News and Reviews > Mini-Reviews by Members
MiniReview of Linkman URL Organizer and Search Tool
J-Mac:
I notice that on the Outertech site it syas that there is an Internet Explorer toolbar but does not mention a Firefox extension nor toolbar. Does either exist? If not, will it? It also mentions that it directly supports Internet Explorer Favorites, but doesn't say the same about Firefox's Bookmarks. Sounds like it was developed strictly as an Internet Explorer tool and Firefox has recently been added as an afterthought. I hope not.
Thanks!
Jim
rjbull:
Where I'm coming from: I'm a registered user of LinkStash and I'm pretty happy with it, but I still use 1.7.3 because it's the last version that works for me on my Win98SE laptop. Current version with more features is 2.0.9.
According to Linkman's homepage, Linkman is compatible with "...Internet Explorer 3.x-7.x, Firefox 1.x-3.x, Netscape 3.x-7.x, Mozilla 1.x, SeaMonkey 1.x, Opera 4.x-9x, Avant Browser, Neoplanet, Netcaptor, MyIE2, [and] SlimBrowser...".
-KenR (March 17, 2008, 02:04 PM)
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At home, I also use K-Meleon, which isn't on that list. I can partially integrate it with LinkStash by stealing the entry for Mozilla and pointing it to K-Meleon's .EXE (there's a separate entry for Firefox), and LinkStash will send the entries, though it can't grab URLs from K-Meleon.
You can export the links to other programs and even create new export templates
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This is a weakness of LinkStash. HTML output only.
The needs improvement section
To some people, Linkman's biggest problem is the fact that it does not have an internal browser and that you must use it with another program.
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That's not a bug, that's a feature ;) It would make for a much bigger program, and how many more browsers does one need?
A related set of programs is designed to check websites and see if they have changed. Website-Watcher and Check & Get are examples [...]
What I would love to see is an integration of these two classes of software. While Check & Get currently comes the closest to this as it stands, I prefer to use Website-Watcher and Linkman for these tasks. That means I need to keep the links synchronized between these two programs, but it gives me tremendous flexibility in website monitoring and organization/searching of bookmarks.
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Disagree strongly. You'd end up with a bigger program with very much bigger footprint for its data files, make portability much more difficult, and while I may like to bookmark lots of links, I don't necessarily want to routinely check them. In other words, I see this as two separate functions I'm happy to keep separate. Different folks...
How does it compare to similar apps
[...]
The developer of this program has always responded to me within a few hours whereas neither of the developers of other programs ever has.
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LinkStash is still in development - the latest .EXE is dated 2008-03-03. I've occasionally used the forums for support, but haven't needed e-mail.
In my opinion, there is no competition between Linkman and the competitors.
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Power users like more power... I don't need all the extra power, but I consider LinkStash to have two particular advantages for me:
LinkStash EULA: 3. LICENSE GRANT
XRayz Software hereby license use on (A) your own personal computer(s), desktop(s) and/or portable(s), or (B) multiple users on a single computer, but not both (A) and (B). Usage on a LAN or in a server/workstation environment requires that each workstation accessing the software must be licensed.
In practical terms this means the software can be used by a single user *for personal use* on the work computer and the portable computer for that user only.
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I would really recommend that Linkman's author reconsider license policy, at least to the extent of offering a discount license bundle that allows one person to own a home, work and portable license, and not have to pay for three at full price as I presume is currently required.
... Take LinkStash and your bookmarks with you on a portable device such as a USB pen drive.
[...]
All bookmarks are kept together in one single file, easily fitted on the average floppy diskette. This means your bookmarks are totally portable and can be taken to and from work, and easily synchronized between computers.
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Which is really nice for moving bookmarks around.
KenR, LinkStash's bookmarks file can be optionally encrypted, and it also has a KeePass-like passwords function where passwords only are encrypted in an otherwise unencrypted file. I'm surprised that Linkman doesn't offer those; did you overlook them in your review?
Outertech Support:
I tried it, it freezes up as soon as i start to use it, cant use its menus and the only way to get rid of it was to kill it in process explorer.
