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Author Topic: Bookmark Docs - MiniReview  (Read 22150 times)

wraith808

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Bookmark Docs - MiniReview
« on: January 29, 2011, 01:42 PM »
App Name:Bookmark Docs
App URL:http://www.bookmarkdocs.com
App Version Reviewed:2.1.1
Supported OSes:Windows XP, Windows Vista
Tested OS:Windows Vista
Support Methods:Free Lifetime Technical Support by E-mail
Upgrade Policy:Free upgrades for 1 year after purchase, 40% discount on purchases after upgrade protection expires.
Trial Version Available:Yes, fully functional for 30 days.
Pricing Scheme: $24.95 with volume discounts.  Licensed per user, instead of per installation.

Introduction
I found out about Bookmark Docs through a thread here.  

From the site:
Bookmark Docs lets you precisely "bookmark" any places in various documents and then quickly return to them whenever you need, and do all that in a unified manner.  Add bookmarks and hyperlinks to Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, CHM, and MSDN documents, and to Web pages.

I've seen many bookmark managers over the years (and have bought more than a few), and haven't found anything that really satisfied my needs, so the idea was interesting to me.  The installation was professional and seamless, though you will want to pay attention to the options at the end; Bookmark Docs by default does not put an icon on the desktop, but does want to run at startup, so set your options accordingly.

Overview
When you first run bookmark docs, you are presented with a pretty simple interface.
bookmarkdocs1.pngBookmark Docs - MiniReview

It shows a list of your currently available windows in applications that are supported as links, a link to add a manually created link, and a list of supported applications at the bottom- a welcome bit of foresight.  When you click one of the links, you are presented with a dialog that shows what will get created.  You can also expand the bottom portion to show a bit more detail about where the link will be stored (more on that later), and what the actual link to the document is.  Just conjecture, but it appears that an absolute link is stored along with a relative link, so I'm not sure what the ramifications of changing one or the other is.  There is also a place to tag your links- the usual sort of tag rules apply, i.e. word tags, separated by commas.  A drop down showing the tags that you have used before is available, though one oversight is that you can't add/remove more than one tag in this manner.  If you want to have more than one tag, you have to type it in yourself.

bookmarkdocs2.pngBookmark Docs - MiniReview
bookmarkdocs3.pngBookmark Docs - MiniReview

Once the bookmark is added, the other tab shows a list of the bookmarks.  It has an incremental search, also, so that you can search when your list of bookmarks (inevitably) becomes too large for the screen to display.  

bookmarkdocs4.pngBookmark Docs - MiniReview
bookmarkdocs5.pngBookmark Docs - MiniReview

There is also a taskbar notification icon that allows you to invoke the add window, or to add a bookmark link to your active window.  I did note that if you are in an unsupported application, the application that appeared in this window seemed random; there might be logic behind it that I haven't yet figured out.

bookmarkdocs6.pngBookmark Docs - MiniReview

There is also access to the help documentation (online only), and the Bookmark Manager.  This is where the more advanced aspects of Bookmark Docs can be found.

bookmarkdocs7.pngBookmark Docs - MiniReview

In this window, you have a breakdown of the tags that have been used in links, and the ability to filter based on those tags.  You can also drag tags to links in order to quickly tag them.  Renaming tags is also possible from this interface.  The more exciting option is hinted at by the bottom window in the interface.  You can load different bookmark files, so that you can have more than one set of bookmarks.  One list of bookmarks can be kept in a version control system, or on dropbox to sync between machines/users, and the other kept private to your machine.  The application also supports copying the url of the documents (in full or shortened format), so that you can use other applications to manage the syncing of links, such as google bookmarks.

In practice, I've found the linking mechanism to be quite reliable, even if I've found quirks in certain applications.  Web pages and PDF files work splendidly.  In Word documents, in 2003 documents, the link shows up at the top of the application when you are taken to the page, but less conveniently, in 2007 documents, the selected location shows at the bottom of the screen.  Not a crippling issue, just a little less than optimal.

