pipper) Bookmark bar is set to always visible, and I have exactly 10 bookmarks: Company browser: - Mail - Backlog view - Sprint view - Company doc tool (Confluence, Nuclino, ...) - Calendar - Gitlab - Some other link Gitlab Personal window: - Gmail - Hacker News - Whatsapp If I need any reminder for reading something later I will use the reminder app. I will try my best to either read right away or just discard. Once I read a tab I close it. I can reopen it later, no need to have more than 10 tabs at a time... Right?
- jamespetercook 4y ago
  This sounds a lot like how I work too. If I have to open a bunch of tabs it’s usually temporary and I’ll want to get rid of them again at the earliest opportunity.
  - Curzel 4y ago
    Exactly!
  - thereseadoremos 4y ago
    same here! it doesn't sit well with me when there are a bunch of tabs open. if I haven't categorized it in my tab groups it's something not of importance and i have to clear them all within the day
dustractor 4y ago
I've been on a browser trying spree looking specifically for which has the best bookmark manager. Or at least [cough cough brave] not the worst bookmark manager.
- jollyllama 4y ago
  It's so bad. But the rest of the browser is so good, I keep using it.
wawjgreen 4y ago
bring back del.icio.us!!!
- suction 4y ago
  pinboard.in is a good alternative
  - kamilm 4y ago
    or websktop.com
grigaraviciusv 4y ago
Just use a Session Buddy extension, rather than just heavily relying on Bookmarks.
kkfx 4y ago
Modern WebVM improperly named browsers for legacy reasons do exists for surveillance capitalism sake, not for the end user. Bookmarks in that sense are not much "first" nor "second class" citizens, it's the human a second class human-{data,money}-cow to be milked. GAFAM interest (and their equal "competitors" in Russian Fed. and China) is that the human live connected to their services, dependent on them FOR ANYTHING, having bookmarks means less search engine usage, having RSS means less aggregators usage, having local MUA, perhaps even on a local maildir NOT leaving messages on the server since perhaps you have yours at home and on it many different mails from different services, some even yours directly, means less webmail usage, witch in turn means less "cloud storage", calendar, ... usages. To elicit more money not only they need surveillance, they also need users pay to be surveilled in exchange of breadcrumbs (the useful part of the service they offer, witch is NOT negligible BUT compared to their earning it's actually a breadcrumb service) and lock in. The best way is full integration because we are "fully integrate minds" and if such integration happen on someone else computer that owner own us de facto. That's is. The original web, the "modern Mundaneum idea" [1] is not the actual web, the actual web is not the original companion of usenet. Is just a few-giants-own-nearly-all arena. [1] see Paul Otlet, Henry La Fontaine Mundaneum history
grigaraviciusv 4y ago
Just get a SessionBuddy or similar extension.
littlecranky67 4y ago
Based on the comments (lot explain how to do X in Firefox), it seems the question should be "Why are Bookmarks 2nd class citizens in Chrome"
jhoelzel 4y ago
personally I have switched to a plugin called "OneTab" in all my browsers. its super nice because it just adds a button to your browser to store all open windows in OneTab, which basically is just and endless html page on which i can search on. This leads to me saving all open tabs onto it when im rebooting and later on just removing those that i dont like quickly by window instead of one by one. It has import and export functions too so i dont need to worry about it. Furthermore because it also has an inbuild douplicate scanner. IMHO its been a long time since I made a REAL bookmark. Otherwise browser completion has become really good, for instance "yc" will show me hackernews so its much quicker to just tab into the address bar and be on my way. Funny enough, the bigger my screen gets the less of advertisement icons I want on it, so removing the fav bar really has gone unnoticed by me. I have more grief with firefox removing the reload button from the adress bar, but i bet thats just a random setting somewhere.
- taskforcegemini 4y ago
  the plugin is probably more comfortable, but I think "bookmark all open tabs" chrome and firefox have. something I recently learnt is that in firefox you can search all open tabs by starting with % in the adressbar
  - jhoelzel 4y ago
    well true but the advantage of the plugin is more that its not really that persistent. For instance: when I research a new topic i sometimes have 20 open tabs out of which i really want to bookmark none, but as long as i am working on the issue i want to be able to use them still. This is where onetab shines, because it lets me remove all, lets call them virtual bookmarks, that have been gerated by one specific window. Henceforth i can use a window more like a topic of interest and am totally able to "hibernate" on research. and when i come back i just click "open all tabs" on the index and will be goot do go: https://www.one-tab.com/ https://www.one-tab.com/ I believe my actual point was, that I have much more stuff that i like to store temporarily, instead of a "permanent bookmark" and the ability to remove bookmarks by "window" really allows me to ogranize myself better.
m0guz 4y ago
I don't know how people think Firefox has feature-rich bookmark manager, probably never used a browser that cares about power-users. Firefox can't even open Bookmark manager in a new tab, whole bookmark feature hasn't improved in 15 years. Vivaldi has the best bookmark management in UX/UI. > i want to be able to quickly load common favourite news sites & blogs. Right click on a tab > Bookmark all tabs. Vivaldi creates a new folder "Saved Tabs ($time$)". Press F2 to open quick commands and write "Saved" and it will auto complete all the folder starts with "Saved" You can create Session for currently opened tabs too.