-Grorgy
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This sounds like a conflict with some other software that changes the menu style (although no other user has reported such problems). You can revert Linkman to using default menus by disabling Office-Style menus in the Interface section of the Settings window.
Updating to the latest build (7.2.0.21) may also help. Every reported bug is usually fixed within a week.
I notice that on the Outertech site it syas that there is an Internet Explorer toolbar but does not mention a Firefox extension nor toolbar. Does either exist? If not, will it? It also mentions that it directly supports Internet Explorer Favorites, but doesn't say the same about Firefox's Bookmarks. Sounds like it was developed strictly as an Internet Explorer tool and Firefox has recently been added as an afterthought. I hope not.
-J-Mac
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Direct IE Favorites support means that Linkman can integrate all features (user defined fields etc) within IE Favorites. It can also load and save them directly, every other URL manager does an import/export and will mess up the sort order.
We would like to add a toolbar to Firefox, but Firefox does not support COM servers, so it's way more difficult to add a database connection to it.
But there is the Desktop Toolbar and the Drop Basket (a feature that was not showed in the review, since it's a mini review). Both do support all browsers.
At home, I also use K-Meleon, which isn't on that list. I can partially integrate it with LinkStash by stealing the entry for Mozilla and pointing it to K-Meleon's .EXE (there's a separate entry for Firefox), and LinkStash will send the entries, though it can't grab URLs from K-Meleon.-rjbull
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You can do this also with Linkman. We thought about official K-Meleon intergration, but K-Meleon developers refused to add any support for URL grabbing.
You'd end up with a bigger program with very much bigger footprint for its data files, make portability much more difficult, and while I may like to bookmark lots of links-rjbull
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The footprint is minimal (or none if you don't use the feature) and portability not really affected.
The URL validation is deeply intergrated into Linkman. After you start it you can continue editing all links (drag drop, delete etc), you can even exit the program and resume the check on next launch.
LinkStash's bookmarks file can be optionally encrypted-rjbull
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So can Linkman's.
J-Mac:
I just downloaded and installed Linkman on my notebook running Vista Ultimate. First thing I did was import my Firefox bookmarks. However it does not seem to read subdirectories with the Firefox Bookmarks file.
E.g., I have a folder on the Fx Bookmarks Toolbar called "Firefox & Mozilla Information", and within that directory are a few subdirectories, such as "Firefox Tweaks/Help" and "Firefox Extensions" that contain more bookmarks. Yet after Linkman imported them those subdirectories are just blank files, not subdirectories. I guess the bookmarks within them are lost (to Linkman, that is). Why don't those bookmark subdirectories show as subdirectories? Doesn't Linkman support anything beyond one subdirectory level? If not, I don't know that I could use it, having a number of subdirectories like that.
Also, my Firefox browser window was shortened up due to Linkman opening up at the bottom and forcing the browser up. Is there anyway to stop that and just have Linkman show as a deskbar?
Finally, Linkman was only open during the time it took me to inout the first two sentences of this Reply to Post. When it opened in that that 'bottom of browser" window, it apparently also placed a rather large logo in the middle of my desktop that forces itself on top of everything else - or at least on top of Firefox. That logo was sitting right across the text I was inputting at the time and so out of frustration from not being able to get it out of my way to complete this post, I immediately closed Linkman!
I realize that I have not yet read anything to show me how to configure the Linkman UI, and that I need to do that. But no application should place parts of its user interface right across open applications like that from the very start. That is the kind of UI "feature" that should have to be user configured.
Thanks for any help with these problems.
Jim
J-Mac:
@rjbull:
I visited the LinkStash site but was immediately turned off - I couldn't find much of the information that I would need before making a purchase. So I clicked on the feedback link and was taken to a page that first wanted me to choose whether I would need a reply or not - before I could submit any request.
How would I know?? They would have to answer that - it depends mostly on the answer!
So I visited their forum, but you are required to register there before even being able to read anything. That's plain ignorant! I shouldn't be required to register for anything prior to being a user of the software!
So that program is out based on general principle.
Jim
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