MozillaWiki - User contributions [en]

Talk:Thunderbird:Thunderbird3

2009-06-14T16:35:10Z

Tdot: /* Disable column sorting? */

=== Comments on 'Better Extensibility'===
Personally, I think it'd be better to simply point tb extension developers at #maildev on IRC. There's so much that can be learned just by reading scrollback, and splitting up the mail-expertise and mail-scrollback would seem like a loss to me. Also, splitting channels makes it less likely that someone will be around to answer a question in either channel, which just leads to frustration.
--jminta

Sounds good. I've adjusted the copy. --davida

As an extension developer, one thing that frustrates me is that some key functionality is not exposed to extensions. For example, deleting messages seems to be handled without JS exposure, and some areas of composing messages, specifically reply-all functionality, is likewise not exposed or broken. It would be great to expose more to the extensions.
--Watusimoto

'''reply:''' These are exactly the kinds of problems [[User:Jminta/Steel | Steel]] is aiming to solve. If all goes according to plan, extensions will have this functionality exposed in TB3.
--jminta

The enigmail developers according to this [http://www.mozilla-enigmail.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=34 thread] are unable to permanently decrypt messages due to the lack of the appropiate API in Thunderbird. I assume the same problem occurs for S/MIME. Among other things this would let you search the messages or access them without Enigmail (for example view archived messages). There are plenty of ways to [http://kb.mozillazine.org/Protecting_the_contents_of_the_profile_-_mail protect the contents of the profile] if thats an issue. [[User:Tanstaafl|Tanstaafl]] 21:18, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

=== Comments on Lightning integration ===
If you choose to integrate lightning and move TB3 towards a heavier email application like Evolution/Outlook etc. it should be considered to provide a Thunderbird lite version without lightning etc. similar to outlook express.

Newbie(kulic): Subject Lightning/iPhone
Lightning extension featuring implementation capabilities of David Allen's GTD would be nice. I currently use the Lightning extension in Thunderbird2 and designate a different calendar for each generalized project. It's a kind of workaround, but it's pretty good. It might be nice to have an option for the tasks to be visible on the calendar by date. Something like that.
Ultimately, (maybe Thunderbird 4 or 5) want to be able to have paperless sync (very customizable and extensible along the spectrum from complex to simple) of GTD material, and of course have it sync with the iPhone. This would consist partially in continuing sync support for iPhone calendar(through Google and maybe also in parallel simply via wifi (a la AirShare)), but also might necessitate an iPhone Lightning App.
(sorry if this difficult to trace threading):...Currently I've been compiling DailyAgenda txt files in Notepad and transferring them via Airshare to the iPhone for reference throughout the day. Obviously it would be nice to have what everyone calls seamless integration, and not have to draw stuff through all these different programs. ...(from GTD we would also appreciate tagging and view by context, as so much of what needs to get done at any given time depends on where we happen to be,.. so, in the Lightning roadmap it's good to have these things in mind.
--Currently (in Thunderbird2) I find that in the process of unchecking and checking different calendars, the task list population lags somewhat. Is that latency programmed in? If so it would be a simple thing to remove. It takes too much time. I need to be able to check and uncheck those things fairly quickly in order to compare different sets of tasks.
--It might also be nice to have the ability to add attachments to tasks, like PDFS and other supporting materials. Typically I'll go through a brainstorming session for a particular project/task and the relevant notes will be in a .txt file. It would be nice to be able to simply drag that into the taskCreation window; integration in other words. A lot of things necessitate supporting documentation of some kind, which can take the form of htmls, PDFs, even pictures. In terms of coding, I would imagine that you wouldn't necessarily want to replicate the actual file, but rather have shortcuts. Although in some cases maybe you would want actual files replicated, otherwise there wouldn't be access off the local machine, (ie in iPhone).
*Again, these may be longer term considerations. Like Thunderbird 4 or so. But some of it could have relevance for the Thunderbird3. Remember the biggest thing going on right now in the iPhone world is in the Organizer dept (and integration), and GTD (if it's done right) is the most flexible and universally workable operating paradigm for that. It's just a question of integration. And I don't think everyone is (at all) comfortable uploading their lives(this is common now) into Google servers or whoever else is running sync servers(a lot of companies are). It's just a bit too much of a security risk. So I would continue to support Google sync capabilities but ultimately want to be able to sync by wiFi also without any of that. Not sure about the iPhone API, if it supports wifi sync. But something to look into.
Okay, I've rambled enough.

=== Comments on Usability (IMAP support) ===
A main focus on usabilliy should be better IMAP support. In particular its important to have an option to save a copy of all emails locally and an improved download mails and work offline mode.
It should generally be possible, when using IMAP and being offline, to write an email and send it. That mail should be copied to the local sent mail folder and be marked as unsent. Then when going back online the mail should be sent out and synchronized with the remote IMAP folder.
Particularly attachments should be downloaded and saved locally for further reference.
IMAP localization should be improved / currently use of German IMAP folders (e.g. with GMX) requires a lot of nasty hacks in prefs.js / users.js and about:config
Most important is a working export function to save mails / contact
list AND account settings / global settings

Right now even silent deletion of Emails happens in specific situations when using IMAP: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=439216

:: I'll take it one step further: Why is there an offline mode at all that users need to manage? That's _so_ 1990s. If TB can connect to the server, sync. Otherwise, I'm (silently) in offline mode and always have access to _all_ my mail. Wireless networks come and go, and TB should be aware of the occasionally connected world. --[[User:Lord|Bob]] 10:39, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

