Hi folks, I've been thinking lately how great it would be for my
productivity it there was a 'better' way for me to store, sort,
organise and manage my bookmarks.
Key Features: (for those who don't like to read lots)
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1) Keyword Based Bookmark Filing ( e.g. with tags and categories )
- folders to group associated tags together (folders = 'groups')
- 'groups' can inter-connect based on individual bookmark's
specific tags etc.
- i.e. a group can have many tags (naturally) but a tag can
also belong to many groups
- groups can have sub-groups
2) More Bookmark Information
- Add a 'description' field for bookmarks
- Bookmarks could store the link's html meta data ( i.e. title and
description fields )
- Ability to set a custom description to better explain the link
reference and/or purpose
3) Bookmark Screenshot / Thumbnails
- To provide an instant visual reference to help people to
remember the page, reason/purpose for the link
- Browser is already capable ( new tab launch window ) so should
be easy to implement (i hope)
- Might take up a lot of extra storage space so features/
functionality to choose whether to store a thumbnail or not on a per
link basis, plus easy options to 'clean up' or purge all, least used
or selectively un-wanted thumbnails.
- Bookmark descriptions / meta data can be displayed on hover or
click pop-up, maybe even click to pop-up a larger thumbnail with meta
data or a full page 'preview'?
Long Description / Reasoning:
======================
I'm a web developer (and a bit of an information junkie) so I'm always
looking for and finding loads of handy references, resources, tools
and guides on-line that I like to bookmark for later use. This may be
something that I end up referring to regularly, occasionally, or often
just as a one-off. Sometimes I bookmark things just-in-case they may
be useful to me in the future, to save me from having to search for it
again. This way I don't have to remember what it is (to search for)
because I've bookmarked it!
-- How many times have you found something a on-line and thought "Hey
that's great, I'd love to learn more about this. Oh but I don't have
time now, never mind I'll just remember it for later." and then you
never do. You forget what it was because either it wasn't something
you'd normally think of / search for, or you stumbled across it by
accident whilst searching for something else or through general
browsing and you can't remember the steps you took to find it?
Frustrating isn't it! --
I think that the existing bookmark manager (whilst pleasantly easy and
simple to use) could be greatly improved with the addition of these
few 'simple' features.
I would like to be able to 'tag' my bookmarks with key-words rather
than have to save them in any specific folder so that they can be
easily referenced and cross-linked, and (perhaps more importantly)
easily searchable. I also find that the classic folder structure has
become to rigid and strict to be an effective means of organising my
bookmarks, considering the amount of links and range of topics /
subject areas that I typically need to manage.
I realise that folders are still a natural way to organise things but
I feel that they could work better as general 'groups' that can cover
a range of specific 'tags' or sub-groups and can be inter-connected to
any other group by an individual links specific tag / group
associations.
Think of it a bit like WordPress's blog tags and categories, with
maybe a tag cloud.
Example:
=======
An example of where this could be useful....
Take the 'minify' project on Google Code (
http://code.google.com/p/minify/
) which can minify both CSS and JavaScript, now I could bookmark it in
my 'CSS' folder, but I could also bookmark it in my 'JavaScript'
folder, or both (doubling up), or I could put it in my 'tools' or 'on-
line services' folders, but this is a bit vague and imprecise.
Finally:
======
Having keyword tags with category/group folders tying relevant tags
together would be a great help to me (and hopefully others).
I'd also like to see the ability to store more information about each
link, such as maybe the page's meta description tag, or a custom
description. It would also be really great to have screen-shots /
thumbnails for bookmarks too, not just the links on the new tab /
launch page.
FYI - If I was a familiar the necessary programming languages (maybe
Java or C# right?) I would have a crack at building this as a browser
plugin / extension myself but unfortunately I don't so I thought I'd
post my ideas here and see what the community thinks? Maybe there are
some people out there who can build this?
I'd love to hear your thought / feedback.
Kind regards,
Chris
P.S. Apologies for the long post.