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Tag Based Bookmark Management In Web Browsers

All Acting Regiment

23:53 / 23.07.05

Tom Coates obviously says it better than I can, but what he's suggesting, if I've got this right, is a system where when you bookmark a page, you also "tag" it with a keyword. That way, if you're anything like me and you always bookmarks loads of pages, you can search through your database (a fluid data storage system, as opposed to the rigidity of a folder heirarchy) by keyword.

Does anyone else think this is a great idea? Does anyone here know how to make such a system? Would it be a feasible project in say, Firefox?

paranoidwriter waves hello

01:03 / 24.07.05

I also think it's an excellent idea. I use Safari and still haven't worked out how to (or even if one can) put bookmarked pages into groups; and hate having to scroll down a menu for ages, only to let my mouse slip and have to go through the whole laborious process again and again.

That typed, I'm not sure how (well) this "key-word" idea work. Would you hit a command then type the keyword into a search box? And would having so many key-words end up being confusing eventually if you continued to build up loads of bookmarks? Hmm...I dunno.

Still, I have no idea how you'd write this into the software, but any help with organising can't be a bad thing, no?

semioticrobotic

02:53 / 24.07.05

Is this something you can't acheive with a del.icio.us account and Cocoalicious?

All Acting Regiment

12:39 / 24.07.05

It may well not be, Bryan, and thanks for the links, but could you explain how to do what you're suggesting?

semioticrobotic

14:18 / 24.07.05

Sure, Legba, but a caveat: Cocoalicious is only available on OS X. I forgot to mention that last time I posted.

Instead of clicking "add bookmark" on a page, I do the following.

I'm running OS X Tiger, so I have the dashlicious widget installed on my Dashboard. When I find a page I want to save, I make sure it's in the foremost Safari window, invoke the dashboard, watch as the page's information is automatically added to dashlicious, tag the page, and upload the link to del.icio.us.

Then the page is available in the Cocoalicious client, which allows searching by tag and by keyword (the title of the link, etc.). It's much easier to navigate my bookmark collection this way, I think, and after glancing at Tom's post, I get the sense this method is in the spirit of his rumination.

All Acting Regiment

15:01 / 24.07.05

That certainly sounds promising, but still sounds complex- as I'm not a Mac user, I may have got this wrong, but it sounds like you're using three different programs?

I feel like a bit of an ass now as I see that it is possible to add keywords to a bookmark in Firefox, but crucially, you cannot do this as you bookmark.

What you can do is add keywords through the Bookmark Manager, but I've found that I now have a load of bookmarks and that adding keywords to all of these will be a bind.

distractile

15:20 / 24.07.05

Legba, I think the OpenBook extension for Firefox might be what you're looking for. I also find Add Bookmark Here indispensable. FireBMarks also looks nifty, but I only just installed it so don't know how well it works.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

14:32 / 25.07.05

I now feel sad and inadequate that I don't have enough bookmarks to make filing and indexing them an issue.

maywoo

23:51 / 25.07.05

There are a great great many social bookmarking applications and services! (del.icio.us being the one I tend to use). Yahoo's My Web 2.0 and Shadows.com are recent offerings in beta that look pretty promising. The neat thing about Shadows is that it focuses on creating discussion forums around any web page, allowing you comment on, as well as tag or rate anything with a url.

neuepunk

01:29 / 26.07.05

There's a bit of Javascript you can set as a bookmark on del.icio.us. Basically, when I'm on a page I want to bookmark, I click a "post to del.icio.us" bookmark on my menu bar. I then get a pop-up window that auto-fills the title and URL, and I can add extended info and tags. There are plugins for several browsers to use del.icio.us entries as a collection of bookmarks.

It looks like Tom is advocating pulling some del.icio.us functionality into the browser, and allowing it to synch with a server. Additionally, he's showing other tag sources - like flickr - aggregated with these bookmarks. This sort of tag aggregation is happening at sites like technorati already, but it's once again all server-side.

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