::: It would be nice if it wasn't modal but its important to keep the ability to control what remote folders have local copies since there are plenty of users that don't want offline copies and dropping it would also annoy users who rely upon the "MIME Parts On Demand" preferences to avoid fetching a large attachment when reading a message. [[User:Tanstaafl|Tanstaafl]] 22:04, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

It would be useful if the contents of the IMAP offline folders could be transparently searched first when searching remote folders. i.e. use them as a IMAP cache like Mail.App does. That might also make it easier for somebody to resurrect old functionality such as the ability to search the entire message (the old definition of "Body" - it searched headers/message bodies/attachments) without having to specify exactly where in the the message what you're looking for is stored. [[User:Tanstaafl|Tanstaafl]] 22:04, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

=== Comments on 'Architectural cleanup' ===
I know some people don't share my love of JavaScript, but I'd like to see the architectural cleanup include an audit of mail components for possible candidates to move from C++ to JS. Firefox has gone this route for components not on perf-critical paths, for example the search service or the download manager. Advantages include virtually crash-proof code and no reference counting. Also, it seems as though Mozilla2 will be moving even more things to JavaScript (with ES4), so getting a head-start on this would be good.
--jminta

I'm not sure if it has been mentioned elsewhere, but the move away from mork for the .msf files seems to be a good opportunity to dump mbox as well (and replace it by maildir). It occurs to me that common agreement was already reached on this issue, which is tracked in [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58308 bug 58308]. As a placeholder I've added it [[Thunderbird:Thunderbird_3_Possible_Bugs|here]]--[[User:GustB|GustB]] 12:46, 4 February 2008 (PST)

:Its not clear to me that "common agreement" was reached on replacing mbox with maildir. I periodically see a few posts in the mozillaZine forums from people asking for this, but most users have no idea what it even is because they are using Windows. Many of the comments in the bug report advocate supporting both formats. [[User:Tanstaafl|Tanstaafl]] 09:33, 2 March 2008 (PST)

::I refer to comment 75 of bug 58308. Or comment 18 of bug 290057. Just search bugzilla for maildir --[[User:GustB|GustB]] 04:58, 7 March 2008 (PST)

Is the de-morkification the first of a two step process, where its changes eventually get replaced by [[Mozilla2:Unified_Storage | Unified Storage]]? [[User:Tanstaafl|Tanstaafl]] 09:33, 2 March 2008 (PST)

A common problem that I see in the mozillaZine forums is users panicking due to Thunderbird [http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_a_profile_that_suddenly_disappeared appearing to lose all of their data] the next time they start it. There are arguments whether this is mainly due to prefs.js getting corrupted or a old bug where Thunderbird sometimes forgets about the existence of a profile in profiles.ini but I'm surprised some minor architectural changes to work around this issue weren't considered. [[User:Tanstaafl|Tanstaafl]] 14:33, 1 March 2008 (PST)

Another group of problems is the MIME handling, summarized in [[Thunderbird:Fix_some_longstanding_bugs#Attachments_.26_MIME_bugs | Fix some longstanding bugs]]. Certain highly visible bugs related to MIME-type parsing (e.g., with quoted-printable HTML messages) and attachment handling (management of Content-Type associations and actions) should be addressed, a comment in one of the bugs suggests a major overhaul of the MIME module code. --[[User:Rsx11m|Rsx11m]] 14:34, 2 March 2008 (PST)

=== Comments on 'Increased Adoption' ===

The item 'GMail IMAP support' can probably be a subpoint under 'Simple Account Setup', as it is an example of an ISP-specific setup. My concern here is that it would involve a lot of work to cover all possible ISP setups across the world, not to mention non-public corporate or institutional setups. Thus, equal effort should be given to the extension of the Account Wizard to allow alternate encryption and port settings to be entered already during the initial setup. A partial patch is pending review for more than two years now in [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=221030 bug 221030]. --[[User:Rsx11m|Rsx11m]] 21:13, 24 February 2008 (PST)

:I've expanded on this in [[Talk:Thunderbird:Easy Account Setup]]. --[[User:Rsx11m|Rsx11m]] 12:20, 9 March 2008 (PDT)

I wish I knew of a better place to leave this feedback. Here are things our company would love to see in Thunderbird that all users would love.
1) Fix that "Mail Server Password Required" bug/issue. Whenever our imap accounts lose connectivity with have to repeatedly enter our passwords and click remember our password over and over again. It's an exercise in futility. Thunderbird should simply reattempt connection and just let the user know connectivity is lost and they should retry later.
2) Ability to drag emails to local folders/desktop etc.
3) Ability to select and save a group of emails to a folder.
4) A better method of sending feedback on Thunderbird.
Thank you.

I'll leave this feedback here, as I hope it will be more visible than it has been in the past in other locations. In order to appeal to current users of Mail.app on OS X, it is vital to include a built in way to import Mail.app settings and mailboxes, and to provide integration with the system wide address book application. I firmly believe that these 2 features alone will have the largest influence on getting mac users to adopt Thunderbird.

==== Increased Adoption: IMAP ====
Nowadays people want all their email online and having the mail offline is a big disadvantage of Thunderbird with only POP3 compared to feature rich web interfaces like GMail's.