- StuffMaster 4y ago
  >Firefox can't even open Bookmark manager in a new tab, whole bookmark feature hasn't improved in 15 years. For me this is a strength.
- imaginaryNumb3r 4y ago
  I second Vivaldi. The people I know who tried it never went back.
  - dfgsdfgwef 4y ago
    tried Vivaldi for a while.It doesn't have bookmark tags went straight back to FF. FF has the best bookmark features IMHO
  - xpil 4y ago
    I have been using Vivaldi for years now, on mobile (Android). Gave up after their recent update. Why? Because they changed the layout of the "reload" button. Previously, I could simply double-tap the "V" menu to reload the current tab. Now I have to either pull down (which is not always feasible) or find the "refresh" button in the far left part of the "V" menu, because double-tapping now brings the settings screen. Not sure what genius in their UX dept thought that opening the settings screen is more important than re-loading the current tab but they should change it back.
  - altilunium 4y ago
    Vivaldi's "reading list" feature is better than just a simple "bookmark". You can read it offline and sync it from mobile browser to PC browser.
ShowalkKama 4y ago
you might like tab stash. As the name suggests it allows you to stash tabs in groups and reopen them later
mamoriamohit 4y ago
You're almost right! You're not alone. I am with you. To add to your little annoyances, I'd add one as well – categorizing the bookmarks. Even if I end up bookmarking a site, I find it hard to organize it nicely in a place that I can go to later on. I'd love to put some hashtags on bookmarks to search for later. Just me?
- aleken 4y ago
  After reading your comment, I went to the bookmark manager in Firefox. Looks like Firefox supports tagging bookmarks. But finding them again using tags seems a bit cumbersome. You have to go the the menu to search bookmarks and then enter the tag.
  - FranklinMaillot 4y ago
    ctrl + L to go to the address bar then type * <space> to search in your bookmarks. Replace * with ^ to search in your history or % to search in your open tabs. You can also try @google or @wikipedia to search on those websites. I love those shortcuts! This is the kind of features that make Firefox far superior to Chrome in my opinion.
- samwhiteUK 4y ago
  Firefox allows tags
avipars 4y ago
Agreed, I actually find bookmarklets quite useful... You can have it run custom javscript snippets... and I like them better than extensions.
- account-5 4y ago
  I came here to post this exact thing, love bookmarklets.
mackrevinack 4y ago
i would love if bookmarks would act more like outliners such as dynalist or workflowy. i would like to able to focus in on one folder on the sidebar and have nothing else showing. currently when you have things organised in folders and subfolders, the 1st level of subfolders are indented, the 2nd level are indented even more and eventually you have to scroll sideways to see things. and having shortcuts to get back to frequently used folders, or at least be able to search for a folder in the sidebar. at the moment firefox only searches for bookmarks, not folders being able to edit bookmark names and links directly without having to open separate editing window. vivaldi's sidebar does a pretty good job of this and also has a note section which can be very useful to remind your future self in a few years why you bookmarked something
- sprucevoid 4y ago
  > at the moment firefox only searches for bookmarks, not folders Yes, annoying. I've set Firefox to export bookmarks to .html each time it closes and then use scripts to search in that HTML for folder names. Messy, but beats manually scrolling around in a very long list of bookmark folders in the Firefox UI.
buro9 4y ago
My browser home page is a page of bookmarks I originally made in 1998 and it's still going strong: https://david.kitchen/bookmarks/ https://david.kitchen/bookmarks/ I update it occasionally (last updated the HTML to XHTML 1.0 in 2000, but last edited the bookmarks a month or so ago)... but these are my frequently used bookmarks. I also use Pinboard ( https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/ ) for the long tail of bookmarks where I can search the full text of the bookmarked page. If I see something half interesting it goes to Pinboard, and later I can find something with just a remembered keyword or two. For me, bookmarks remain my primary entry into the web, and is how I open every browser and new tab... it's my personal curation of how I perceive the web and how I launch into it. I used to rely on the browser bookmarks back in Netscape. But it feels like it never improved and with every browser since it's just been relegated and gone downhill a fraction more. I still use the Bookmark Toolbar in Firefox, but really just for ephemeral things which I keep for a week or so before either deleting or moving to Pinboard or my home page. I consider browser bookmarks impermanent, partly because I use a mix of browsers for different purposes but partly because the discovery is terrible and it may as well be a black hole.
