How about some of the many bookmark managing extensions on extensionsmirror.nl ?

- Virtual folders.

- A better default bookmarks view than we currently have. I think that a system where the bookmarks popup (when you click boomarks in the main menu) is a large dialog looking very similar to windows explorer (hierarchial folder structure on the left, large icon navigation on the right). This should increase ease of navigation, important when dealing with large amounts of boomarks.

- Building on the previous idea, if this was added you could have a bar at the top with links to the sites that you most commonly go to from the site you are on. E.g. I often go from slashdot to wikipedia to look stuff up - why not have it put my wikipedia bookmark in a quickly accessible place when I am on *.slashdot.org?

Well.. lets see here..

1. Ability to drag and drop folders.
2. Confermation when deleting items.
3. Expandable tab groups in the sidebar and bookmark drop downs.
4. Search function displays better information about location of results in the bookmark tree.
5. Cute fluffy animals.

I would make a long blog post about this somewhere, but I've got to sleep right now. I'll post here and/or send an e-mail about it when/if I've made the post.

Quick ideas, though:
1) Tag-based bookmarks management, possibly automatic through the use of bookmarks
2) Session-saving integrated into bookmarks (a "Last Session" folder in the bookmarks menu). This would get rid of the "Go" menu once and for all.
3) Analysis of your reading habits that places common pages on the "Forward" button, thus making it as useful as the "Back" button.
4) Autodetection of Live Bookmarks on a site as you bookmark that site, and presenting you with an option to bookmark the feed.

Personally, I'm smitten with Gmail's folder-replacement, Lables. Could this be a possibility? Given that many blogs and comics I read are MWF, M-F, 7-day, or on another schedule, having a much more simplified way of bookmarking them would help.

Also, easier Renaming.

How about that rock-solid nv file cache? I really hope you're implementing that in future versions of ff. The present file cache isn't very good, with a hardcoded limit of 8192 entries and none resistant to crashes. But you probably already know about that...

Having read Asa's post on /. and reading it... it dawned on me that's pretty much what I've been doing for the last couple years. The fast database engine was Google and I think the last time I actually explicitly bookmarked a page was over 4 years ago.

Google.com > "search phrase" > "I'm feelin' lucky" > *BINGO*

Asa's suggestion would I guess be extending that line of thought a bit further...

> 1. Ability to drag and drop folders.
With Firefox on Windows you can Shift+Drag or Alt+Drag or Ctrl+Drag (beware that Ctrl+Drop does copy)

I think a "most frequently visited" list would be more beneficial as a bookmarks replacement/supplement than a full featured "cache/history search system". Categorizing the sites is optional, but would be annoying for the very most frequently visited.. I want those one click away. Ability to "override" the categorizing/labeling and sort order would be key for power users but for the "my grandmother" approach would be complete overkill. It should just work without having to "do" anything. In fact I could see some auto-generated, local, portal-like start page that slowly got smarter using the frequently visited list to add rss feeds and such to your personal start page. I'd trust a local start page over my ISP's portal anyday. I'd development one myself, but I'm too freaking lazy (read "busy").

That being said, your suggestion for a "desktop search engine" type history search is an excellent idea. An option to use the same quick search the way that web searching is done now would be even better.

I hope you find this helpful.
-Andrew

With larfnarf I very much agree:
- Search function displays better information about location of results in the bookmark tree.
With Foxtrot I very much agree:
- Tag-based bookmarks management, possibly automatic through the use of bookmarks. I agree with Akhenaten the Lables in Gmail are very nice. The tag-management in Maple could also be a model.

Most questions/comments in the user newsgroups regarding bookmark management is to be able to apply sorting to a sub-folder only. That, and importing/exporting sub-folders, and displaying the folder path in bookmark search results.

OT, but I find it funny that your Slashdot post is moderated "100% underrated" when it doesn't even HAVE rating yet (except for the automatic +1 for being logged in and +1 for good karma). Hello, moderators? Maybe "Interesting" or something?