==== Rage Against The Account Machine ====

[[Thunderbird:Rage Against The Account Machine|Rage Against The Account Machine]] explains the problems with the current (Thunderbird 2.0.0.<var>x</var>) approach to accounts. Among these problems is that Thunderbird 2.0.0.<var>x</var> demands that the user create and configure an account before doing anything else. If the user declines to do so (because, say, the user needs to express a thought in writing before the thought slips from the user’s mind), Thunderbird 2.0.0.<var>x</var> quits. This behavior is hostile and discouraging to the user. Implementing the proposals in [[Thunderbird:Easy Account Setup|Easy Account Setup]] and [[Thunderbird:Autoconfiguration|Autoconfiguration]] would be a huge improvement but still not enough to achieve best‐in‐the‐field usability. [[Thunderbird:Rage Against The Account Machine|Rage Against The Account Machine]] is a proposal to '''eliminate Thunderbird accounts''' as we know them, '''eliminating the need to set up accounts''' in the process. —[[User:Etan Wexler|Etan Wexler]] 16:28, 25 June 2008 (PDT)

=== Comments on 'Getting Involved' ===

You mention that there are currently 1300+ RFE's for Thunderbird pending, this does not include some 800+ [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&short_desc=&product=Core&component=MailNews%3A+Address+Book&component=MailNews%3A+Attachments&component=MailNews%3A+Backend&component=MailNews%3A+BiDi+Hebrew+%26+Arabic&component=MailNews%3A+Composition&component=MailNews%3A+Database&component=MailNews%3A+Filters&component=MailNews%3A+Import&component=MailNews%3A+Internationalization&component=MailNews%3A+LDAP+Integration&component=MailNews%3A+Localization&component=MailNews%3A+MIME&component=MailNews%3A+Movemail&component=MailNews%3A+Networking&component=MailNews%3A+Palm+Sync&component=MailNews%3A+Printing&component=MailNews%3A+Profile+Migration&component=MailNews%3A+Search&component=MailNews%3A+Security&component=MailNews%3A+Simple+MAPI&long_desc_type=allwordssubstr&long_desc=&bug_file_loc_type=allwordssubstr&bug_file_loc=&status_whiteboard_type=allwordssubstr&status_whiteboard=&keywords_type=allwords&keywords=&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&bug_severity=enhancement&emailassigned_to1=1&emailtype1=substring&email1=&emailassigned_to2=1&emailreporter2=1&emailqa_contact2=1&emailtype2=substring&email2=&bugidtype=include&bug_id=&votes=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&cmdtype=doit&order=Reuse+same+sort+as+last+time&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0= RFE's for the MailNews Core] modules. About 120+ (total) of those RFE's have at least partial patches up for review, thus would be easier to add than others. It may be worth to go through those to determine which ones fit into the concepts for TB3, and to give them some increased priority. --[[User:Rsx11m|Rsx11m]] 21:21, 24 February 2008 (PST)

A link to the [[Thunderbird:Fix some longstanding bugs]] article should be provided in addition to [[Thunderbird:Thunderbird 3 Possible Bugs]] as all of those are probably likely candidates for priority fixes. --[[User:Rsx11m|Rsx11m]] 14:58, 2 March 2008 (PST)

I'd like to try out TB3 to see how it's UI looks like, yet I can't afford loosing any mails (not even already read ones). It would be nice if there's a "read-only" mode during installation or running.

== Goals of the Thunderbird 3 ==

IMO people don't want to get yet another mailer, people want to get a modern communication center which handles all kind of personal information. This essentially means a TB3 has to be able to synchronize these information to any kind of external storage (devices). It has to be realized that synchronization will become the main data exchange protocol anytime in the future and might even supplant POP3/IMAP/SMTP later on. Therefore it's essential to plan to base the internal structure on e.g. SyncML (OpenSync) and move the older protocols into addable/removable plugins. This would allow to open up TB3 for future uses which aren't known so far. Besides TB3 would get a simple internal structure to handle all currently known whishes.

So first action should be to add '''synchronization''' to the goals of TB3. The second action should be to analyze OpenSync and determine how feasible it is as the base of TB3. Third action should be to define the necessary APIs of the needed plugins, e.g. check if access to SQLite could be realized as a plugin and used as the information storage engine. A concept of this kind probably is robust enough to handle many more whishes without making it more complex. Many if not most wishes might simply be realized in an appropriate plugin. Anonymous

I suggest you add a lower level goal of '''providing a help system''', to help meet the high level goal of
To improve usability". See http://interimhelp4tbird.mozdev.org/ [[User:Tanstaafl|Tanstaafl]] 19:46, 24 March 2008 (PDT)

None of the goals address process issues. Or perhaps I should say helping to get users more involved.

* Its quite common to have bugs sit for years as new or unconfirmed with no assignment to a developer, let alone a comment by one, and then sometimes be closed automatically for inactivity. This discourages users from filing bug reports. ([[User:Wsm|wsm]]: progress is being made in this area, but the user community needs to become more involved in [http://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:QA_Days QA activities] to make this important issue a reality.) As an aside telling somebody "''Also, please do not file bugs on browser/email software older than two weeks - first, download a newer build of Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, or Camino and check that the problem is still present.''" who only uses released versions doesn't exactly make them feel welcome. ([[User:Wsm|wsm]]: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Thunderbird&version=---&format=guided guided bug form] is not controlled directly by Thunderbird team - it does need some improvement)

* Lots of people add comments in the appropriate planning documents talk page lobbying for certain features. When the next major release is released we all scratch our heads trying to figure out why certain features were implemented, and whether there is a chance that what we wanted will get implemented in the next release. It would help if you publish a one page document describing the criteria you use to determine what to add/implement for each major release beforehand, and afterwards provide a short document listing the top 30 features that were considered, showing how they were ranked/scored, and where the dividing line was. This wouldn't take much time, and might help provide more useful input from users next time. [[User:Tanstaafl|Tanstaafl]] 19:46, 24 March 2008 (PDT)

Allow for '''completely hiding the folder pane'''. The folder pane is only needed when switching between folders. But switching between folders could be easily be done through a popup box (as in SeaMonkey). This would allow for a dual pane instead of the usual triple pane layout, occupying much less screen area. ([[User:Wsm|wsm]]: for all 3 views types this can be achieved by dragging the splitter to the far left margin - but it does not persist across restarts).

