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Friday, July 2, 2010

Bookmark management in Google Chrome vs other browsers

An update: look at the next To converge Chrome Bookmarks with Google Bookmarks? post too.

As you might remember, initially some extremists from Google Chrome team were suggesting that bookmarks are not necessary in a modern browser, because their function is replaced by wonderful search algorithm. (Or do I exaggerate?)

While Google Search and its interface in Google Chrome and Firefox are indeed wonderful, they cannot replace bookmarks. Personally, I’m a bookmark-addict. I have thousands of bookmarks, organized into a rich three structure. Wonderful Xmarks extension allows to backup and sync bookmarks across machines and browsers.

However, among three major browsers – Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome, only Firefox presents acceptable bookmark management. In both IE and Chrome bookmark managers are dismal.
First of all, when you add a new bookmark, both Chrome and IE present all the branches of bookmark tree expanded by default. If you have 10,000 bookmarks in hundreds of folders, finding right spot for a new bookmark becomes a nightmare.
Internet Explorer is unique in that it presents no visual clue of whether currently displayed page is already saved in bookmarks (favorites) or not. Also, thanks to it's tight integration to Windows OS, IE does not allow to put various characters into bookmark / folder names.  It’s a mere disaster.
I’m mostly using Google Chrome these days, but often launch Firefox just to conveniently add a new page bookmark. Firefox remembers a position of  previously added bookmark (IE does not) and only expands that branch in a bookmarks tree by default. It allows to add tags to bookmarks and to put separator lines between bookmarks. Its “Organize Bookmarks…” tool is also far superior to practically unusable IE “Organize  Favorites…” and to HTML-based Chrome “Bookmark Manager”.

But I’ve just got an idea of how to make adding bookmarks to Chrome much easier. What if we add a simple “Bookmark current page” mouse right-click option to Chrome’s “Other Bookmarks” menu?
You’re on a page which you want to bookmark to your “Developer/Google Android/Android Devices/Zii EGG” folder? Just expand it in “Other Bookmarks”, right-click mouse and choose “Bookmark current page”!

What do you think?

1 comment:

  1. I have thousands of bookmarks, organized into sync bookmarks a rich three structure. Wonderful Xmarks extension allows to backup and sync bookmarks across machines and browsers.

    ReplyDelete