On Bookmarks
I grew up using the Internet, and I must confess: I’ve never used bookmarks on my web browser. It’s not my browser’s fault, either. I’m not the only person on the Internet who believes that bookmarks suck.
You have to understand, I have a high standard for innovation. Over the years, I’ve tried all sorts of web browsers. I still haven’t found one that thrilled me more than Internet Explorer 4.0 beta 2. Call me geeky if you will, but – darn it – it took more than five years for the ideas in that browser to catch on. RSS may be hot now, but it’s basically a rip-off of the CDF format that debuted in summer of 1997 for those of us who beta-tested IE 4. I defy you to find any other browser that was so far ahead of its time.
Firefox (Almost) To The Rescue
After singing praises for Internet Explorer 4’s innovative features, you could only imagine my delight when I heard that a new version of Firefox would replace bookmarks with something new, called Places. The philosophy behind this new feature seemed to be that your browser’s history and bookmarks both served the same basic purpose: to help you go back to a web page you’ve seen before, and liked enough to visit again. Naturally, I was frustrated when I found out that “Places” would not end up in Firefox 2.0, but was pushed back to version 3.0.
It’s a shame, too, considering the statistics they have that prove bookmarks and history don’t get much action any more.
Beyond Firefox
The Firefox team aren’t the only people thinking along these lines, either. Camino for Mac OS X already combines history and bookmarks into the same screen. But when one looks at the web pages cited by Firefox’s Places page, one can see that there are many ways to improve bookmarks other than simply integrating History and Bookmarks into the same screen. Some want to see bookmark titles included the URL Bar’s auto-complete feature, as well. Unfortunately, Camino does not tie its bookmarking system into the URL Bar in any way, making its innovative bookmarking layout no more useful than traditional bookmarks.
Flock also has an innovative aproach to bookmarking. You “star” a website you like, and Flock then keeps this bookmark in an online, social bookmarking service, like del.icio.us or Shadows. When you’re vising a site in your “Favorites” list, the star button turns from blue to orange, letting you know you’re on a page you like.
Epiphany probably has the most innovative bookmarking system I’ve seen. Iteliminates the hiearchical, folder-based structure that you know and love in favor of “tagging” your bookmarks. In other words, it is a “folksonomy” based system.
Folksonomy? What Are You Talking About?
Most of us got to know the kinds of computers that ask us to put our things into folders. We can put all our files into one folder; or we could get more organized, and categorize all of our files into a hiearchical structure of folders. “Folksonomy” is increasingly becoming an industry buzzword. Instead of putting things into a hiearchical order, we simply assign a number of broad subjects to one file.
For example, I could keep a number of bookmarks that relate to my town of Bloomington, Indiana. Some of these bookmarks may pertain to things like entertainment: movie showtimes, restaurants, and the like. Others, however, may pertain to job postings in Bloomington.
With a taxonomy-based bookmark system, I might be forced to put these links in separate folders. The links to jobs in Bloomington may serve me better if they were in another folder that also had links to jobs in other cities. While all my job-hunting-related bookmarks would be in one place, my bookmarks to Bloomington area jobs would be ultimately be separated from my bookmarks to Bloomington area entertainment.
In a “folksonomy-based” structure, “Bloomington” only serves as one keyword. Beyond that, “jobs” could be a separate keyword—as could Indianapolis, or Chicago. When I look for bookmarks related to Bloomington, I get to see all my bookmarks related to Bloomington: jobs, entertainment, school, or anything else.
Epiphany goes one step further, by tying my bookmarks to the auto-complete feature on the URL Bar. If I type the word, “Bloomington,” into my URL Bar, I will see all the websites I’ve bookmarked with my town, whether they involve business or pleasure. Beyond that, I could type “Bloomington Jobs” to see bookmarks to job posting sites; or I could type “Bloomington Movies” to see my bookmark for movie showtimes.
Flock features similar functionality in its Search Bar, but after using Epiphany as my primary browser for a few weeks, I decided I liked the simplicity of being able to do everything from the URL Bar.
How You Can Improve Firefox Right Now
Firefox’s trump card will always be its extensions system. That’s why I switched from Epiphany back to Firefox in the end—it can be made to do a lot of cool things. To solve my bookmarking problem, I installed myurlbar_a, and that brought me the feature I most wanted: to connect the titles of pages in my bookmarks to my URL Bar’s auto-complete feature.
Additionally, it can also use the titles of web pages in my history, but it lists my bookmarks first. So now, if I want to make it extremely easy to go back to a site I like, I bookmark it. This is useful if I want to to check out the hourly weather forecast for Bloomington. All I have to do is start typing, “hourly,” and before I finish the word, Firefox already knows where I want to go.