== When I will migrate to Thunderbird ==

I wanted to let you know what conditions would need to be satisfied in order for me to migrate from Mac Mail to Thunderbird:

1. If there was seamless email encryption enabled by default, you would pretty much have me sold.

2 If there was a nicer looking skin enabled by default, + the features and ease of use were just as good as mac Mail, I would migrate.

Right now i think thunderbird as being a. not as pretty as my other apps, It really makes a difference to me, and I know it makes more of a difference to most people than they are willing to admit. b. a little harder to use than mac mail. c. nothing special to bring me over.

Just thought I would let you know. I do want you to know that you have the advantage over mac mail, I will select open source software over proprietary.

Thanks for this very reasonable mail software! Is just not my best option at present.

: Regarding "If there was seamless email encryption enabled by default, you would pretty much have me sold", what specifically is missing from Thunderbird? It has supported S/MIME for years. I sign all my work-related email, and encrypt about 10% of it. If there are specific bugs that are keeping you from converting, let's see if there are existing bug reports out there. I have my pet peeves as well and it would be good to see if there is any overlap.
: --[[User:Lord|Bob]] 09:20, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
::I am not saying that S/MIME is not integrated. I know it is. I know it works well. My point, which I don't think i made clear, is that its a hassle, and most people don't bother with hassles. To my understanding Thunderbird does not encrypt by default if the other side will accept an encrypted email. This is the automated system I am thinking of. If I use Thunderbird, and another computer uses Thunderbird and another uses thunderbird, the email is seamlessly encrypted. Without me doing a thing. Perhaps not just thunderbird, any email client who is willing to partake in a seamless email encryption handshake. I have seen some implementations where the fist email that is sent is not encrypted, but is used to determine what the other client is able to do. etc. etc.

[[User:Drsassafras|Drsassafras]] 14:27, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

== Printing emails ==

Looking for progress on this need, didn't find anything recent: Sometimes I need to print out an email but find too much paper is consumed by useless parts. I can "edit as new" and select what I want and paste into a word processor, but formatted html emails no longer resemble the original at all. I have to manually reorganize the parts to make it printable. That is way too much work. I can use a screen capture program if what I want will fit on one screen (not usually). And that makes a gif file, which has to be loaded into an image editor to print; still a lot of steps for what should be a basic feature.
So a basic need for development is to be able to select a contiguous segment of an email, including graphics, and send to a printer. Even nicer to be able to select a rectangle, like a screen capture, but which can span the whole email if needed. As a minimum, to able to File/Save As Image (saving the entire message as .bmp or .gif to crop and print in an image editor; would be better to save as .rtf or .doc, but not sure how consistently that would work).
I am not a programmer so I have no idea if this would be hard to do.

== Options and preferences cleanup ==

We have started a possible cleanup of the Options in Thunderbird 3, to make it more like FF3, and remove Deprecated options, include new ones, and track other issues with those areas. [[Thunderbird:Preference Settings]]

== Hiding of status windows (i.e. smtp send progress) ==

I apologize if this may not be the right place to voice this request, but I feel- and I speak for a group of Tb users in Houston- that the smtp send progress window that pops up when you click send should have an option to disappear into the main Tb window, seamlessly integrating the process, but still showing the progress. I might just be picky, but this is frustrating to me and I wish it would just go away sometimes! haha I've just joined the testing and QA groups because I love the product, the concepts of Mozilla and the principles of the organization. Way to go, Team!!

--Jacob

== Extensibility: changing messages, ala Enigmail ==

(I'm copying my post from a possibly unread forum elsewhere.)

I would like to be able to have all sent/received messages encrypted, but have the stored local copies stored in a decrypted format. Word from the Enigmail team is that Thunderbird doesn't expose an API which would allow them to do that, yet they would also like to be able to do that.

See http://www.mozilla-enigmail.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=34 in their forums.

I noticed however that Thunrderbird 3 had several architectural changes, or API changes. Will this enable the enigmail team to implement the feature of storing messages in a decrypted form. If I understand correctly, basically they need a way to change the content of the message.

Or perhaps somebody from the Thunderbird team already knows how they can do it -- I see that the "Delete" attachments extension must be able to modify messages, so perhaps it can already be done.

This feature would help a lot of people in decided to adopt Enigmail, and I think then the integration would go from good to great and even more people would use Thunderbird.

[[User:Mortoray|Mortoray]] 20:49, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

== a humble request for a feature for Thunderbird?? ==

could I please request a feature for the next Thunderbird??

the only thing I've found I would like to see is the ability to open lightning from a shortcut on my desktop...
in the same way I can with the addressbook...
I realize I'm not the only one to ask for this feature and hope it makes it to the next Thunderbird

thanks and good luck

-----------

Additional Features Requests for TB v3: Message Filter Organization

Some serious TB users have large amounts of Message Filters (250+) and need help organizing the volume of filter items.

- Users frequently organize filters by "type" (Work, Email List, Company, Organization, Vendor, Personal, Junk, Spam, etc.) as well as Name or Title but in v2 there is no current organization of filters into Folders or Groups, please add a Folder or Grouping mechanism. Minimum of one level, but multi-levels of Folders or Groups would be better.

