News and Reviews > Mini-Reviews by Members
MiniReview of Linkman URL Organizer and Search Tool
J-Mac:
Linkman seems to have some browser confusion built-in. Or maybe I don't understand what it is trying to do.
First, by default it is configured to open Internet Explorer - even though Firefox is my default browser. Why wouldn't it be initially configured to use the default browser? Seems presumptuous...
So I went into Settings and changed it to use the default browser. But now double-clicking a URL does nothing at all. Soooo, finally I tried the Mama Bear's bed, OOps - I mean I selected Firefox, and then it worked. Why doesn't it pickup the default browser? Other programs do this fine, so I know I have it correctly set as my default browser. Also, the Settings say for it to always open a new tab, but it insists on opening a new Firefox window. I went in and changed that, and then went in again and changed it back to Firefox in new tabs. This time it did work.
However there are some URLs that instead open a "parked domain" page at Texturizer.com. Huh? The domains are good - if I copy it and paste it into Firefox, IE, or Opera, it goes right to the correct site. But in Linkman it goes to the Texturizer.com parked thing. (I'm guessing that Texturizer is the developer's web host, and this is his way of referring bad URL's to them?) This does not happen on all URLs; just on some. If they were bad URLs I would understand, but they are good ones.
Jim
J-Mac:
The more I try to use Linkman, the more it is apparent that it is designed for use with Internet Explorer. It needs to have a little more development toward Firefox and/or Opera before I would take it seriously.
The IE stamp is all over it. Defaults to using IE no matter what your default browser is; the toolbar has an icon to "Open IE Favorites", but nothing for Firefox; the File menu on the top menubar has "Open IE Favorite", Save as IE Favorites", and "Merge with IE Favorites". Nothing in support of Firefox except that it can import its bookmark file. And open URLs in it - if you change the default Settings - which are initially set for IE.
I know he said that he can't add a toolbar to Firefox because of Firefox's limitations - though that doesn't seem to prevent others from adding at least extensions that offer similar functionality as toolbars. And I don't believe Firefox prevents the addition of "Open" and "Save As" or "Merge As" commands in the Linkman menus. Or icons on its own toolbar.
Hopefully it will break out of the IE shell in future releases and add more Firefox support. As for Opera, I do know that they severely limit access to their API and make it very difficult for ANY third party integration - the main reason Opera is not my primary browser. But Firefox most definitely invites a lot more integration than Linkman currently has.
Thanks!
Jim
Outertech Support:
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?
-J-Mac
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It does and the import code is some 2 years old and you are the first one with this problem.
I've just done a quick test to verify it, see the screenshot below (used build 2.0.0.14).
Is there any way you could send your boomarks.html file to [email protected]? 100% confidentiality is guaranteed and the problem will be fixed within 48 hours.
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?
-J-Mac
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Could you show a screenshot so there is no confusion about the problem?
A deskbar (like the Linkman Desktop Toolbar) reduces the desktop space by it's size, so it can not be overlapped by other windows, it's just the nature of a deskbar. You can drag it to the top of your desktop or if you don't like this behavior detach it from a screen edge so it becomes a normal window (and you get the full desktop size).
See the Linkman Desktop Toolbar tutorial for details, including screenshots.
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
-J-Mac
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This logo is the Drop Basket, one of Linkman's most prominent features.
To move the logo, drag it to any position with the left mouse.
To get the menu of the basket click it with the right mouse button. There you get the options to hide it. (This same can be done in the View menu of Linkman). In this menu you can also add the current browser URL to Linkman amd access all your Linkman links. The logo is a "Drop Basket", because you can drag & drop any links from your Firefox window to this logo and Linkman will add them to its database. The size can be configured by using any gif image (Tools | Settings | Drop Basket).
The drop basket is explained in the Linkman tutorial.
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.
-J-Mac
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With Linkman 7.0 Beta both the Desktop Toolbar and the Drop Basket were hidden by default. From user feedback we've realized that many users have not seen that there are such features after several days of use (people don't read help files).