Suggestions for Improvement
The interface for accessing documents is a little less accessible than I'd like.  Though it's definitely easy to bring up the document links, I think that a shortcut menu of your most accessed links on the taskbar notification icon, and perhaps shortcuts to them would be a definitely welcome improvement.  The ability to copy links out of the application, however, might possibly mitigate this; I will have to see how it works in practice with other productivity applications that I use to speed up the launching of documents and applications.

Comparison to other apps
I've used a few bookmark managers over the years, and the bookmarking facilities included in several other applications.  I have to say that this is the most slick implementation, from adding bookmarks, to the tagging of them.  The ability to bookmark a certain area in a document is especially great, as many times I have to reference certain parts of a document, and finding it each time that the document is opened does reduce productivity.

Conclusions
I foresee that this will become one of those applications that I come to rely on heavily.  Though there are a few niggling areas that could be enhanced, it does what it sets out to do, and really is a timesaver.  I give it my recommendation.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2011, 01:57 PM by wraith808 »

Bionic71

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Re: Bookmark Docs - MiniReview
« Reply #1 on: February 26, 2011, 02:24 AM »
Release Date:  February 24, 2011
Current Version:  3.0 (3.0.0)
more easy, useful interface.
add description to the bookmarks and have them searchable
minimize main dialogue after startup
fixed bugs

Paul Keith

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Re: Bookmark Docs - MiniReview
« Reply #2 on: February 26, 2011, 03:32 AM »
Do they plan to have a LInux version in the future?

wraith808

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Re: Bookmark Docs - MiniReview
« Reply #3 on: February 26, 2011, 09:55 AM »
I don't know... I suppose you could always contact them on the site.

mouser

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Re: Bookmark Docs - MiniReview
« Reply #4 on: February 27, 2011, 02:40 PM »
Just got contacted by the company offering a 40% review for members; will post in the member only discount area.

rjbull

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Re: Bookmark Docs - MiniReview
« Reply #5 on: February 12, 2012, 01:48 PM »
It's on offer on Bits du Jour today, 2012-02-12, 50% off, $12.45 instead of $24.95.

Actually it seems more than I need; I'd be perfectly happy with some kind of Firefox extension (better still, if other browsers supported as well) that used Ctrl+F2 and F2 in the way that most text editors do, even if it didn't remember the bookmarks between sessions.

Steven Avery

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Re: Bookmark Docs - MiniReview
« Reply #6 on: April 02, 2012, 10:28 PM »
Hi Folks,

Just keep in mind that books at google and archive.org have directly page urls so for those Linkman (my bookmark program of choice in the post-Powermarks era) works fine.  

Similarly large web pages often have multiple urls for sections. Generally it is not too hard to find your spot, although it might be quite helpful in shared links.  This will take some testing to see if the extra pointing functionality is important, and how smooth it is, and whether it justifies augmenting Linkman.  Or if there is something here that should be suggested to Outertech for the long term :) .

For me, the big functionality improvement would be PDFs, which are notoriously resistant to good bookmarking and are often fairly long.

Have to find a few minutes to really try it out.

Steven

Curt

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Re: Bookmark Docs - MiniReview
« Reply #7 on: April 05, 2012, 05:10 PM »
From "Found Deals and Discounts":

Upgrade policy

   All upgrades are free for one year after the purchase of Bookmark Docs.
After the first year, you can order new version with a 40% discount.

Special offers:
License renewal for a year with a 70% discount for only $7.45
Or a renewal for 3 years with a 50% discount for only $12.45

-Bookmark Docs

Now may be the right time to make a purchase!  :up: http://www.bookmarkd...cs.com/purchase.html

What are you users saying, is it (still) a fine program?  :tellme:
-what about working together with Firefox ... ??


cyberdiva

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Re: Bookmark Docs - MiniReview
« Reply #8 on: May 29, 2012, 09:33 AM »
This will take some testing to see if the extra pointing functionality is important, and how smooth it is, and whether it justifies augmenting Linkman.  Or if there is something here that should be suggested to Outertech for the long term :) .

