Bookmarks: the future

[B]

Hello everyone,

I've been using the bookmarks app for a while and I recently even had a
pull request applied (\o/). As the core developer told me he was "maybe
on the mailing list" (sic), I would like to discuss some features, to
avoid work duplication:

1) UX: First of all, the UI could really use some enhancements.
Currently, if you have more than 10 bookmarks, you have to scroll
because each bookmark takes too much height space. I'd prefer to have
them in a tight table, for instance.
2) UX: I investigated changing that and then, le wild Backbone appeared.
People shouldn't use frameworks that heavy for such simple apps like
bookmarks. I'd be in favor with removing backbone and just using
standard JS (standard JS including jquery), or a more lightweight
frontend framework.
3) Feature: we should be able to classify bookmarks in folders. Tags are
good, folders are nice for an overall structure.
4) Feature: I currently use a tag "read it later" for links of that
kind. However, it'd be nice if bookmarks had a real "read it later"
function, i.e. saving the content of a given web page in the couchdb so
that we can access it in the future (imagine integration with the RSS
feed app for fun and profit). That's much more work, but shouldn't be
that hard, right? There are already content detection algorithms out in
the wild (I can think of wallabag, the PHP open-source alternative to
pocket and such).

So, is anybody interested in working on any of these features? Otherwise
I will take care of these by myself, one at a time.

Cheers!
Benjamin (:bnj)

[Pierre Piour]

hi,

it seems your idea of a bookmark application is opposite to mine. And i will not change mine according your ideas because it just doesn't fit to me. I built this application because i was looking for a delicious replacement for ages. And i did it for me, if you want to know, it's more than 6 months now that i am wondering why i did put some tags there. About the code, well, i prefer it with backbone.
But it's great ! If you write a different application with different features, people looking for it will find it ! More applications => more happy users !

My mistake was to call it "cozy-bookmarks", so as soon as you have a decent version of your application, post here and i'll change the name of mine so you can take it !

[Frank Rousseau]

Hello guys,

  Yeah you are right! It's the aim of Cozy: allowing the remix and/or mix of web apps! This way, users could access to a large choice of web apps. By selecting the ones they prefer, they could build a personal cloud that fits perfectly with their needs.  So Ben, don't hesitate to fork the bookmarks project. Joseph already did that with cozy-todos when he understood that his requirements would imply too much changes. Install Tasky and you will understand what I mean (in fact he didn't fork it, he started from scratch and reuse what he likes from cozy-todos).
https://github.com/jsilvestre/tasky

About the cozy- prefix, it's the same don't worry about it. Even at Cozy we are thinking about dropping it from our official app names. So, Piour and Ben, do what you want and notify us when you are ready and we will update accordingly your app link in the market place.

About tags, before adding folders see what Joseph did in Tasky, it will probably make you rethink the need of folders :).

About Backbone, I like it too and it is light. I think it's always good to have a framework and Backbone don't do too much magic. My advice: if you really want to drop it: try to find a lighter one, it should be better than nothing.

Whatever, thank you guys for making Cozy a better platform !

Frank

[Joseph Silvestre]

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to add I'd love to have a bookmarks application that could synchronize with my Firefox and Chrome. I have looked at Firefox sync self-hosted solutions, it's kinda complicated (in terms of Cozy integration) but they have implementations in NodeJS that might worth the look.

Also, Backbone rocks unicorns, it's really simple to start with once you've read the documentation once or twice. But if you don't like it, I'd strongly suggest you use another (like Frank said) because plain JS is a pain in the a** to maintain in my opinion. Maybe you could check for ReactJS+superagent if you want something more 'simple' (I don't think ReactJS is simpler than Backbone actually nor product a nicer code, but it's blazing fast and the hot thing to look at atm). Also there are no dependencies other than ReactJS and superagent which might be what you are looking for (no underscore+jquery).

Joseph.

PS: if you try Tasky, please note that reorganizing tasks doesn't work yet :p