Bookmark Organization in Browsers

The other day I was talking with a Windows-using friend. She’s using an old laptop of ours, as her newer laptop is having various hardware and software issues. I noticed she was using Chrome, and I asked her how she liked it. She liked it for the most part, except she didn’t like how Google wouldn’t let her organize her own bookmarks. She said she can’t imagine it would be that difficult. I told her it was probably quite the opposite. Google’s “smart” bookmarking in Chrome (with the most frequently visited and most recently visited sites showing up in the Opera-like speed dial page) is probably more difficult to implement (from a programming perspective) than the more traditional bookmark style (organize it yourself).

She then described to me how she organizes her bookmarks, and I was fascinated by her way of thinking about sites. She organizes them based on action (see, shop, read, share, etc.). I organize mine in kind of a strange way too. My bookmarks I organize by how often I view them. So I have a folder full of “weekly” bookmarks and a folder full of “daily” bookmarks. Inside the daily ones, I have my Bloglines reader, which contains all the sites I would ordinarily bookmark except that they have RSS feeds, so I’d prefer Bloglines to keep me informed of when they update instead. So every day, I open all the sites in my daily folder in tabs, and every week I open my weekly bookmarks in tabs. And any non-bookmarked site I visit I just use Google or Firefox’s own “smart” address bar to find.

How do you all (my small set of loyal readers—thanks for visiting!) organize your bookmarks? Or do you bother organizing them at all? Or do you even have bookmarks?

13 comments

  1. – sites with feeds in my (Google) Feedreader (most of them blogs)
    – important sites for daily visits + links to blog-login etc. on the browser link bar (below the address bar), shortened with letters (GR for GoogleReader, etc.)
    – stuff I want to share with my friends via delicious.com which results in about 2-3 links/day on average.

    I also use Foxmark (FF plugin) to have my bookmarks on all systems (WinXP, Ubuntu). I’ve deactivated Google Bar (even though it also does this synching of bookmarks, right?).

  2. I have a couple of folders of bookmarks. I have my “newspaper” comics I read in one folder. That’s a daily thing I check, so I open up Firefox and choose the “open all in tabs” option to load them all and blow through them. Then I move down to my “webcomics” folder, which I have separated out just so I’m not opening a zillion links at once. I load all those tabs, and at the end of them, I have a link to Google Reader to log in and check my RSS feeds. Then I have a folder where I keep links to websites I visit that update irregularly that don’t have RSS feeds. I don’t actually use those links though, because I use WebMonX to keep track of those. And then I just have a whole bunch of random links outside of those that I should really look at and clean up. It works for me.

  3. I use delicious. I tag based on type of site (blog, news, etc) and subject (linux, windows, etc).

    I also have a basic set of sites that I keep in my “bookmarks” toolbar in Firefox or Flock that I go to every day.

    Amy

  4. Since FFox 3 I haven’t realy been bookmarking anything. Not that I don’t like the taging idea of FF3, but the smart bar just shows me anything i need just by pressing a few keys, so why bookmarking and taging?

    BTW I have been reading your blog for quite sometime now, but I don’t think I’ve ever commented on it. So… Hi! :D

  5. In my Firefox bookmark bar I have placed all the sites I frequently visit. They have no names, just the favicon, so they don’t take up much space. Then I have a folder with some trivial stuff, one called “GO!!” which contains sites that I need to visit soon. Then I have one folder for my school work and one for game developing.

    I am also using the Read It Later extension for sites I discover daily and want to read but don’t have the time. Then I hit the little read icon in the URL bar and it automatically saves it to read later.

  6. I have the speed dial plug-in for Firefox, and I use that for my most visited sites. then I put the next most visited in the bar and for ones I don’t visit that often, they just go in folders in the bookmarks menu

  7. I have Firefox 3 and Epiphany 2.22.2 on Ubuntu and put my most used websites on the bookmarks toolbar in both.

    In Firefox my bookmarks are just in alphabetical order by name of website, plus a few folders for specailist subjects, such as Ubuntu Forum questions!

    I did want to mention the way Epiphany handles bookmarks, which is actually very functional and different. Essentially you can tag them as “uncategorized” or assign them to a category, such as “Ubuntu Forum Questions”. Epiphany then allows you to see all bookmarks in alphabetical order or to see only one category. It also allows searching for bookmarks, which is much quicker than scrolling if you have a large number.

    Epiphany is the standard Gnome browser and while it lacks some of FF’s features, such as spell-checking, it does load webpages faster than FF. If anyone is looking for a faster, simpler browser I can recommend it. It is available in the Ubuntu repositories. It can run on any Linux system and is also available for Mac, too. Windows – sorry you are SOL!

  8. Most of the web sites that I bookmark are ones that I almost never visit, but think might come in handy to me at some future point.

    I tend to remember web addresses well and can usually type in enough of the address to get it to show up in the address bar. FF3 helped with this, but even in FF2 I found it quicker to pull up pages by typing in the first few letters of their web addresses than by opening a bookmark.

    That said, here are the folders that I have to organize my bookmarks:
    Product Research (with sub-folders by product)
    School References (with sub-folders by class/project)
    Insightful Thoughts (for stuff I’ve seen and won’t look at often but don’t want to forget how to find)
    Music (with sub-folder for guitar resources)
    Projects (with sub-folders for various research-intensive non-school projects)
    Web-Related (with sub-folders for Good Site Design, Bad Site Design [two of my favorite bookmark folders], Code, Hosting, and Development Tools And Resources)
    Linux (with sub-folders for specific topics/problems, filled with resources that have come in handy or specific tutorials I’ve followed — mostly in case I need to remember how to reverse anything I’ve done)
    Potentially Useful Programs (mostly links from PC World to programs that have sounded good but I have no need for at the present time)
    Potentially Unuseful Programs (fun but time-wasting stuff)
    Organizations (sub-folders for Environmental and Travel)
    Political
    Travel (organized by mode of transport — mostly links to booking sites)
    Design Tips (some Photoshop tutorials and a sub-folder for tips on preparing photos to be sold as stock)
    Windows/General Computer Tips
    Recipes (because they didn’t seem to fit anywhere else)

    I show the “Bookmarks Toolbar” in Firefox and have my most-visited sites on there so I can click on them easily. Right now, that includes the ABC News Politics homepage and a style guide to MLA citation format, and blogs, including this one.

  9. By categories. Which mean I never use them xD They just pile up until on some random day I organize them.

    Or, like now, just put them in the Bookmarks toolbar where they pile up until I give up on reading them due to lacking time xD

  10. I have my bookmarks organized by categories. For example: Blogs, News, Community, Games, Development, etc.

    But in the end I always use google to find what I’m looking for. The sites I visit more often I just type on the address bar.

  11. I categorize by how often I read my bookmarks as well, though a little differently from you. I have folders marked ‘daily’ and ‘weekly’ and within those I have subfolders marked ‘blogs’ ‘comics’ ‘ubuntu’ and my other interests.

    I just found this blog, and I’m throughly enjoying it so far. I’m a student of philosophy and nursing, and I have strong leanings and feelings towards feminism. I’m glad I found this; when looking for ‘how to completely remove Kubuntu’ of all things.

    Tyler

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