Talk:Places:Firefox 2 User Interface Ideas

Discussion Thread

Discussion Thread in mozilla.dev.apps.firefox

Some Thoughts

Looks very good (especially search functionality for Bookmarks was badly needed), but I still miss something in this UI while doing a Search: In Search Result, one should not only see the Name and Location (url) of Bookmarks, but also somehow the Place where it is stored in the own Bookmarks (Folder, Subfolder etc.). This would greatly help to organize an highly nested Bookmark structure (delete duplicates etc.). While big Hierarchies might be bad, some Users are simply used to this and probably will never change their habits. --Stebs

We imagined exposing some of this through the properties window. Ben

Great! No clutter for normal Users, but the functionality is still there... Stebs

Any chance of multiple bookmark toolbar folders, like the way flock does it?--Noamsml

I second Stebs's request. Also could the Search function return not just bookmarks whose name contains the searched string, but also _folders_ whose name contains the searched string, and if at all possible bookmarks whose _url_ contains the searched string --MichelJullian 16:55, 7 Jan 2006 (PST)

Will Linux users be able to use drag'n'drop to rearrange bookmarks from the menu? Kezo

Here is a bookmarks feature idea I recently had. I visit a bookmarked page and get a "this page has moved to.... you wil be redirected" page, then end up on the new page. It would be really nice if in one or two cliks I could update the bookmark I just visited to the new page I am on. (Maybe a right click menu.) --Godfreja

I would be delighted to see support for the Windows standard use of F2 to rename. This would greatly improve my bookmark experience. The properties approach is cumbersome by comparison. - One of the reasons people don't use bookmarks so much is the default names are often not particularly meaningful to the user & it's too much effort to change them. One approach I have used in IE to make bookmarks more visually accessible is to use custom icons - as IE bookmarks are actually shortcuts this is fairly easy. "One picture is worth a thousand words" and it does make it so much quicker to visually locate a bookmark or bookmark group when you have lots of them. This is probably the only feature of IE that would incline me to use it in preference to Firefox. Pennyrg

There's a lot of discussion going on about this UI in the newsgroup. Just wanted to make sure that was referenced from here. Beltzner 00:39, 23 Feb 2006 (PST)

It would be great if you could search the *text* of history and bookmark pages, not just the title and URL. davermont, 7:48, 3 Mar 2006 (EST)

What about putting search in the sidebar instead of attached to a button in a popup? I think this would be a good transition between the old bookmarks sidebar and the new places system. It would also be similiar in function to IE7's "Favorites Center". --Richwklein 15:30, 09 Mar 2006 (CST)

About "Saving a Search Query": What happens exactly once the Save button is clicked ? I don't understand what widget could be made draggable to save the search somewhere. Or have something similar to the Add Bookmark Dialog, with a list of folder where it could be visible. --> Maybe discussed on bug 317847 --Sylvain

The extension "Flat Bookmark Editing" is a wonderful example for a productivity tool that caused a qualitative change when I started using it. The principle of "permanently open tools" like in Photoshop isn't new and has a good reason: it dramatically reduces the editing effort. This is a key issue for converting the "bookmarks manager" into an "information manager" that contains more than the saved bookmark (tags, annotation, etc.). (see also http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/bookmarks-usability/)

Comment about "Editing Bookmarks": "When the user visits a page that exists within their bookmarks, the Tag button lights up and can be clicked to edit metadata." An option to put metadata editing as a permanently open tool in the sidebar could change the way we are using bookmarks because we could for the first time "add" to any website personal context that is available parallel to the website. This is actually an old idea and linked to Berners-Lee's ideas of a semantic web. This "sidebar tool" could also be useful to display other information about the website such as white or black listed, blocked cookies, etc.

I think advanced search boxes should be shown by default in the Places popup. If someone is going to open an entirely new window just to search, surely they want to do something advanced. It also allows your first search query to be a useful one if you want. Right now you're forced to first search for nothing, just to get to the advanced options, the click the plus button to have them show. The easiest way to do it would be to just never show the rather useless "Showing <blank>" box, and turn on search options there permanently. Simple searches should be relegated to the Location bar (results shown in autocomplete), because that's the simple way to search. --wjjohnst

Scrapbook

How about adding Scrapbook functionality

Tags and the Bookmarks Menu

I am not quite sure how many times (if any) this idea has been suggested, but I know the perfect way on how to integrate the Tags system with the Bookmarks Menu...

Below Organize Bookmarks (but above the actual bookmarks), would be a folder called "Tagged Bookmarks", and several other Tag-based folders. My menu proposal would look a bit like this

Bookmark This Page
Subscribe to This Page
Bookmark All Tabs
Organize Bookmarks
---
Tagged Bookmarks >
Recently Visited Bookmarks >
Recently Tagged Bookmarks >
---
Bookmarks Toolbar Folder >
(your bookmarks)

Tagged Bookmarks would be a new submenu containing subfolders of all the tags that exist in the database. In those folders would be lists of bookmarks tagged with that option.

Another thing we could try, is maybe an extension to the address bar, there would be an extra button next to the Go button (or maybe in that submenu next to the favicon) that would allow you to change the address bar to a search bar for contextually searching through bookmarks!

So, how do you like that? Viper550 17:30, 24 May 2007 (PDT)