Bookmark Base blog

Mozilla team just announced new scheme for bookmarks called “Places Organizer” that will be implemented in Firefox 3 (here’s the screenshot).

Places Organizer will store all bookmarks and history in embedded SQLite DB. They promise performance and reliability boost while enchasing bookmarking experience. It will also feature bookmark backups and sorting.

You will be able to see Places Organizer in action probably in about one month: this is estimation for pre-release version of Firefox 3.0 M9 version. But development process can be delayed till the beginning of January 2008.

According to Janco Associates data Firefox now handle about 17% or whole browser market. There were downloaded 400 million copies of this browser.

Sometimes people ask how Bookmark Base can synchronize bookmarks. Here is a short answer:

1. Import bookmarks from one browser (f.e. Internet Explorer).
2. Import bookmarks from another browser (f.e. Firefox).
3. In this moment your bookmarks are already synchronized and you just need to export the bookmarks from Bookmark Base to any browser or file supported.

Some things are too plain to understand immediately.

The difference between the Bookmark Base and other bookmark managers is that the Bookmark Base was created not to organize collections of sites but to make surfing the Internet more convenient while working on several computers. It’s not a secret that many users connect to the Internet from home and workplace computers, laptops and maybe the Internet cafes. That’s why it’s quite complicated to memorize what computer you were using when you found and put each link to “favorites”. Bookmark Base helps you to synchronize links. You can install this program not only on the HDD but also on the USB drive, this way is recommended by the developers.
On being installed, Bookmark Base finds such supported browsers as Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox, Seamonkey and K-meleon and imports bookmarks from the chosen program or from all of them. Also working with Bookmark Base you can do some uncomplicated operations to sort links: add the description, change link’s name, move it from one folder to another, create a new folder, add a link, etc. Besides, the program can check all or only the marked links verifying their ability to work. For clarity all imported links will be marked with yellow color, all working ones with green and broken – with red.
Having started Bookmark Base from USB drive on another computer you can export database to the browser. This process is automatic and very fast because the program will find the folder where the browser is and add new links to existing ones. If Bookmark Base isn’t able to find the file with bookmarks you can manually choose it in the setup.
You don’t have to export the database into a browser if the synchronization of the links on different computers is unnecessary but you can open sites directly from it. The complete security is provided when the program works with a flash drive and no files are created on the HDD while the database is kept in the encrypted file.

Also, Bookmark Base supports XBEL importing and expoting so you will be able to import bookmarks from third-party tools which supports XBEL.

We have successfully released Bookmark Base v.2.0.0.2. It can be downloaded on Bookmark Base download page.

Bookmark Base now can work with XBEL files, Mozilla Seamonkey browser and K-meleon browser.

Keeping all of our bookmarks organized and synchronized between computers can be difficult. A new generation of bookmark management software is on the horizon to make managing your bookmarks easier and more effective than ever.

Bookmarks are one of the most wonderful tools that Internet browsers have to offer. Keeping records of our favorite web sites and letting us get back to them with the click of a button. Bookmarking is easy to do in your web browser, just click a button (or hit Ctrl-d) and bam, the web page you are currently visiting is bookmarked.

If you’re the type of person who likes to have organized bookmarks but also likes to use more than one browser or utilizes more than one computer, you might find bookmarking a little more difficult. How do you keep bookmarks synchronized between browsers or computers? A new generation of bookmark software designed to be your one stop bookmark source might just be the answer.

Rather than bookmarking your pages through a single web browser, these external bookmark management programs work separately from any browser. Once the software is installed bookmarking is often just as easy, but the bookmarks aren’t just saved for a single browser. Instead they are saved into an external bookmarking program that then exports its bookmarks to whatever browser you happen to be using, whether it is Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Firefox or any other web browser.

Besides this sharing of data between different browsers that are located on the same computer, there are also software programs that allow you to synchronize bookmarks between computers, either using the same browsers or different browsers. Different software programs can attack the problem of computer synchronization in different ways.

If the computers you wish to synchronize your bookmarks on both reside on the same network, it is often a piece of cake to keep bookmarks synchronized with a program designed to transfer data over the LAN. You can set up automatic synchronization routines to operate once a day or once a week. You can also set it up to synchronize whenever you tell it to. There are many different possibilities for bookmark synchronization.

If your computers don’t reside on the same network, other software available can work through the internet. Bookmarks are uploaded to a special server on the Internet, from which you can synchronize your bookmarks from one computer to the other through your internet connection. This is great, for example, for synchronizing bookmarks between your home and office computers that often times are not set up on a personal local area network.

These bookmark managers oftentimes also make the process of bookmark management in general even easier than software included with web browsers. Utilizing simple, intuitive and user-friendly interfaces, they allow you to organize your bookmarks as well as change bookmarks quickly and easily. If you’re not satisfied with your current bookmark managing software, these sorts of bookmark management solutions could just be the answer you’ve been waiting for. Combining ease of use with functionality, they are a great way to keep your bookmarks up to date with ease and style.

One of my friends, Andrew, asked me today if Google Browser Sync is our future-going rival?

I checked Google Browser Sync page, launched my FireFox (usually I work in Opera, but I have a lot of browsers on my PC; guess why?) and installed that extension. My hasty conclusion is that it works. I was not too deep in testing but I managed to synchronize bookmarks between my big PC and laptop.

Now I would like to list pros and cons:

• Good
• Free. Not open-source but free to use.
• Quite simple to use. Google guys managed to make synchronization process as simple as possible.
• Syncing all. Not only bookmarks synchronized but also history, cookies and passwords.
• Bad
• Only Firefox. Yes, Firefox is good browser and its popularity grows but let’s face the truth: MS Internet Explorer is the main browser for now. Not only geeks and ubergeeks use the Internet.
• Privacy issue: lots of disputes were performed about “Google and privacy”. I don’t want to make another holy war but my personal opinion is: better to use controllable desktop software. Easy does it.

So my decision is that “Bookmark Base” is not rival to Google Browser Sync. They are just too different to be competitors.

What word do you like more - bookmarks or favorites? As for me - bookmark is more correct word for describing saved links to online resources.

But “favorites” is an established term in IE which has more than 80% of all browsers. Maybe it’s about quantity?

Comments appreciated.

For people who aren’t just casual surfers the amount of information online presents a daunting management issue. You want to bookmark all the pages you find useful in your online research and business, but how on earth do you keep track of them all and get that one particular link back when you need it? Effective bookmark management is one of the biggest challenges to full-time Internet users and there’s still much to be done with software packages to meet all the “wish list” criteria for the “perfect solution.”

There are a lot of programs to manage bookmarks, both shareware and retail. Compass, for instance, has been around since January 1997 and has been considered to be a standard in the genre for a long time. But while all of these programs do what they do well, none of them seems to be the all-in-one solution that hardcore web users crave for. Continue Reading »