- Provide a search mechanism for finding existing filters by Filter Name and/or by inside filter data field.

- Provide an import and export function for Message Filters for average users (beyond developer or administrator access at the file level to the text file rules.dat).

- When Adding a New Filter, add the Filter in the same place as or beneath the previously selected filter, and not at the very top of the filter list as in v2.

- Add drag and drop movement of filters between other filters. Otherwise, add Message Filter "Move to Top", "Move to Bottom", "Move Page Up", and "Move Page Down" functions.

- Provide a way to add a New Mail Folder within the Message Filter screen, because not everyone creates the folder first before creating the message filter.

- Make the List View of Message Filters more like the List of Email Accounts with Mail Folders make them all in the same List view. This way Message Filters can be moved from one Email Account to another.

- Provide a visual reference icon change (folder icon with small filter icon in lower right corner) on the Mail Folders to show if a Message Filter applies to that folder. Also, make a menu item and context menu option to jump to that Message Filter on a selected Mail Folder that has a related Message Filter.

- Add Message Filter search parameters beyond the default email header fields like To, From, Date, etc., so users don't have enter custom ones. Namely the following parameters: Reply-To, Sender / X-Sender, Message-Id, X-Spam, Received, X-Nonspam, References, User-Agent, X-Priority, X-Mailer, etc.)

--EMacTech

-----------

Requested TB v3 Enhancements: Advanced Server-Like Ant-Spam, Message Filter, or Junk option Options:
(For the following advanced lookups, provide options with user inputs to assign individual lookup servers that will perform the various DNS and List lookups.)

- Check the initial Received line and compared the initial outgoing SMTP server vs. established RBLs - Realtime Black Lists (see http://www.dnsbl.info/dnsbl-list.php and other lists).

- Check DNS Zone records of the FROM/REPLY-TO/SENDER sender's domain for a SPF (Sender Policy Framework) zone record and comparing to outgoing or sending SMTP server.

- Check initial SMTP server IP vs. SORBS.net's list of dynamically allocated IP address space, i.e check is email is send from a Botnet / Zombie infected computer (a dynamically allocated IP of a dialup or otherwise connected home user infected with code that is sending out spam)

- Perform a mail server check on the sender FROM/REPLY-TO/SENDER email address. Ask incoming mail server (looked up via DNS MX record) if user exists.

--EMacTech

== Disable column sorting? ==

Hi

When I use Thunderbird my newest email appears at the top of the list window, right underneath the column heading buttons.

I like new email to appear at the top rather than the bottom, but often find that I mistakenly click the column heading instead of the new email - which of course reorders the whole list, and the unread email is sorted out of sight until I re-sort the columns.

Is there a way to 'lock' the column resort function of these buttons? (Perhaps making the sort function a right-click menu option instead?)

kind regards,
Chris

== Integration with other Desktop Applications / Desktop Mashups ==

Thunderbird would greatly benefit from an API supporting more integration at the desktop. As a general goal would be to allow the exchange of data making it possible to create small scripts or applications similar to Mashups on the Web so that such [http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/desktop_mashups/ Desktop Mashups] can combine the strength of different applications and simplify specific tasks. For example, we should be able to include links to an email in a calendar or a ToDo list so that we can open this email from the other applications. [http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/desktop_mashups/ Details about the concept and more examples ...]

== A 'Command Line' with Support for Javascript like Firefox's URL or Firefox Ubiquity ==

The ability to write small scripts for specific tasks would introduce a concept to Thuderbird that has been very successful for Firefox. Bookmarklets combined with 'smart keywords' became a very powerful tool for customizing the browser and simplifying repetitive tasks. Firefox Ubiquity further improves this concept and makes it easier to develop the scripts. With Thunderbird, I would like to jump to specific folders using the 'command line', to search emails using 'smart keywords' to focus on From, To, Subject, etc., or send the selected text of an email to another desktop application such as a calendar or a notes list. I think a Ubiquity-like feature would substantially change the usability of Thunderbird and also support the integration with other applications described above as Desktop Mashups.

Talk:Thunderbird:2.0 Product Planning

2007-11-24T02:06:04Z

Tdot: /* Tagging, annotations, and information management */

==Separate messages from attachments and store them in a database==
Current desktop search facilities are much more productive then search tools because of their database oriented approach.
In case message headers, body and attachments would be stripped the data could be integrated into a database, which might easily carry the messages of a users life and store the data separately in archives. Since attachments usually eat up so much of the precious space, these have to be specially treated and separated (i.e. to the file system)
Searching and therefore finding, as well as storing and archiving could be performed fast and (semi-)automatically.

==Separate download of text and attachements for POP-accounts==
There are still numerous users of Thunderbird getting their mail using modem connections - reducing size of downloads is then critical and could be achieved by more sophisticated options for downloading large files via POP:

Thunderbird allows to set a maximum size when messages are downloaded from a POP-Server. If a message e.g. contains large attachments, then only the first few lines of the message text are downloaded. It would be better if Thunderbird would download the whole message text and only skip loading large attachments.

The new options-page should look like:
* (Checkbox) "Load attachments"
** if yes: (Checkbox) "If message is larger than" (Value) kB
*** (RadioButton a) "Only load first few lines of message text"
*** (RadioButton b) "Load message text but skip loading attachments"
*** (RadioButton c) "Only load attachments smaller than" (Value) kB

For options a+b+c it would be good if the name(s) of the attachments that were not loaded would be indicated (similar to the state when attachments are deleted with the extension "Attachment Tools"). And even better if it then would be possible to load single attachements by clicking on the filename.