For me, the big functionality improvement would be PDFs, which are notoriously resistant to good bookmarking and are often fairly long.
-Steven Avery (April 02, 2012, 10:28 PM)
I haven't tried Bookmarkdocs, probably because I haven't felt the need to do so.  Like Steven, I'm very pleased with Linkman for most web bookmark needs.  Off the web, I've made bookmarks easily in TXT documents with my text editor, UltraEdit, and I've found that I can make bookmarks in PDF files with my pdf reader, the free PDF-XChange Viewer.  As for DOC files, I use SoftMaker Office, and their MSWord alternative, TextMaker, also can make bookmarks.  That leaves relatively few things for which I'd need Bookmarkdocs.  

tomos

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Re: Bookmark Docs - MiniReview
« Reply #9 on: May 29, 2012, 10:02 AM »
Off the web, I've made bookmarks easily in TXT documents with my text editor, UltraEdit, and I've found that I can make bookmarks in PDF files with my pdf reader, the free PDF-XChange Viewer.  As for DOC files, I use SoftMaker Office, and their MSWord alternative, TextMaker, also can make bookmarks.  That leaves relatively few things for which I'd need Bookmarkdocs.

I dont fully understand, cyberdiva - when you say "I can make bookmarks" - what exactly do you do? (if you think we're taking things too off-topic, you could start a new thread.)
Tom

cyberdiva

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Re: Bookmark Docs - MiniReview
« Reply #10 on: May 29, 2012, 06:44 PM »
Hi, Tomos.  I'm not quite sure I understand your question.  Each program creates bookmarks in its own way.  Perhaps I should start by saying that by "bookmark," I mean setting a way to get back to a particular place in a document or a particular web page."  In my PDF reader, PDF-XChange Viewer, there's a column on the left side of the interface called "Bookmarks."  If I come to a place in the PDF document I'm reading that I want to be able to find again easily, I just click on "New" under Bookmarks.  The bookmark will show up in the Bookmarks column, with whatever name I give it.  I can set multiple bookmarks this way, and they'll all be listed.  Any time I click on one of the bookmarks, I will be taken to its location in the document.

The method is somewhat different but the result is similar in UltraEdit (for TXT or HTML files) and TextMaker (for DOC files).   Somehow I have the feeling that this may not have been what you were asking, but....
  

tomos

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Re: Bookmark Docs - MiniReview
« Reply #11 on: May 30, 2012, 05:03 AM »
Hi, Tomos.  I'm not quite sure I understand your question.  Each program creates bookmarks in its own way.  Perhaps I should start by saying that by "bookmark," I mean setting a way to get back to a particular place in a document or a particular web page."

thanks cyberdiva,
I wasnt thinking very straight when I asked the question :-[ I've never used bookmarks in any of these apps. Must have a look, thanks!
Tom

rjbull

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Re: Bookmark Docs - MiniReview
« Reply #12 on: May 30, 2012, 04:08 PM »
I should start by saying that by "bookmark," I mean setting a way to get back to a particular place in a document or a particular web page."

Following your earlier post, I read you as implying that Linkman can bookmark not only a Web page, but also a given position on that page.  Is that correct, please?

cyberdiva

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Re: Bookmark Docs - MiniReview
« Reply #13 on: May 30, 2012, 04:41 PM »
@rjbull - No, I didn't mean to imply that Linkman can bookmark a given position in a web page, but I can see how my statement might be interpreted that way.  What I intended was two separate possibilities: a bookmark to enable one to go back to a particular place in a document OR a bookmark to enable one to go back to a particular web page (not a particular place in that web page).  The bookmarks I make in UltraEdit, PDF-XChange Viewer, and TextMaker do the former, while the bookmarks in Linkman do the latter.  (See Steven Avery's discussion above for more discussion of what Linkman can do.)

rjbull

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Re: Bookmark Docs - MiniReview
« Reply #14 on: May 31, 2012, 04:41 PM »
No, I didn't mean to imply that Linkman can bookmark a given position in a web page, but I can see how my statement might be interpreted that way.
OK, thanks.  Reiterating my own earlier post, it's a feature I'd like, and like to work in the same way as a text editor does.  That looks more like a job for a Firefox extension than a separate program... but it was worth asking.