Let go of your bookmarks!

[ender]

gmail has been my bookmark system for 2 years, since I found toread.cc .
virtually everything, I found interesting while surfing and browsing, I will just hit my toread.cc script in the booksmarks, and it goes with link to my gmail account.
till now, I have 40,000 *emails* or links in my gmail account, of course, not all from toread.cc, but half of them? sure.
and if I need something, I just use some keywords, and gmail usually gives me the correct file I was looking for.
Rather than google.com, which might also have lots of junk in between the results.

[jojo99]

I disagree.  I have over 5000 Favorites.  I use the FF extension PlainOldFavorites to give me the same structure in IE as in FF.  And every year or so I run through them using amdeadlink and check that they are still in existence and available.

I also use the Scraplink FF extension to save copies of pages with information I am interested in, just in case the page disappears.

Google/Yahoo, etc. are useful for quick, common searches.  However, too often, the first few pages of most search engine results are gamed and littered with garbage links from CNET, Nexttag, Dealtime, Pricegrabber,etc.  Try searching for reviews on just about anything electronic, for instance.

What if you have a selection of favorite sites that you are experienced and happy with?  Say favorite photography blogs?  Specific articles on certain health subjects?  Best File Sharing sites?  Best airline ticket sites. Best virus scanning sites?  etc.  How about sites using Flash content (until recently? Google didn't search such sites)?  There are many reasons to maintain and use favorites/bookmarks.

I use the last free version of X1 to search the favorites fast and quickly when I need to find something that I think I have saved.

[dantheman]

jojo,

I liked your comments about link checking.
Does IE favs contain keyword shortcuts? That's what i like about FF! You can add always add a keyword say "dcf" for the forum here and when using OpenBook extension you get that perfect partner to manage your bookmarks with ease.
Foxmarks is great to sync your bookmarks online and they have an alpha testing program now to sync with IE and I'm sure it will be out of alpha stage soon.

Dats my 2 cents for today!   

[jojo99]

PlainOldFavorites has the same exact design as in IE.  I don't know about keyboard shortcuts as I have never used such functionality.  Sorry.

[dantheman]

PlainOldFavorites has the same exact design as in IE.  I don't know about keyboard shortcuts as I have never used such functionality.  Sorry.

-jojo99 (July 14, 2008, 05:05 PM)

Jojo,

I believe IE7PRO and Maxthon (freeware) have this kind of option.
You simply assign a shortcut to your link and type it in the url address box.
Say you bookmarked www.google.com
You can assign any letter in the keyword section of your Firefox bookmarked page so, say you assign the letter "g" then all you have to do is type "g" in your url box, hit enter and you're taken over to www.google.com Neat hé? It can be really handy for extra long url addresses.  

[Curt]

... That's a good idea.  I often keep a few notes in MemPad, even if nowhere else.

-rjbull (June 17, 2008, 05:05 AM)

The latest 3.31 beta update a week ago made me re-install MemPad
- because Horst has corrected the previous hotkey mistake (both hide AND popup at 'ESC'):

08 July 2008:

    * Mouse wheel: focus auto change behaviour improved
    * Auto-save when minimizing to SystemTray (if auto-save is active)

Now MemPad can compete with my beloved FlashNote! 

[steeladept]

Wow, I am really shocked.  How do you guys (and girls) keep those thousands of bookmarks readily available?  I had trouble when I topped 30, and that was with nested folders for organizing them by topic.  Invariably I would end up with two or three folders dominating and by the time I got them organized I was going 4 or 5 folders deep.  Then I would get lost as to which folder set I put the bookmark in...

Of course now I only keep 7-10 bookmarks.  They are always the tabs that I have open on browser startup.  My theory here goes as follows:  These 7-10 are links that I check daily (more or less) and provide my starting point for everything else.  If I close that tab, and then later want it back I use my bookmark instead of going to the home button (and opening all 7-10 sites again, many of which are already open).  Any other site I go to isn't visited often enough to keep (for me) and with my apparently above average GoogleFu, I seem to almost always find what I am looking for within 3 searches (typically just narrowing the list from the previous ones).

The key to this, of course, is the various Google tricks.  A listing of them can be found at:
http://www.google.com/help/operators.html

[m9833]

I also never used my bookmarks, mainly because the bookmark managers made it difficult to use them in the first place. Click here - then click there - then search. Aaaarrrrrrgggggghhhh!!!!

It was only after I found (the now sadly off-the-shelf) PowerMarks that I started using Bookmarks in earnest. This actually did increase my productivity quite a lot. Now, I am back to square one, I save bookmarks, almost never to use them again :-(

[justice]

why can't i search bookmarks from the search field nexxt to the address bar? that would make using bookmarks so much better. early morning awesomebar ignorance.