There is no reason that I'm aware of not to extend something similar for IMAP. While I'm not especially fond of large attachments in my INBOX, the reality is that people will send them. When they do, I want to be able to deal with large files--images, executables, text--without attempting to download them in their entirety. (I should add here that to delete an attachment requires you to download the whole thing first!) Lastly, it would be great to see the size of attachments before I attempt to download them; right now, I only see the file name and an icon. Why not show more attachment information in the attachments window a la Mulberry 3.x (RIP)? : [[User:Therearenoteams|Therearenoteams]]

== Better offline IMAP support ==
To reduce size of downloads also the offline support for IMAP-accounts could be enhanced:

It would be nice to have better offline IMAP support. At the moment you have to download the whole folder if you want to read Mails offline... And: if you read a message while you are online, this Mail ist also not available offline, if it is not downloaded again with the offline function.
It would be better if one can select single mails to download for offline use, and if mails that are already opened and downloaded online, could be used offline.
--[[User:Sebi|sebi]] 06:21, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Search IMAP folder, especially the content of messages, not only adress, subject an other header data.

Moreover, it would be nice if there would be an option that attachements would not already be loaded when selecting a message but only when the attachement is selected for download or opening.

== Marking archive folder to contain sent messages ==
The "sent" folder is treated differently by Thunderbird compared to other folders:
* The tab 'sender' is changed to 'recipient' in the 'Sent'-folder (which makes sense as for sent messages the recipient is more important because the sender is usually oneself).
* Secondly, when doing a quick search for 'sender' instead of really searching for 'sender' it is searched for 'recipient'.

This functionality could be enhanced by two points:
* The text in the quick search dialog should change from 'sender' to 'recipient' to reflect what Thunderbird is really doing. (After all, the current behaviour of quick search in the 'Sent'-folder could actually be called a 'bug').
* If one wishes to archive sent messages by moving them to a newly created folder the funcionality of the 'Sent'-folder is lost and there is no quick way to look for the recipient. It would be nice if this folder could be marked as 'this folder contains sent messages' resulting in the same behaviour as for the 'sent'-folder.

Allowing to decide whether an e-mail message should be archived at all, striping off the attachments and filing it with appropriate labels (ideally obtained by a bayesian filter) should help. However the whole concept of having a sent folder could be replaced by a fixed label called "sent" vs. "received", so that the messages could be filed together with the other messages in a conversation stream instead.

==Setting an other folder as Trash folder==
Currently thunderbird creates automatically a folder "Trash" on an imap account.
Would be nice if this folder would be adjustable (like the sent, templates and junk fodlers already are!) --[[User:AliB|aliB]]

==Export / Import "Message Filter" & "Junk Mail Training Data"==

I use Thunderbird on a Laptop, at work, at my home computer and sometimes at school. It would be fantastic if it were possible to keep all this settings synchronous.
It also gives the possibility to store these settings for backup purpose.
--[[User:AliB|aliB]]

Also there should be a support for using or fast copying mail filters from one account to another! --[[User:UncleFu86|UncleFu86]]

At the very least, can the Message Filters be manually edited & saved?--[[User:Blusk|blusk]]

They can be manually copied from one account to another, but edited and saved only in the MTB Interface itself. --[[User:UncleFu86|UncleFu86]]

The ability to save/import settings could be included in an email stored on the IMAP server so that the settings could be imported without access to the computer from which you want to copy settings from.--[[User:Skydiver|Skydiver]] 08:53, 5 Dec 2005 (PST)

The ability to save/import settings especially from Microsoft would be THE key for me to start using Thunderbird. Without such an option it is simply too much hazzle to re-create a message filter with 900 entries.
On the other hand, the ability to save and import from Microsoft Outlook Express to Outlook Express does exist when using the regedit program. This should be possible with Thunderbird even today. The trick is to find the right register key. (The key for my installation of Outlook Express is: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\{14B5F47A-B747-4FB8-8DCA-BDBB1840A884}\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0\Rules\Mail )
The above works for saving and import. One can even import from other identities if one is willing to do some creative armtwisting by using notepad. Here is a description: [http://arno.daastol.com/computing/mailfilter.html]
--[[User:Arnomd|Arnomd]] 11:27, 23 Feb 2006 (PST)

== Load .eml files ==

<strike>Thunderbird is already capable of storing an email into an .eml file. The new version should also be capable of opening .eml files. This would allow Thunderbird to completely replace Outlook. Currently, on Windows systems, Thunderbird cannot read .eml files, and Outlook is associated with them.</strike>

Use File>Open Saved Message...

File>Open Saved Message opens the message, but the message tools (Move/Copy) don't seem to work. And, you can only open one saved message at a time. It would be helpful if you could save a group of .eml files into a mail folder.

== Store settings online (Roaming and clustered mailstore) ==

It would be cool, if Thunderbird was able to store all his settings (accounts, adressbook, signatures, filter rules, junk-learning-data etc.) in an online repository. (This feature was once built into Netscape, I think it was called "Roaming".) This way, I could use different computers and didn't have to configure the client every time from scratch. You could use a web based repository, IMAP, LDAP, ...? This feature should also allow me to use a POP based message store on one computer as a primary repository of messages while running multiple copies of TB from multiple computers. There should not be a requirement for TB to be running on the primary machine, so the message store would be accessed by a standard filesharing mechanism such as NFS, Windows fileshares or an internet based file sharing mechanism or service. (But a copy of TB running on the local machine should also work.) So this may require a small synchronization demon which is probably available from one of the open source clustering projects. This would be particularly useful for people who tend to use a stationary PC at home and leave it running all the time, but occasionally use their laptop to roam around at home or to go on the road during the day. Combined with the roamable settings feature, this would be extremely powerful. It would also allow you to access home email from at work without having to worry about turning off each machine (or exiting TB) to make sure only one copy was running at the same time. Yet the mail repository would never be physically present at work, thus more under your own control.

