<p>''Please comment in the Talk page (use the Discussion tab above)'' Places is a new system for storing bookmarks, history, and other information about pages. It is currently scheduled to go into Firefox 3. This document covers much of the design and user-interface of Places. Developers looking into using places should see the [http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Places developer documentation]. Note: Places has been disabled on the Trunk, as announced at the [http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3/StatusMeetings/2006-09-20 9/20 Gran Paradiso Status Meeting], pending redesign. Once work is underway, we'll see about getting some of the tinderboxes to do Places builds alongside the non-Places builds. We'll be using the [news://news.mozilla.org/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox mozilla.dev.apps.firefox] newsgroup and this wiki for discussion and communication. = Goals <font faceObjectives =The primary objectives of this project are to: * Improve access to History and Bookmarks* Make it easier for people to Bookmark pages Secondary objectives include: * Consolidating user data formats* Providing a platform for using interesting per-URL metadata* Improving the capabilities of Live Bookmarks* Providing a solid architecture for bookmark sync and remote storage == Builds == As noted above, Places is currently disabled in the "Impacttrunk" stylebuild of Firefox. To use Places you must enable it at build-time using --enable-places. Detailed instructions for building Firefox are available in the [[mdc:Build Documentation|MDC Build Documentation]]. Places builds are unstable and are recommended only for developers at this time. Please [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox&component="fontPlaces file bugs] in Bugzilla. = Overview = Implement new back ends for Bookmarks and History using the mozStorage system. Develop newer, more usable front end components to display results, emphasizing simple search and categorization. == Background == Studies from the late 1990s show that while revisitations of pages previously seen counted for roughly 39% of all page navigations (see [http://scholar.google.com/ Google Scholar]), Bookmarks and History usage was low (1-size3%), despite the fact that roughly 20% of those revisitations were to pages seen > 10 URLs ago (and thus outside the usefulness range of the Back button or menu). Autocomplete in the URL bar is a useful tool but fails to address some common desires when looking up visited pages. There is a gulf between the capabilities of that tool, the capabilities of the Bookmarks and History systems today, and the desired capabilities of those systems. == Use Cases == * [[Places: 100pt" colorHistory Use Cases]]* [[Bookmarks Use Cases]] (not specific to places) == Functional Requirements == TBD, but reasonable compatibility with Firefox 1.x =="#FF0000">Plans Design Documents == === Design Documents === * [[Places:User Interface]]* [[Places:Design Overview]] * [[Places:URL Store]]* [[Places:Bookmarks]]* [[Places:place URIs]]* [[Places:Results]]* [[Places:Controller]]* [[Browser History]]* [[Places:AutoComplete]]* [[Places:Transactions]]* [[Places:Drag Drop]] Much of the design information is on the developers wiki. ==== Special Containers ====* [[Places:Bookmarks Containers]]* [[Places:Live Bookmarks]]* [[Places:File System Container]] More to come... === Code Location === HACKED <pre>mozilla/browser/components/places/font></ppre>for the front-end, <ppre>mozilla/toolkit/components/places/<font face/pre> for the back-end. === Team === * [http://dietrich.ganx4.com/ Dietrich Ayala]* Asaf Romano* [http://blog.mozilla.com/thunder/ Dan Mills]* [http://blog.mozilla.com/sspitzer/ Seth Spitzer] With guidance from: * Brett Wilson* [http://www.melez.com/mykzilla/ Myk Melez] (microsummaries)* [http://www.franklinmint.fm/ Robert Sayre] (feeds)* [http://shermandickman.wordpress.com/ Sherman Dickman] See [[Places:Task List]] for a list of tasks. We'll be meeting every Thursday at '''2'''pm PST in [http://irc.mozilla.org/ #places]. See [[Places/StatusMeetings]] for the logs of the past meetings. == API Changes Required == The APIs for accessing Bookmarks and History will be replaced. APIs abstracting the layout of the metadata tables used in the profile storage file will be provided. See above for details. * [[Places:History API]]* [[Places:Bookmarks API]]* [[Places:Annotations API]] =="Impact" style="font= === Extensions ===The APIs for accessing and manipulating Bookmarks and History are being replaced with new ones, and almost all Bookmarks and History user interface will be replaced or updated significantly. Any extension that does anything with History or Bookmarks will almost certainly have to be rewritten, at the very least to use the new APIs. === Performance === Bookmarks can have a non-sizetrivial impact on performance, see [[Places: 50pt" colorPerformance]] for more information. ="#FF0000">Discussion Implications = </font><font face="Impact" style="fontDiscussion Elsewhere == * [http://robert.accettura.com/archives/2005/08/01/intelligent-bookmarking-draft/ Intelligent Bookmarking (Draft) - Robert Accettura] * [http://tdot.blog-city.com/evolution_bookmarking.htm The Evolution of Bookmarking -- Bookmarks, Firefox, del.icio.us, Tagging, and Information Management] * [http://www.ra.ethz.ch/CDstore/www5/www185/overview.htm Automatically Organizing Bookmarks per Contents], Fifth International World Wide Web Conference, May 6-size10, 1996, Paris, France. ([http: 50pt" color//scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=5092164817324641042 Google Scholar search for the article] if it moves) * [[User:Dria/On Tagging|Deb Richardson's "#FFFFFFOn Tagging">By<]] * Comments from Todd Agulnick of Foxmarks** [http://blog.foxcloud.com/?cat=7 blog post]** [http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox/browse_frm/thread/173ba1f87d7f88c2 newsgroup thread on sync]** [http://www.foxcloud.com/Places/font><font faceERD (possibly obsolete)]="Impact" styleArchived Build Notes (obsolete) ="font-size Milestone 2 (1/30/2006): What's new in this build: * Your existing history is now preserved and imported into Places.* You can search from the Places view* You can construct queries over your history/bookmarks and save them* If you are migrating to Firefox from another browser, your history and bookmarks are imported into Places.* Stability, performance, and bug fixes Known issues: 50pt * It is recommended that you delete the file " color=storage.sdb"#FF0000"> in your profile directory if you have previously run a Places build.* This build is based on the Firefox 2.0 branch. It still claims to be 1.5, so 1.5-compatible extensions will continue to function. Extensions that utilize the old bookmarks and history interfaces will not work correctly.* If you use the installer, you have to do a custom install and disable Quality Feedback Agent. Otherwise, the installation will error out.* Bookmark keywords do not work yet.* If your profile directory is on NFS, you will see slower performance. By CyberMad<Milestone 1 (12/font><15/p>2005): This is our first public milestone build. It has a working Places view, history, and bookmarks (with import). There are a few known issues: * These builds are based on the Firefox trunk. As a result, any extensions which claim only 1.5.0.* compatibility will be disabled.* If you use the installer, you have to do a custom install and disable Quality Feedback Agent. Otherwise, the installation will error out.* Existing bookmarks are imported, but history is not yet imported.* Bookmark keywords do not work yet.* If your profile directory is on NFS, you will see slower performance.