Now I know why i never liked the Awesomebar as much as i did farr, after installing Enter Select 3 pressing enter launches the first result like farr does. Nais!

[Lashiec]

Now I know why i never liked the Awesomebar as much as i did farr, after installing Enter Select 3 pressing enter launches the first result like farr does. Nais!

-justice (July 17, 2008, 03:11 AM)

I wonder if there is a extension to mimick FARR, numbering results, and using the NumPad to launch them...

[justice]

the FARRsomebar!

[dantheman]

the FARRsomebar!

-justice (July 17, 2008, 04:49 PM)

 

Cool!  I like dat!

 

[Curt]

Mouseless Browsing 0.4.4.1
by Rudolf Noe

Updated June 24, 2008

https://addons.mozil...US/firefox/addon/879

Long Description

==================================================
NEW BEAT VERSION WITH A LOT OF NEW FEATURES AVAILABLE UNDER http://mlb.rudolf-noe.de/
http://www.rudolf-no.../content/view/14/26/
==================================================
Mouseless Browsing (MLB) means id-based browsing.
Major goal of this extension is to enable browsing only by using the numpad keys.

HOW DOES IT WORK...
Mouseless browsing bases on marking all links, form elements and frames with ids. If you do not like to see all of them, you can configure this in preferences dialog of MLB. You can trigger an action (e.g. following the link) by simply entering the id and depending on the configuration confirming it by pressing Enter. When the checkbox "Execute automatically..." is checked the action is automatically triggered after the specified delay for auto-execution.

* You can configure to use the numpad exclusively for Mouseless Browsing. In that mode you can trigger actions even the focus is on a textfield or selectbox. The output is suppressed. If you not use the exclusive mode then triggering actions by typing ids don't work if the focus is on a textfield or a selectbox. Entering the id while holding the CTRL-Key triggers the action in any case. You can toggle between the two modes by pressing the num-key twice within 1 sec.

* Entering an id for a link results in navigate the browser to that link, entering an id for a form element results in clicking resp. selecting that form element. Entering an id for a frame results in focusing the frame so you can scroll the content. The ids for frames are always place in the top left corner of the frame and they have a different background color.

* By default links are opened in the same tab. If you press the ALT-key while entering the id the link is opened in a new tab. The same happens when you press the configurable postfix key (default: +) after you have typed in the id of the link.

* If you would like to select a link you have to press the configured postfix-key (default: shift) after you've typed in the id of the link.

* There are also the following non-visible ids which you can enter: "0" focuses the address field, "00" the web search field and "0" + [1-9] activates the appropriate tab.

* Finally there are shortcuts for navigating back an forth in the history (default: divide/multiply-keys) and for scrolling up/down (default: minus/plus)

PLEASE REFER TO MY WEBPAGE FOR THE FULL DOCUMENTATION
Works with:

    * Firefox: 1.5 – 3.0.*

[Curt]

...  If I close that tab, and then later want it back I use my bookmark instead of going to the home button (and opening all 7-10 sites again, many of which are already open). 

----

... various Google tricks.  A listing of them can be found at:
http://www.google.com/help/operators.html

-steeladept (July 16, 2008, 01:13 AM)

- Highlander 1.2
   highlander at einaregilsson.com
   http://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/4086/
   There can be only one...    ...tab for each url.

- if you are using Firefox, that is.

Thanks a lot for the link to the google operators! 

[lanux128]

Mouseless Browsing[/url] 0.4.4.1
by Rudolf Noe

-Curt (July 18, 2008, 04:17 AM)

also check out brotherS' mini-review for this addon here.

[40hz]

I rarely bookmark anything anymore since I got used to using a feed reader.

For things I need to keep for reference, I use a note manager and just include the URL along with any other data I want to keep.

For "read later" type things i use the Scrapbook FF add-on.

[iphigenie]

I do use bookmarks and local website archive as often as I use search engines

If it is something where I think this site is better than others and I will want to find that one again, then I bookmark it.

I have temporary bookmarks for projects/learning, which I delete when i am done with them, and permanent bookmarks that I want to keep forever.

Search engines are good to find information, but they are not good to find a particular site you want to find again. After all they are constantly tweaking their algorithms and entire sites can disappear off google overnight, so you just cant trust you can ever find this particular site again.

In short
- if it is the information I am interested in, I archive the information in lwa/note and rely on search engines to find again.
- information for a project I might bookmark as well, for speed of finding when someone says "where did you find..."
- if it is the site itself I am interested in (its tone, style, a shop etc.), I bookmark it both in the browser and in an online tool (i use several, depending on whether it is for a project, for sharing or just for me)