Both features are enabled by default, because both they are integral parts of Linkman and can be hidden within seconds (both can be dragged with the left mouse button and a popup menu is available on a right click).
The IE stamp is all over it. Defaults to using IE no matter what your default browser is; the toolbar has an icon to "Open IE Favorites", but nothing for Firefox; the File menu on the top menubar has "Open IE Favorite", Save as IE Favorites", and "Merge with IE Favorites". Nothing in support of Firefox except that it can import its bookmark file. And open URLs in it - if you change the default Settings - which are initially set for IE
-J-Mac
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You are right in one point. Linkman is better intergrated with Internet Explorer as with any other browser. There are two reasons for it. The URL management in IE is the worst of all browsers, so there is the most room for improvement. This means that an IE user is much more likely to be in need of a replacement for the bookmark management. The result is that the majority of Linkman users are IE users (this was already the case before the IE Toolbar has been implemented).
This does not mean that we don't want Firefox users to purchase Linkman, on the contrary. IE has been only a priority because of the larger base of potential customers and time constraints.
After we have added the Linkman IE toolbar a lot of people have requested a similar toolbar for Firefox. We have looked into it and it proved extremely difficult to implement a toolbar with similar features (but the idea has never been dropped, it's still on the to do list).
The very result of this limitation was the creation of the Linkman Desktop Toolbar. The Toolbar fully supports Firefox. You can drag & drop links from Firefox to the Toolbar (even to a specific folder) to add links to Linkman.
Eventually there will be a toolbar that intergrates directly into Firefox. It's just not a Top 10 to-do priority because of implementation difficulties and the existense of the Desktop Toolbar, Drop Basket, Tray Icon and configurable Windows-wide Linkman shortcuts.
As you've pointed out Open/Save IE Favorites buttons are available in the main Linkman window, but no Firefox buttons. This has several reasons.
* Buttons for every browser would clutter the UI (button configurability is on to do list).
* The IE buttons point out that Linkman unlike other URL Managers can load Favorites and not just import them.
* You can configure Linkman to load your Firefox Bookmarks on program start automatically (Tools | Settings | Program start).
* We strongly recommend to use the native Linkman bookmark format with Firefox (to make use of all Linkman features)
As to the problem that Linkman was launching URLs with IE on your system.
This is definitely a bug. Linkman should use your default browser. I think it may be a problem with Linkman and Vista Ultimate, since we use Vista Business here. I'll look into the problem within the next 3 days.
And I don't believe Firefox prevents the addition of "Open" and "Save As" or "Merge As" commands in the Linkman menus.
-J-Mac
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The menus are there.
File | Import | Firefox
File | Append | Firefox
File | Export | Firefox
And as I wrote before, you can automate the import in the first section of the Linkman settings window, but we recommend to use the native lmd format with Linkman.
rjbull:
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.
-Outertech Support (April 24, 2008, 04:07 PM)
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Probably because of their "closed Gecko engine." It's a disappointment, but not a surprise, and thank you for trying.
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.
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Footprint - not so much of the program itself: the context was KenR's wanting a program that combined the functions of Linkman with WebSite-Watcher/Check & Get Web page monitoring tools. If you monitored a lot of Web pages, you'd have a lot of data on disk, and more to transport in a portable version.
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.
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URL validation is nice, but what was meant was a way of tracking changes in Web pages, not whether their URLs still existed. As I said, I prefer to have those functions in separate programs.
LinkStash's bookmarks file can be optionally encrypted-rjbull
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So can Linkman's.
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Good... do you plan a KeePass-style password feature? Again, that's nice to have, but might be best left to a separate program.
rjbull:
I visited the LinkStash site but was immediately turned off
[...]
So that program is out based on general principle.
-J-Mac (April 24, 2008, 09:20 PM)
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It could be better arranged :) I've already alerted its author to this thread, so I'd better nudge him again ;)
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