== better Meta-Data usage like del.icio.us (Tags) ==

The colour-coding of eMails in Thunderbird is a nice feature and with customisation I can do a bit of '''cross-cutting'''-concerns '''tagging'''. But I would love to use easy '''custom keyword''' like a column where I can type in things like "projectX", "projectY", "informative", "justMarketing", etc. Then of course sorting, filtering of these custom meta-data e.g into virtual folder: "projectX"+"informative" would be great. I think of del.icio.us for my eMails. If '''one could use the RDF infrastructure''' it would be sustainanble for even more complex meta-data-handling. Starting with RDFS where I can build small taxonomies/trees of keywords.
--[[User:Gabridome|Gabridome]] 01:37, 18 Jan 2006 (PST)
This thing is also similar to [http://www.gmail.com gmail] which is growing in popularity also for his usability.
It seems also a [[Thunderbird:2.0_Product_Planning | commitment]] of the developing team.
<nowiki>"Message Tags
Rebrand message labels as tags. Expand the functionality to include arbitrary number of tags and multiple tags per message. Investigate supporting auto generation of saved search folders for tags."
</nowiki>

== synchronize different inboxes ==

I'd like to have the possibility to synchronize different thunderbird inboxes (of different pcs), e.g. import all mails, import new mails etc., this way I dont't have synchronize by hand and make sure that i'm not importing the same mail twice or even more times.
I think synchronizing two Thunderbird installations on different PCs via LAN would be really interesting especially for people, who have a desktop and a notebook.

Synchronizing the whole profiles on two different computers (or more) should be implemented soon :))

== PGP / GPG Support ==

I would like to see direct integration of enigmails PGP / GPG Support into Thunderbird, to make the setup for novice users as easy as possible.
--[[User:Sleepy|Sleepy]] 06:49, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

not only integrate PGP / GPG. the setup should be easy - ok - but there should be also possibilities for other electronic signatures that should be integrated. perhaps include Enigmail [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigmail more infos]?

----
I don't think I can stress this issue enough. When the user installs TB, the wizard runs and asks for their mail server and account info. It could then ask the user if they want to utilize encryption (with an explanation?), asking for just a few things like a passphrase and if they want to store their public key on a local file or on a website.

It would be a HUGE selling point for companies if they knew that it was easy to setup encryption with their email system, rather than pay for a costly server side application. The easier it is, then the easier it will be to get people at home to use. The more they use at home, the more they'll ask for it at work.
----
Yes, this would be an incredible feature that I just cant believe no one has done yet. Make it "just work". Negative is that it would piss off the government, but positive is that it would work towards protecting human rights activists. Other standard tradeoffs for easily accessible encryption technology apply, but since this is already available for those determined to have it, it would not likely make the negatives worse. ([[User:Morkfromork|Morkfromork]])

== Palm Desktop/Adressbook Support ==

It would be nice to get direct access to your Palm Desktop addressbook when you're writing Mails out of Thunderbird instead of the build in addressbook.
--[[User:Sleepy|Sleepy]] 06:51, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

It would be nicer to also have access to the Iambic Agendus addressbook extensions for Palm Desktop.

== Centralized administration and administration plugins ==

What about central administration? It would be cool if there was a way control thunderbirds settings (especially account settings, etc.) from a central place. As there might be many ways to do this, the interfaces between thunderbird and the centralized settings could be done by plugins. For example: Imagine an MS Windows environment. Managing accounts with Active Directory would be cool. Under such a situation one would need an AD plugin. For other administration means or other platforms one could use another plugin. --[[User:mmweber|mmweber]] 29 Nov 2005

== More Usenet Features ==

I use Thunderbird even more as an Usenet-client than as an Email-client. So I'd like to see some enhancements there. Like scoring or better support for killfiles.

Perhaps a dynamic scoring like in Gnus. If i delete a message or did not read it, the sender score will be decreased and vise versa. --[[User:Driessel|Driessel]] 07:18, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

I think users with mail-list-subscription for software developement would benefit from this too. (phj)

With current Thunderbird, it is hard to keep track of your watched threads when there is a lot of newsgroups with a lot of traffic. Some flagging on groups that have new replies in watched threads would be very helpful, see also [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=127692 this bug]. --[[User:Jfrantzius|Jfrantzius]]

Truly, Thunderbird lacks Usenet features. I'm about to move to another newsreader but here are what IMHO should have been in TB: multipart binary file support [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60981], GNKSA compliance [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12699], and antispam tools for newsgroups [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=179984].

== Ability to setup Workflows ==

What about this Idea: I get an email. This email is converted to a task (perhaps in Evolution or SunBird). When I finished the task the sender receives an message, that i have done the task. With some more meta data it should be possible to setup workchains. For Example:

Anne sends a document to Bob.
Bob edits the document, when he finished his task, he is asked if he wants to notify Jane (she is the next in the chain).
If he says yes jane will be notified.

This needs a more powerfull filter (perhaps send some XML-files aus attechment, with the meta data).
It should be possible to develop this as an extension. --[[User:Driessel|Driessel]] 07:32, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

== Ability to select menus that should appear in context menu ==

I'd love to have the possibility to determine which menu items should appear in the context menu on a folder/mail etc... without having to hack XUL.
I especially miss the ability to run junk filters and message filters from the context menus.