- CWuestefeld 4y ago
  I recommend the extension "Group Speed Dial" to manage this neatly. https://fastaddons.com/ https://fastaddons.com/
- alok-g 4y ago
  The same story here. I had started in 1999, and have been editing the same page since then. I can also search Google, Wikipedia, etc., directly from the same home page. The only core difference that I maintain that page locally on each device and use local file sync. Firefox on Android stopped opening local HTML files, without them giving a clear reason why, and I stopped using it. [1] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/7546 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/7546
webjac 4y ago
I'm recently using Raindrop.io precisely because bookmarking is terrible in browsers. I want tags, and better search and classification, and previews, and so much more. Raindrop does all of that and works very well
- kwanbix 4y ago
  I tried raindrop.io but I really couldn't get used to it. Will try again.
  - kamilm 4y ago
    Might want to try Websktop as well if Raindrop is not up your alley.
- dfgsdfgwef 4y ago
  FF already has everything you mentioned.Perhaps has the best tag system.
msravi 4y ago
The reason I don't use bookmarks in browsers is that I can't stash a copy of the page for offline use and I need to properly categorize it for it to be usable later. The best way I've found is to use the MarkDownload[1] extension for firefox, and download a markdown version of the page into my notable[2] folder. That way, a markdown version of the page I'm interested in becomes part of my notes, becomes taggable, searchable, gets synced, etc. And I don't need to spend time properly categorizing it. All the bookmarked sites and their content become fuzzy-searchable (fzf). Very convenient. 1. https://github.com/deathau/markdownload https://github.com/deathau/markdownload 2. https://notable.app https://notable.app
nathias 4y ago
vimium addon replaces your urlbar for an actionbar that pops up and you have a way to enter urls, or search/browse bookmarks it also replaces browser keys with vimkeys so you can use your browser completely with keyboard, I don't think there is a better interaction for browsing ....
wisdomseeker_ 4y ago
Is this related to this post? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32506168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32506168
CSDude 4y ago
Because Google believes they have the ultimate search engine that can find anything you want (and can show ads in the meantime). Also this is why navigating Google docs is hard, there is no quickly navigatable traditional file/folder tree, at least not easy to use like a regular file browser in Google Drive.
alexashka 4y ago
You're largely alone. For news, people use RSS readers. For productivity - nobody's using more than a few tools, they keep them open. For rabbit holes - there's a save all tabs feature in chrome, you save into a folder. It sounds like you're testing the waters to see if there's demand for this and, there isn't :)
- tgflynn 4y ago
  He's not alone. I also have a lot of bookmarks and would like to be able to use them more easily.
  - alexashka 4y ago
    > He's not alone No one claimed that he's alone, except someone in your imagination.
    - tgflynn 4y ago
      > You're largely alone. I mean that's literally what you said, my imagination had nothing to do with it.
eternityforest 4y ago
Why are bookmarks done the way they are currently done at all? A bookmark is generally not highly private. It would be reasonable to sync it as one syncs their notes. It is the kind of thing one may wish to annotate in various ways. Instead of bookmarks what I really want is markdowns files that describe my relationship with that site. I want a split screen text editor on my phone that edits the notes field in that file. I want the option to save an offline copy and fulltext search it all. If not, the text file could default to an algorithmic summary. And most importantly, this should be in a folder of my choosing that SyncThing can access. I've been thinking about making an external bookmark manager that uses Android's share feature.
- msravi 4y ago
  Completely agree. This is what I do: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32506923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32506923
Jaruzel 4y ago
I run a remote 'home page' that lets me add/remove links via a web-form (it's written in PHP). I have this home page set on all my machines/browsers. That was I'm in total control of my 'bookmarks', and their are not trapped on a particular machine or inside a proprietary sync system.