Hello,

some suggestions about the Bookmark system:

- "Clean export": Exporting Bookmarks without things like favicon and "private data" like add_date, last_visit and so on. Just Name, location and maybe description (or on demand). If you want to share, backup or otherwise publish your links, all this additional information don't need to be in there. (I found an extension to delete favicons from the bookmarks (my file stripped down from 3+ MB to ~500kB) but not a tool for the rest. Exporting to Favourites (IE) and re-Import fails.

- OPML Import/Export: Additional to the above, the possibility to export it to an OPML file, which you can import in other Link-managers, or import links this way into Firefox.

- easyier Tagging: Maybe by showing the Description field when bookmarking. At the moment i add the "tags" behind the name so i can search. Not very handy...

- Edit in Searchresults: You cant edit Searchresults, delete or move them... thats a prblem if you want to free your huge bookmark file from doubles...

- Integrated "Flat bookmark editor": Thats a nice tool - no need for the properies dialog, fast and easy.

Maybe some or most things can be done with extensions by now, but the strength of the extensions - the variety, is the weakness at the same time - sideeffects, incombatiblity... I have 22 extensions installed, and it was a hard prcess to find out, which extension causes which prblem...

PS: regarding to the first comment, i think i will try some more bookmark extesnions...

Powermarks-like functionality would make some people happy.
http://www.kaylon.com/power.html

1.) Automatically sort by name when putting a new bookmark in the list (possibly be a toggle in the options to turn this on/off)
2.) Confirm deletes
3.) See Open Book extension and Sort Bookmarks extenion for more info/features/suggestions
4.) Ability to export only certain bookmarks and/or folders (like if I want to give a select few bookmarks to my friends, etc.)

If those were in place, it would be perfect!

As mentioned above, a bookmark search that displays the parent folder. I use EBS which is great.. but it doesn't display the parent folder. I have a LOT of bookmarks.. and sometimes can't remember where I store a bookmark.

I would agree that del.icio.us like tagging or gmail-like labelling of bookmarks would be a fantastic feature to implement.

I also like what iTunes does with the music I listen to. Most popular, most listened to and Smart Playlists are great ways to organize my MP3 library. Similar features in bookmarks would be awesome. Smart Bookmarks could easily be created by looking at the text-based content of the page.

Kills me that URL autocomplete doesn't include bookmarks.

What I've really wanted in bookmarks for quite some time is the ability to aggregate bookmark trees, so that it's possible to share bookmarks -- without being forced to share all of them. A couple of examples:

* At work there's a standard bunch of internal sites that are useful to everybody. It would be good to store a list of bookmarks to them in a networked file and for everybody to be able to link in that folder (at a place of her choosing) in her bookmarks hierarchy. Whenever a change is made, everybody gets the change (wiki style editing!).

* There are many bookmarks that are useful to me at both home and work, so it'd be handy to be able to share between these places. However I don't want my bookmarks to be identical in both places: at work my bookmarks toolbar has lots of links and folders appropriate to my job; at home it mainly has folders with links to sites on news, music, hobbies, and so on, with a few work-related sites relegated to just one folder at the end. But I've got a few folders of things like technical documentation that is useful in both places.

Does that make sense?

Personally, I almost never use the bookmarks manager. I tend to do everything directly, with drag and drop or right click-> delete.
That works very well for me, so I don't really have something to desire in that area.

I see as possible improvements:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=286383
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=286544

Arnaud.

The two thing I miss most are:

- Autocompletion doesn't include the Bookmarks

- No way to syncronise the Bookmarks and the IE Favorites. I really like (sorry, but I really do :) the way the Favorites are integrated in the start menu and I use that a lot.

I know there are extensions for both of them. (AutoMarks and SyncMarks). But IIRC was tabbed browsing an extension once as well ;)

I use the manager and like it, but please try to fix bug 262329 (Sort by Name should not delete separators, but sort items between two separators)
A cleanup feature to for ex detect "dead bookmarks" could be cool too.

I especially like Smylers ideas, and would like to see a way to share my bookmarks and/or links to extension with some people. If this is possible, we could see some serious ranklisting of bookmarks like is done with music by audioscrobbler.

I wish that when I choose "Sort By Name" from the menu it would leave the menu open and not close it so I have to go back into the menu a second time.

