(Dis)Organizing Bookmarks

Posted on Saturday, June 14th, 2008 at 12:09pm by Rob Wilkerson

This is another call for help. In all my years of computing, browsing and generally keeping up with the times (or trying to), I’ve never – seriously, never – found a way of organizing and accessing my browser bookmarks that doesn’t quickly devolve into utter madness. Madness, I tell you.

I’ve tried the entry-level folder structuring, centralized solutions like Delicious and Google Bookmarks and am beginning down the path of a synchronized solution in Mozilla Weave (true, not a purely organizational metaphor, but synchronization will facilitate maintained organization). I’m also vaguely aware of new bookmarking features in Mozilla 3, but must confess my total ignorance of the details and to how to use those features effectively.

So to those of you out there who actually like how your bookmarks are organized, what the hell are you doing right that I’m doing so freakishly wrong?

, 5 Comments

Subscribe5 Comments on (Dis)Organizing Bookmarks

  1. Bill Mill said...

    del.icio.us plus as many tags as I can think of.

    Although, I have to say, I’m much more likely to simply be able to remember an article enough to google it than I am to find it via my bookmarks. They’re simply a last resort.

    ...on
  2. Chad Kieffer said...

    Like Bill, I’m typically able to Google for the recently visited links or find them in browser history. I’m pretty impressed at some of the new basic history/bookmark features in Firefox 3 (most visited, recently visited).

    For most bookmarks, however, I rely on browsing tags or del.icio.us bookmark search. I’ve taken the time to bundle my tags and will periodically go in and prune and update my tags and bundles.

    The del.icio.us add on for Firefox 3, has added import and export. It’s not sync, but I don’t really need it. I have only a dozen or so private/local links that I manually maintain across a few machines.

    ...on
  3. Kyril Revels said...

    After years of using Del.icio.us, I haven’t really found much need for any other solution. Coupled with the FF2 plugin’s sidebar (still haven’t tried the one for FF3 yet), for me it’s just as good as having them stored locally, and much better organized than I could consciously manage myself.

    However, apparently everyone’s mileage w/ Del.icio.us varies, otherwise this post wouldn’t have been necessary. ReadWriteWeb had an article about different bookmarking solutions a few weeks ago that might be of some use.

    6 Great Tools to Save Links for Later

    ...on
  4. Rob Wilkerson said...

    Thanks, folks. In spite of the silly-ass name, I might have to give del.icio.us another try. I wasn’t particularly enamored with it the last go-round. Is there a FF extension that allows to to easily search (not scan) for tagged content? I think I mostly want more direct (read: faster, one-stop) access without having to sift through a mountain of tags.

    ...on
  5. Rachel Lehman said...

    Yes! Use the del.icio.us toolbar for Firefox, world of difference over a simple bookmarklet. Also one thing I have learned over a year or so of use (previously I used ma.gnolia.com which I abandoned for del.icio.us – too slow and no browser extensions, at least at the time) is to keep tags minimal! If you make them to specific or obscure, you’ll never remember how to go back to them. And use a standard for how you tag – whether or not you use plurals, hyphens, etc. Helps to be consistent.

    ...on

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