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First post, by xjas

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As the title says. I need a bookmarks desktop app that is browser independent (i.e. not a Chrome/etc. extension!), syncs across multiple machines (this could mean just putting its database file in my OwnCloud dir and accessing it from multiple clients), and is cross-platform (OS/X & Linux - don't actually care about Windows for this.)

Bonus points if it can merge and sync multiple sets of bookmarks from god-knows-how-many machines going back two decades of browsing 😜, and access multiple databases in different tabs.

Obviously it absolutely 100% needs the functionality that if I click on the bookmark in the app, it opens the website in my browser of choice. Don't laugh, I've tried "bookmarks managers" that don't do this.

I feel like this is a problem some of you have already solved, so asking for suggestions.

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Reply 2 of 18, by wiretap

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Just make a HTML file in a folder with links. You can even get creative and make folder icons & site icons to click on. Then on each PC, just set it as the home page.

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Reply 3 of 18, by Mr. horse

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wiretap wrote:

Just make a HTML file in a folder with links. You can even get creative and make folder icons & site icons to click on. Then on each PC, just set it as the home page.

This. Thats what I do at work.

No sir I don't like it!

Reply 4 of 18, by xjas

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wiretap wrote:

Just make a HTML file in a folder with links. You can even get creative and make folder icons & site icons to click on. Then on each PC, just set it as the home page.

Umm, that sounds like a gigantic pain in the butt. I'm trying to use tools to make this easier, not create multiple days of extra work for myself.

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

Reply 5 of 18, by yawetaG

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Aside from the browser independent side, older Opera (up to 12.x) releases had a very good bookmarks manager that could import from and export to various other browsers and also interchange formats...

Reply 6 of 18, by Dominus

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I think since xmarks (?) closed there is nothing left that does this.

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Reply 8 of 18, by wiretap

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xjas wrote:
wiretap wrote:

Just make a HTML file in a folder with links. You can even get creative and make folder icons & site icons to click on. Then on each PC, just set it as the home page.

Umm, that sounds like a gigantic pain in the butt. I'm trying to use tools to make this easier, not create multiple days of extra work for myself.

Shit, I thought that was as simple and as easy as it gets. I must be way nerdier than you. 🤣

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Reply 9 of 18, by Mr. horse

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wiretap wrote:
xjas wrote:
wiretap wrote:

Just make a HTML file in a folder with links. You can even get creative and make folder icons & site icons to click on. Then on each PC, just set it as the home page.

Umm, that sounds like a gigantic pain in the butt. I'm trying to use tools to make this easier, not create multiple days of extra work for myself.

Shit, I thought that was as simple and as easy as it gets. I must be way nerdier than you. 🤣

My thought are likewise.
A simpler idea would be to drag you bookmark to the desktop and put them all in a single folder and use open with option to pick your browser.

No sir I don't like it!

Reply 10 of 18, by xjas

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I have hundreds of bookmarks to go through from almost 20 years of browsing, which all diverged from the same Opera 5 bookmarks file on my Thinkpad 365 that I used until ~2002. I need to be able to find duplicates, cut/copy/paste, move things between folders, etc., and delete them easily with ONE BUTTON. Otherwise this whole process will be an unbelievable grind. Manually editing an HTML file in a text editor sounds neither simple, quick, nor fun.

And yes, I do want to keep a lot of the historical ones so I can look them up in Wayback Machine, etc. I don't use these in my "daily driver" browsers anymore.

Mr. horse wrote:

My thought are likewise.
A simpler idea would be to drag you bookmark to the desktop and put them all in a single folder and use open with option to pick your browser.

I think that only works on Windows? I did try storing files in a directory structure but there's seemingly no way to store web links as files and have them be compatible across all three platforms. Windows uses .urls, Linux uses multi-purpose .desktop files which have a different structure, and OS/X uses zero-byte .webloc files with the actual URL stored in the resource fork. Great.

yawetaG wrote:

Aside from the browser independent side, older Opera (up to 12.x) releases had a very good bookmarks manager that could import from and export to various other browsers and also interchange formats...

To be honest, if Opera hadn't screwed over their bookmarks functionality when they switched engines, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. 😜 I'm basically looking for a standalone version of Opera 12 bookmarks manager. Maybe I should just reinstall O12 for this specific purpose, but I'd like a system that's more future-proof.

I've found a few programs that seem to do what I want, but they're all old (~2005-2010ish) unmaintained Win32 apps. If I had the energy to put a bunch of weeks of work into this, I'd honestly be thinking of writing my own; maybe a fork of PCManFM or something.

There's also Buku which seems to be the favorite among the Arch/LFS/Gentoo crowd. It's a command-line app. It's universally described as "powerful", but I can't think of a worse thing to be a command line app. I haven't tried it yet.

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Reply 11 of 18, by root42

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Something like https://raindrop.io perhaps?

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Reply 13 of 18, by Dominus

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Muz wrote:

Are bookmarks require for daily use?

yes, it's one of the essential things of life. like oxygen, food and water....

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Reply 14 of 18, by 0kool

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Hey xjas! I've been using Bookmacster for 5+ years now. Have some thousands of links and it does pretty much everything I want (and a bit more). It is a commercial product and OS X exclusive mind you. I did gave some thought to migrating to Linux, but the lack of a similar software was one of the major holdbacks for me. Guess I'd have to run a copy of Mavericks in VM if I ever decide to go the GNU way.
I think it costs about $20 or so and you could trial it. I don't know if bookmarks hoarders like me are rare breed, but I can't imagine managing without this application.

Recently I've discovered a program for Windows (Wine to the rescue?) called Rons WebLynx and it seemingly knows a few tricks as well (haven't tried it yet).

There are a few browser extensions that could somewhat help you as well (Bookmarks Organizer for example), but for the most part they're good for nothing.

Hope you find this useful. Cheers!

Reply 16 of 18, by Matzo

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Could be a nice simple project using PHP, MySQL and Bootstrap featuring a login and pages to manage folders, sub folders and of course bookmarks themselves. Being on the web it can quite easily be OS and platform independent.

Reply 18 of 18, by kode54

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Huh, bookmarks. Now there’s something I haven’t used effectively in years...

These days, I just leap to a search engine, type an url from memory, or that failing, a fulltext search on my indefinite browser history.