- mxuribe 4y ago
  I used to use Shaarli (https://shaarli.readthedocs.io https://shaarli.readthedocs.io) to accomplish sort of the same thing that you described. And, shaarli worked great for me *for years*! But then, when i delayed migrating from my VPS (where i self-hosted shaarli, and needed badly to update version of ubuntu on the VPS) and i failed to upgrade to a newer version of shaarli, i sort of got myself stuck, and never set it up again on my new VPS...sure, i still have all the bookmarks (they're just saved in plain text within php easy to get), and you know what? I sort of abandoned all those bookmarks from my legacy shaarli setup, and have never once needed to look up a bookmark! Meaning, i guess i was saving these things for pretty much little/no reason, so i never set up shaarli again. This is by no means an issue of shaarli. Its simply that i came to a realization like folks going through digital minimalism must feel, that "hey, i guess i don't need X after all". Lately i have the need to save a couple of bookmarks again (though only a few)...so instead of using shaarli, i just saved them within firefox and set up the firefox account syncing, and it seems good enough for my needs. But, going back to my original point, yeah shaarli fit my need quite weel as far as saving remote bookmarks. If you ever don't want to maintain your own php setup, i encourage you to take a look at shaarli; really fast, stable, crazy low on resoiurces...all around great utility!
- gitgud 4y ago
  Is it protected in any way or publicly accessible? Always wondering how people handle this
  - Jaruzel 4y ago
    It's secured behind a cookie based login.
francisfeng 4y ago
That’s why I build Anybox: To pick up where built-in bookmark manager left off. If you’re on the Mac, you should give it a try. https://anybox.app https://anybox.app
- vintagedave 4y ago
  Looks great. The front page doesn't mention which browsers it integrates with: is it Safari only, or does it plug into Firefox and Chrome too? But it's a subscription! Bookmarks are data. I don't want to have my bookmarks under the control of something that will lose them or make them inaccessible any time.
  - francisfeng 4y ago
    It has browser extensions for Firefox, Chrome and Edge. Not just Safari. Anybox has lifetime option. It stores data on CloudKit and has many ways to export your data. I will never take user data hostage.
- __lm__ 4y ago
  That looks interesting! Does it also have a way to deal with sets of "related" links? For example I might want to save and archive a webpage and its discussion on HN together or a collection of multiple blog posts as single entity. Currently I use org-mode but, even with org-capture, it is not frictionless and the mobile integration is lacking.
  - francisfeng 4y ago
    I’m afraid not. But this is an interesting idea.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
norman784 4y ago
I previously used Workona, that let you create groups, and you can send the tabs to those groups, it kinda worked, but was clunky, now (because I use macOS) I use tab groups from Safari, it works pretty well, but I hope other browsers take note and implement something similar (extensions can do it too, but I don’t want to rely on extensions for this, extensions can be dangerous, so I want to keep the minimum possible).
verytrivial 4y ago
Firefox on Android seems to have just given up on bookmarks. You can't even EDIT THEM (seriously) let alone order them in folders or pin them etc. Open, edit or share, that's it, and the last of which I think perhaps three people have ever done, and only by accident.
- malinoal 4y ago
  editing and creating bookmarks, as well as organising them into folders, as well as opening multiple bookmarks/folders simultaneously and bookmarking multiple tabs at the same time all work fine for me on Firefox on Android
  - verytrivial 4y ago
    Weird. I have a single "Bookmarks" menu item. Opening that shows them. I can tap to open, or "X" to delete. Long-press to select (multiple) which reveals a share icon and a triple-dot with open, open in private or delete. That's it. There is no edit or move operation. (I noticed adding to a folder appends, and for a while was carefully shuffling between folders to sort, then realized they'd given up on bookmarks so I should too.)
- kamilm 4y ago
  Yes, mobile Firefox was great until version ~60 something. You could install all the extensions from the store. But now there's like only 18 extensions for mobile. But there is another way to organize bookmarks like one would expect. _shameless plug_ You can use Websktop webapp for this. That way you'll have a fully customizable grid of bookmarks. It could look like this: https://i.ibb.co/5T3pnXH/mobile.png https://i.ibb.co/5T3pnXH/mobile.png
apricot13 4y ago
I actually dont mind bookmarks being hidden away but I would love an interface similar to spotlight but for opening bookmarks I never know where i've put them only that they have blah in the name!
type0 4y ago
Google doesn't want you to use and organize bookmarks in Chrome simply because they are the biggest ads and search engine company, so they will earn more money if you search more instead of relying on your bookmarked library.
richardw 4y ago
You’re so absolutely right. Bookmarks is wide open for improvement. I search for something. I save it. I’d like my search to be included so next time I search it includes the thing I found last time. Let me tag it. Let me filter my bookmarks for the last month or two. But do it all simply, not some horror show of checkboxes and text boxes. Wider than bookmarks, I’d like to save the project state and go back to it later. Folders, browser windows, IDE, documents, bookmarks.