- When adding a bookmark have the 'Keyword' input box present by default. I think its a great feature that you guys have hidden.
- Dialog when adding bookmarks that have same name/address
- In the bookmarks menu, right click context, remove the 'New Bookmark', 'New Folder', 'New Seperator' Entries...leave those for the bookmark manager

How about dropping the 10+ year old scheme of storing bookmarks in some bizarrely formatted bookmarks.html file? Isn't it about time to try XML? Or even the file system based Favorites folder that that *other* browser uses is better than a .html file.

I know this isn't an "end user" sort of issue, but it bugs me! I do think making the backend easier to work with would help innovation.

I do not like sub directories within subdirectories.

example:
bookmark opens sub directory 1 and sub directory 2 and then you see the links of sub directory 1 or sub directory 2. when you choose one of them.

bookmark >* sub directory 1 >* links

I would like bookmarking system with columns for discription and one sub directory also with columns.

example:
bookmark - column 1 - column 2 (column 3) >* column 1 - column 2 (- column 3) links

I have sub director with called "world", because is large I would like devide it it 2 different ones.
column 1 | column 2 > column 1 | column 2 | links
world | general > persons | place
world | country > name | places | links

I do not want them in directory world and than 2 sub directories. you get to many windows open and takes time to get to links.

the width is column is adjustable.

the usage would be in bookmark toolbar.

hope I made sense!?

| Maybe "Interesting" or something?

Done.

See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=289535

Bookmarks?!

Sooo last year! ;). I only use del.icio.us now - the portability is wonderful.

Let see:

A more friendly way to move a bookmark at the bottom to a folder near the top, when there are lots of bookmarks and folder in-between.

A common area for bookmarks rather than in an individual application profile directory or an easy way to syncronize bookmarks.

One simple thing please. Windows Standards: Folders are always grouped together when sorting. Folders A-Z followed by Bookmarks A-Z. it is very very very silly to have to scroll to the bottom because you have a folder starting with "Y". Please follow windows standards.

Yes yes yes, please please for the love of god atleast make a option of sorting folders by name "normally" (recursively).
I agree with Kroc Camen "it is very very very silly" the way it is now.

Never mind windows standards how about just common sense.

Mozilla can do it. K-Meleon can do it (sort folders recursively). ALL other browsers i use do it just NOT FF, why?.
I have more then 200 folders, more then 2000 bookmarks and i tell you it's impossible to find stuff in FF some times. :(

Pretty please thank you :)

- check them
- if broken, go check the Internet Archive for last best copy/copies and mark those instead, and optionally offer to download if I'm afraid the content is going to disappear.

- globally, always, have a way to check saved/cached copies against what's there now and what's on the Internet Archive or anyone else's copy saved elsewhere if it's made available.

- pour together different collections and look for duplicates even if they're at a different level in the outline form (aka subfolder/subdirectory). Help me sort them out.

The real problem with bookmarks right now is that they are arranged by name. URL's are unique (by definition and name), so a URL should only be stored once, but then given categories (by the user and the browser) -- the directory structure would then be built on all of the common categories of the bookmarks

bookmarks to a URL could occur in different categories, and even with different names depending on what category you are looking at

date created, date visited, number of times visited -- would all be categories, too

This is actually how a "My Documents" folder should work, too -- but that's another story

Security. I'd say forget the features for now. You wouldn't believe the number of users who are losing their bookmarks. Now I don't believe for a moment that Fx is at fault (more about that in a moment), but it's a legitimate problem for these folks, and the anguish makes an awful lot of noise. Some people have lost huge amounts of research, some lose their bookmarks repeatedly, etc. Regardless of where the fault lies, these hapless hordes make Fx look bad.

I'm pretty sure either the users or another program is deleting the files. Fx is very good about using the backup file if the original is destroyed, but if both files are deleted, they are gone. There are some clean up programs that function solely to clean up "unnecessary" files. There are already a couple of extensions that back up Fx user data automatically. But since Fx already does that, I conclude that they work only because they aren't targets.

It's hard to know what Fx can do about that, but there may be some possibilities. Maybe run some sort of polling program to watch over the files and scream if they disappear? Send a talkback report? Maybe you have some more ideas.