Ask HN: Do you still use browser bookmarks?

39 points by zeroday28 ↗ HN
If not, how do you store important URLs, websites and links?

64 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] thread
No because modern browsers discourage local bookmarks by making the interface more and more clumsy. It's a bit of a pain, but I keep important URLs in local HTML files.

* Favorites / Recent / Frequent

* Pursuits

* Code

* Links of the Day

I mainly use Vivaldi browser, and for me it makes using bookmarks quite pleasant and convenient.
Firefox makes them pretty easy to use. One key stroke (Ctrl/Cmd-B) displays/hides the bookmarks sidebar where you can search your bookmarks. You can drag the current url to the bookmarks bar to add a new bookmark.
From the comments, I gather the preference to use the keyboard and to search for bookmarks. I tend to use the mouse more and browse my "important" and not so ethereal links.

The sliding sidebar hierarchy of bookmarks in folders doesn't work for me. There is no sidebar using Firefox Nightly on Android — bookmarks in Safari are easier given the extremely constrained screen space. I'd much prefer a floating window web page. Sidebars consume and waste much of the space within each browser window. I'd like to be able to drag new links to be added to my local web page(s) and be able to use Command+B/Ctrl+B to make text Bold. Editing web pages within the web browser was abandoned long ago.

Yes. Typing in the search bar seems to be an effective way of calling up a bookmark if and when I need them.
Why "still"? hehe I only started fairly recently. Typing * in the Firefox search bar searches bookmarks—what's not to like.

URLs I use frequently I add to my start page.

Tell HN: You can make polls (if you have at least 200 karma)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

OP, you could have a Yes or No responses and be able to see the number of votes they get, and like a regular Ask HN, people can explain their answers in the comments.

Yes, with Firefox sync to my home, office and mobile. Very handy.
Yes, I have around 100 bookmarks on my personal browser and more than 1000 on my browser at work. Bookmarks serve two functions for me, particularly at work. First, the very act of making and filing the bookmark is an aid to memory. Second, typing in the Firefox URL bar is way more valuable than using either web search or (worse) the internal search at my job, which is barely usable. People are always shocked at how quickly I can pull up relevant resources.

The most annoying thing about using browser bookmarks is that every site puts tons of crap in the title (or worse doesn't have a meaningful title). I wrote a greasemonkey script to strip the crap so my bookmarks can have clean titles.

In Firefox, if you combine the Vimium extension and bookmarks, it acts like a quick launcher of sorts in the browser to quickly open specific websites. Firefox also can sync bookmarks across devices, so this functionality propagates to all devices.
I host wallabag and have a browser extension to add/tag sites and a phone app to access it.
Yes, I use the bookmarks. While bookmarking I try to categorise a url with hashtags (e.g #javascript). This makes the search easier based on grouping of hashtags.
Yes, where else would I store the sites I'll never go back to?
I do use bookmarks (comes to several MBs when I save backups).

However, I've recently been maintaing text files based on topics I use frequently. I have shortcuts in my editor to open links under the cursor.

Honestly, my browser autocompletes any URL that I visit regularly. Usually after two or three letters. It's so much easier than searching through a list of bookmarks.

I also use bookmark keywords - a kind of alias - which has the same effect.

And search keywords are the ultimate timesaver.

I've never made extensive use of bookmarks, keeping only one or two dozen, but in the past couple of years my workflow on my personal machine has become exactly as you describe, just typing "n" to get "news.ycombinator.com," not using bookmarks at all.
Autocomplete domains, mostly, and I use a few bookmarks when I need those really deep links. What's so amazing about really deep links? I never shut up.
Firefox's GUI bookmarks 'manager' was always too clumsy for me ... So I made my own with HTML. Rather than use 'folders' I group them by topic; rather than use the page's title for a link-label, I label each descriptively. The page loads instantly; each line has a 4-letter topic code, a full URL, a linked label (click to open) and comments/search clues.

Much easier to organize, add to, and search in the browser.

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definitely still use bookmarks in all browsers on all platforms. I'm horrified every time i see my colleaguers "search" for stuff on the intranet, confluence, web at large, things they are often referring to but never bookmarked... Even with automcomplete, bookmarks are faster. (counterpoint: recent migration from some internal app to confluence....)
Yes, especially the bar for my bookmarklets.
Latest HTML backup export of my bookmarks is just under a megabyte (925K). It's tree-structured, just like my directories.
Yes, with Firefox. All articles will be tagged with all the important topic specific keywords.
I use bookmarks in lynx and emacs-w3m - 26 different bookmark files grouped by subject. This works well for me.

Chrome/Firefox: no.

Do shortcuts count? Meaning, the grid that Firefox shows on a new tab?