KuiN 4y ago
Join the waiting list to try the Arc beta by The Browser Company. Very fresh take on a browser, quite a bit of your list, particularly bookmark behaviour, is in Arc.
isodev 4y ago
Safari offers this with a great deal of flexibility. I often use Tab Groups and the ability to open new windows by loading a folder of bookmarks. I don't use Chrome, but one reason I can imagine would be that Google would prefer you search for content/websites (so your eyeballs inevitably land on Ads).
zcw100 4y ago
Because it's the junk drawer of the internet.
bayindirh 4y ago
Actually, with Firefox you can do all of them (will write a list because I'm tight on time, sorry). > i want to be able to quickly load common favorite news sites & blogs. Put them to a bookmark folder and click "Open all in tabs". > or load a window with all my productivity SaaS sites. Again, same. Stuff bookmarks to a folder, "Open all in tabs". > or pick up where i left off on a research rabbit hole. Restore your previous session in Firefox or use "Tab Session Manager" plugin. > and i want it to be intuitive, efficient, and a prominent UX feature set. Which can be done. Ask your specific questions as a reply, and I'll answer ASAP.
- pxeger1 4y ago
  > click "Open all in tabs" Or middle-click, or ctrl+click, or shift+click on the folder. (The latter will open them in a new window rather)
z9znz 4y ago
What you want is not what "bookmarks" are. You're asking for a combination of bookmarks+start page+history. You can have all of those things, and it's probably not too difficult to build an extension which provides the cohesive system. The data is already in your browser. The challenge will be deciding exactly what you want and what the UI should be.
abetusk 4y ago
I got burned many times when losing hard drives or computers, upgrading computers, switching between computers or just using different browsers, that bookmarks tied to the browser are ephemeral and shouldn't be trusted. I effectively solve this by creating custom websites to service those needs. RSS was invented for some of those purposes and still exists today. "SaaS productivity" is out of scope for a bookmark and I wouldn't trust a browser extension. You want a UX that's tailor crafted to your workflow? Build one. Or find a service/FOSS project that has one built for you. I'm not sure expecting a basic feature of "save this website URL in a CSV file" should be elevated to anything more.
- clintonb 4y ago
  Bookmark syncing has been around for at least a decade. I haven’t worried about syncing bookmarks in Chrome since then.
  - abetusk 4y ago
    It looks like this is a Chrome only service, so when my chromium installation gets janked and I have to switch to Firefox, then my bookmarks are lost again. It also looks like this is a Google service which means if Google sunsets this service, which is not unlikely considering their history, then my bookmarks are lost. It looks like it's also tied to my Gmail account which means if I don't have a Google account, have multiple Google accounts that I want to keep separated or lose access to my account Google account, my bookmarks are lost. All the above scenarios, with some degree of generality, have happened to me before in one form or another.
    - Saris 4y ago
      Firefox sync works well and isn't tied to any other account, you can also backup the bookmarks file in your profile folder for extra safety.
causi 4y ago
I want to be able to create tracking bookmarks that take me back to the last page of the domain I was on. Like if I create the bookmark on GenericBlog.com and read to GenericBlog.com/page5 I want to go back to Page 5 when I click the bookmark.
rvba 4y ago
The most irritating that "history" is so unintuitive. You open the history, search for some keyword -> say you get 50 results. Then you want to go through result 1 to 50 to find the page. But nooo, the results arent "fixed" in their positions. If you go to page 2, it jumps to position 1. If you go to page 3, it jumps to position 1. In current Firefox it is even worse: now it just closes the whole history window, so you cannot quickly scroll through those 50 sites. The history window closes after you pick one (and moves the site as first on the list). It seems that Chrome can at least keep the history fixed.
jazzlw 4y ago
Check out the chrome extension Toby. Does most / all of this very well and stays synced across computers.
permo-w 4y ago
meta: why has there been so many Ask HN questions without the “Ask HN:” before the title recently?
hiidrew 4y ago
You may like Arc, still in private beta but I have been using for a couple weeks and have completely switched. Fresh take on the browser imo. https://thebrowser.company/ https://thebrowser.company/
wvh 4y ago
I drop links into a markdown file by topic, along with a short description about what makes the link interesting to me. It's more work than creating a bookmark, but I don't end up with thousands of bookmarks without sufficient context. If you export the markdown to HTML, for instance with a static site creator, it's very easy to open many links by just middle-clicking them, or search the context with the browser's search function. Might not be what you're looking for, but it has worked out better for me down the years than having an ever growing collection of bookmarks with limited searchability and indication of relevance.
jrm4 4y ago
Right? Going big on user-centric bookmarks directly cuts into the big guys biz models. We need a new "underground."
pier25 4y ago
Because the effort to maintain a growing list of bookmarks organized is too high for most people. So most people don't use bookmarks, so browsers are trending towards putting less effort into a feature people don't use. Sometimes when I'm investing effort in looking for URLs of one particular thing I create lists of links using markdown and hosted publicly on Gist. Eg: https://gist.github.com/PierBover/0ab4326cb80f47d3f95607d0525f8e29 https://gist.github.com/PierBover/0ab4326cb80f47d3f95607d052... https://gist.github.com/PierBover/cfad93ad4fb3e569ab360f0f32e0f1de https://gist.github.com/PierBover/cfad93ad4fb3e569ab360f0f32... https://gist.github.com/PierBover/6eaa538f4ebfe6d56b070f9d92725a36 https://gist.github.com/PierBover/6eaa538f4ebfe6d56b070f9d92...
- cxr 4y ago
  > I create lists of links using markdown text/uri-list is the superior format
jasonlotito 4y ago
I want context based bookmarks. Bookmarks that appear when I'm on a particular site. Give me that.
lazyweb 4y ago
I'm selfhosting a wallabag server, which lets me access my bookmarks on all my devices, without the need for another 3rd party service. Probably not what you're looking for, but I started looking into private bookmark sharing and this is what I ended up with. It's a pretty ok solution.
wollsmoth 4y ago
I'm not sure I understand the problem. There is a bookmark bar in chrome, it is only hidden when you are on a website. If you want to open a bookmark, you create a new tab, and then there is your bookmark bar. If you need the bar to always be there, I'm sure there's an option about it I just don't agree that the bookmark bar needs to be taking up screen space 100% of the time you're browsing.
sigmonsays 4y ago
bookmarks have low value now days the reasons I stopped using them (and wanted to keep 'em) 1. links dont always take you back to where you were in a website (javascript) 2. links change often and end up broken 3. google search usually pulls back up what I want
mud_dauber 4y ago
That’s my use case for Feedly -> Pocket.
natannikolic 4y ago
The reason why bookmarks suck is the same as why a significant percentage of web users struggle with tab overload. The mainstream vendors became extremely conservative about introducing bigger UI changes and generally innovating on user experience (because of the sheer number and diversity of users as well as classic enterprise internal MO). That’s why we’re still stuck in the 90’s paradigm of browsing web documents where today the browser is also proto-OS running web applications and a data pre-processor (used to retreve+download from Net into local apps or to upload+classify from local apps to Net). Even though it’s technically possible to save multiple tabs as bookmarks and reopen multiple bookmarks as tabs (with a single action), very few people do. My theory is that they became obsolete because: 1. The bookmarks bar is very limited with active real estate and quickly becomes crammed, and thus useless for long-term use which begets large quantities of data 2. To search bookmarks you need to open Bookmarks Manager which is too cumbersome even for occasional searches (most users probably don’t even know about it) 3. Editing and maintaining them is also cumbersome due to a lack of proper tools (batch operations, quick preview, etc) 4. The older the links, the harder it is to remember names and keywords, and our visual memory is often the most reliable point of reference 5. Even if the person is willing to put in the effort to deal with #3 and #4, once saved links tend to become forgotten about because #1 and #2 and the vicious cycle of deprecation is complete That’s why most people use the bookmarks bar as a quick launcher pad for frequently used bookmarks. The Read Later services and native features are great for articles but not for general bookmarks that are not long-form reading. Equally, full-text carbon copy clippers such as Notion, Raindrops, Evernote, etc. are not ideal for bookmarks for the same reason. Not to mention such solutions can only save pages one-by-one (instead of in batch), and can’t open multiple links at the same time — both needed to easily and quickly switch between different tasks/contexts. Without being able to easily save and organise large quantities of (useful) links, people resort to leaving them open until they are able to process them, contributing to a pervasive issue of tab-hoarding. Without being able to (auto)save sessions/tabs, people end up losing a lot of valuable references. The browser is the only (major) app in a modern stack that doesn’t save work and doesn’t enable you to reopen previous work. You can only undo recently closed tabs and recover the last state of the browser if it crashes. But you can’t save and close an online shopping session in the middle, only to reopen and pick up where you left off several days later. Why not? Shameless plug… this is precisely why we’ve developed Tablerone: https://tabler.one/ https://tabler.one/
alkonaut 4y ago
Bookmarks have had their lunch eaten by lots of other browser features. Most importantly of course browser tabs, and url autocomplete, but also smaller and more recent ones like tab groups, pinned tabs and session restore. None of these replace a bookmark list on its own but between all of those features my need to use a traditional bookmark list has become so small that I just don’t bother. The UX for bookmarks is there but it feels like a paper address book for telephone numbers these days.
memcg 4y ago
In Firefox, I use "Bookmark search plus 2" add-on to find which folder a bookmark is saved in. Many other features I don't use, but including folder names in search is very helpful. In the past, the "description" field was available for folders and I used it to store bits of information. I just realized yesterday that the description field is not visible for folders. I fired up an old PC running XP and the description field data is still there.
teetertater 4y ago
Shameless plug for my browser extension: https://dailylauncher.com https://dailylauncher.com I had this same problem so I solved it and now can't live without it :) If you don't like my opinionated interpretation, you can search for other "startpage" browser extensions that offer similar approaches
JohnFen 4y ago
I don't use the bookmarks feature of the browser except for temporary purposes. I run my own bookmark server at home, so I can have a much richer experience, independent of whatever browser I happen to be using. I've been doing this for decades now, and it is pretty much perfect for me.
etchasketch 4y ago
Raindrop.io is what I use. Moved over a couple months back, and deleted all my bookmarks from chrome.
sedawk 4y ago
I use bookmarks extensively and the bookmarks experience on Edge and Chrome is so horrible that they have been relegated to 3rd class citizen in my workflow, I ONLY use those browsers when I MUST. All the bookmarking for me happens in Firefox, it shines in this regards (can it be better, of course, but it is leaps better than Chrome/Edge!). I think the problem is the Instagram-mentality, where everything is ephemeral and very short-lived, preserving long-term is always an afterthought, if at all. With every firefox update I can't help but fear that they'll gut the bookmarks feature-set to bare-bones :-|
ksaj 4y ago
I have so many book marks that are very old, and it is so very rarely that I look for something through them. For the past decade or so I use a markdown page as my "new tab" and that page has links to the places I normally go, and a section for places I go now but probably won't later. That part is a bit of a temporary bookmark section. And the prior part is where all the important stuff is that I use all the time. Of course I prune it when usage changes. Old stuff goes away. If I need it again, I'll find updated more recent/modern material. Bookmarks focus on categorization, which fails miserably when you could instead organize by usage. What should be made more easily presentable: 25 years of Common Lisp links, or a section on a single page that links to the Common Lisp resources I'm using right now? How many of the older bookmarks aren't even valid or interesting anymore? Probably most of them. That's just me, and I'm sure there are people who might agree, and many more who would hate the entire concept and need to tell me why it's wrong. Bookmarks are basically link hoarding. They quickly become useless.
ymolodtsov 4y ago
Browsers generally are pretty bad and have only seen minimal evolution in terms of UI/UX. There are interesting experiments running now, like the Arc Browser, but conventional ones are pretty stuck. Tab groups in Safari/Chrome were the biggest thing we got in recent years.
picsao 4y ago

corobo 4y ago
Where did you get this information? I can't find anything about ads on the internet without 300 copy paste articles popping up about 10 great ways to write ad copy so couldn't just google it. Temporarily intrigued, don't go too far out of your way for my curiosity.
- redhedgehog12 4y ago
  I've put some links below that might explain it a bit better than I did. My info above is a mix of from google's docs as well as experience, talking to others in the industry etc. Ad Rank[0] - this is the algorithm that determines essentially how much you pay like I mentioned. It's far more complex than my simplified explanation as it also takes into account context around the user. The device they're on, their previous searches etc. So a user who is on their 5th search for shoes and is now searching from their desktop may be more interested in a product page than an article since google may assume they're ready to buy now and they always buy from their desktop etc. Ad Rank thresholds[1] - This is the friendly term for the reserve price I mentioned. It's the reserve price for a keyword based on all your inputs. Can go up and down depending on how relevant google thinks your stuff is at that moment for the user but generally google will set a floor for it. Just more info[2] - more info from Google about how this stuff is worked out and what it means in practice. If you google around "ad rank effect on cpc" you'll get more relevant stuff if you're interested. [0] https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1752122?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1752122?hl=en-G... [1] https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7634668 https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7634668 [2] https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1722122 https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1722122 When you think about what google is trying to do with ads it does make sense. If they let anyone serve rubbish for any search, people will stop clicking ads and advertisers will stop using it. Google loses out. It's in the users (arguably, depending on how you view ads), the advertisers and Google's best interest to incentivise advertisers to make their stuff relevant and good.
  - corobo 4y ago
    Appreciated, thank you!
cma 4y ago
$0.02 per click is not cheap for your own name, and this protection is more like protection in the mafia sense of the term.
- hk__2 4y ago
  > $0.02 per click is not cheap for your own name, and this protection is more like protection in the mafia sense of the term. This is something you have to pay only if someone else is bidding on your own brand. Otherwise you’re already the first result and you don’t need any ad. This occurs only if you’re already a big player, and so $0.02 is nothing for you compared to what your competitors are spending. There’s nothing mafia-like here, it would be exactly the same (but much more expensive) in the physical world.
  - cma 4y ago
    For Ford, $0.02 per click is millions, which is all I said. > This occurs only if you’re already a big I see this for a tiny local food truck and accidentally click their ad instead of first result many times when ordering lunch, when I'm trying to not cost them by going through Google's "protection."
    - hk__2 4y ago
      > For Ford, $0.02 per click is millions, which is all I said. Yes, and that’s peanuts compared to the money they make from these clicks. > I see this for a tiny local food truck and accidentally click their ad instead of first result many times when ordering lunch, when I'm trying to not cost them by going through Google's "protection." I don’t see what’s wrong in having to pay to get back the first place when someone else is already giving money to overcome you.

lozenge 4y ago

Vertical screen space was very precious when Chrome came out. I remember their first feature over Firefox was moving tabs into the title bar and removing the menu bar, bookmark bar and bottom status bar, so saving about four bars of space for page contents. Since launch, they've reduced the vertical space of the tab bar/title bar, even as screens gained more pixels. Original design- https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/small_12.html https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/small_12.html The competition- https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Screenshot-of-Mozilla-Firefox-3.png https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Screenshot-of-Mozi...

kkfx 4y ago
And that's why Tab Center Reborn (formerly Tab Center Redux) FF extension came to live, while vertical space is scarce on modern monitors horizontal is ample normally.
fmajid 4y ago
Vertical space is still at a premium because most laptops use the obnoxious 16:9 aspect ratio. That’s why I keep my tabs on the right in Vivaldi.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  I've tried that, but you haven't lived until you've tried Tree Style Tabs in Firefox.
  - permo-w 4y ago
    I like tree-style tabs, and I use it when working on projects, but I find that it is a long, long way from what it could be, which is probably a direct result of the lack of competition the settings UI is absolutely awful; depending on which appearance you choose, it either looks ugly or blurs together; it frequently has visual glitches; could certainly be more customisable appearance and shortcut-wise; doesn’t allow you to have a title or marker as the top level tab; as far as I can tell doesn’t let you save a session of tabs; has an unpleasant glitch where if you drop a tab in the wrong place it’ll disappear behind the current window and never be reachable; the new tab behaviour irritates me; and probably a few more complaints that I’d have to actually open it up to remember
    - PetitPrince 4y ago
      Sideberry is a worthy competitor : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/
      - dotancohen 4y ago
        I might try it next week, but if you'd mention Sideberry's advantages over TST that would be great.
        ohyash 4y ago
        Sideberry is more complete out of the box. TST is more flexible for low level tinkering. That's what I read somewhere for TST, I use Sideberry.
        wintermutestwin 4y ago
        Sideberry lets you turn off the "tree" feature and just have the vertical tabs. The whole point of vertical tabs is so you have enough characters visible to tell what the tab is. Tab trees waste this precious space.
- franga2000 4y ago
  Not to mention most websites love to waste vertical space. Navbars keep getting thicker, designers insist on having top bars even when the navigation is in the sidebar and the bottom is eaten up by cookie banners and chat/feedback popups.
  - ssivark 4y ago
    I’m guessing the problem there is that mobile is far more unforgiving on horizontal space than laptops are on vertical space, so anybody building a webpage to target both ends up in the regime you’re talking about.
    - fmajid 4y ago
      Good point. I suspect websites that start out as a Photoshop mock-up rather than a HTML5 prototype are more susceptible to this.
- wintermutestwin 4y ago
  As far as I can tell, Firefox, Edge and Vivaldi that are the only browsers with some way to get vertical tabs. I don't know much about Vivaldi. Can you tell me what its monetization model is? Does it strip the google crap out of chromium?
  - fmajid 4y ago
    Vivaldi was started by Jon von Tetzchner, the founder of Opera, and is meant to be a power-user’s browser with an emphasis on customizability and keyboard shortcuts, along with a range of unique features. They do strip Google crud like FLoC, don’t pander to crypto scams and are employee-owned, you can check out their statements on Vivaldi.com. The only valid reason not to consider them would be that they are not open-source.
layer8 4y ago
Ironically, Chrome still wastes slightly more vertical space than an appropriately configured Internet Explorer did.
JohnFen 4y ago
> moving tabs into the title bar Of all of the terrible UI elements that have become fashionable, this is probably the one I hate the most.
marginalia_nu 4y ago
> Vertical screen space was very precious when Chrome came out. I remember their first feature over Firefox was moving tabs into the title bar and removing the menu bar, bookmark bar and bottom status bar, so saving about four bars of space for page contents. Was it really? When Netscape Navigator came out, 640x480 was probably the most common resolution. It used significantly more vertical space than Chrome has ever done. What happened between then and the release of chrome to make vertical space more precious? Desktop computers have had very abundant screen-space for a long time.