The extension Menu Editor allows you to edit context menus.--[[User:Audunmb|Audunmb]] 07:21, 12 Feb 2006 (PST)

== Ability to answer to an already sent mail without changing To/CC ==

I would like to have the possibilty to "Reply to All" a mail in my Sent folder without having Thunderbird change all the To's into CC's and adding my own address as a new To. This would allow to send some kind of a follow-up without having to edit the whole header.
--[[User:Bornheim|Bornheim]] 08:51, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Doesn't "Edit as new" provide exactly that?
--[[User:Stmoebius|Stmoebius]] 07:09, 13 Jan 2006 (PST)

== Additional Mailing List Functionality ==

* Mailing list automation
* mailman automation, registration and notification
* detect that a message has been sent to a mailinglist and make it visible (special tag, icon, label, etc.)
* support RFC 2369

== Mail Content Analysis and Classification ==

* language identification (with flags)
* using baysian and existing language identification algorithms
* "groups" of senders, e.g. buddy list, using the address book

== mail-merge letter ==

i sometimes had the wish to to create simple mail-merge letters with predefined variableslike xml-tags or something like this and data from adressbook

== protection of unwanted opening of junk-mail ==

mails declared as junk should not be opened at once, but after clicking a button with a warning "this email is declared as junk! do you really want to open it? [Open]" in the email display-field. especially users with less experience often tap into this 'trap' when they want to delete the mails in the junk-folder finally by drag and drop or whatever.

:Yet this feature could really irritate an experienced user. Probably the message should have a 'Don't say this again' option at the very least... [[User:Randywombat|~Toby]]

== quota ==

there is an extension which displays in the statusbar on the right side the current quota, with a fillstand bar and the used space in per cent. would be nice if it would full implemented

== minimize to (sys)tray ==

nearly all os except mac force the user to have thunderbird openend with a minimized window in the taskbar. with a build in function to minimze it always to systray would save a lot of space in the taskbar. i use it with an extension, which is a little bit buggy. So thunderbird can be started like a service, which watches all mailfolders without standing all day in the forground.

UncleFu86 wants to add: Yes, the extension is very buggy, so it is important that you keep in mind, that I in common want only to systray the main window, the other (message) windows I want to close!! So there has to be a different behaviour, when clicking X on the main window it should minimize to tray, when clicking X on the main window, it should close the message window(s).

The tray icon should visualize where there is some new e-mail or not since last minimization.

== e-mail folders for each contact ==

- E-mails should be sorted automatically to folders of my addresses (one folder for each contact person in the address book) in order to get an overview of all in- and outgoing e-mails

This is one of my mostly missed features.
I call it "automatic correspondence folder". The point is, that a user should not have to configure any filter. The mails will be pasted automatically. Sent mails as well as incoming mails - all into the same (specific) folder.
I described this missed feature also in german on
http://borumat.de/thunderbird-email-tipps.php#korrespondenzen
You could find examples there.
--Andreas Borutta

This feature would be most useful to me if instead of actually moving or copying the email to the folder, it would simply add a "link" in the addressee folder for each person on the to, from, or bcc list. Moving does not work since there may be multiple people, and copying would not be very efficient in terms of disk space. I would want to be able to enable this by default for any person already in my address book, and it should indicate each recipient/sender who does not have an address book entry and allow me to create one by clicking a checkbox. For any email labelled as junk (or dont know) the default should be to NOT create such links unless I relabel as not junk. The links could be stored in an auxilliary file and it should be possible to regenerate these links automatically for all senders/receivers who already have address book entries. This will also allow me to update existing mailstores to use this feature once it is implemented. ([[User:Morkfromork|Morkfromork]] 23:16, 6 December 2006 (PST))

- E-mails should be easilly exported / backed up and synchronized periodically

Alternatively, it would be nice to have set a default folder or folders for each person in your address book.

When you receive an e-mail, there would be a "save to default folder" button. If there were multiple default folders, the "save to default folder" button would open a dialog box with check boxes for each default folder.

When you send an e-mail, there would be a dialog box that would open asking if you wanted to save to the default folder.
-- Sean Roche

== Ordering of any Folders via D'n'd (was: Ordering of E-Mail Accounts) ==

It should be possible to order the diffrent E-Mail Accounts individually, e.g. per Drag and Drop, such that e.g. one's faovite account can be easely moved to the top.

It should be possible to rearrange the order of any items in the folders pane per drag&drop in general, i.e. accounts, folders within accounts, newsgroups within ng account, etc.. -- [[User:Jfrantzius|Jfrantzius]]

== Proper E-Mail 'Bounce' Functionality ==

One should be able to "bounce" incoming mails to another recipient. The entire
mail content (including all headers!) should be left entirely
untouched. I.e. the mail should appear as originating from the original sender to the new recipient(s). Cf. bounce functionality in eg. 'mutt' and other popular clients.

This can be done perfectly well using the [http://mailredirect.mozdev.org/ Mail Redirect] extension. --[[User:Vor0nwe|vor0nwe]] 08:32, 14 Dec 2005 (PST)

It has been asked for as a core feature in 1999 already! It is an essential feature that absolutely should be available without installing an extension. Citing Rick Russel from a related Bugzilla discussion:

"It sure would be nice if we could get a stable version of the Redirect
extension (http://mailredirect.mozdev.org/) in the core code. That extension is
apparently unmaintained, and it's also unstable when redirecting large numbers
of messages."

The Bugzilla thread is here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12916

--[[User:Fluithle|Fluithle]] 04:49, 22 Dec 2005 (PST)

== "Multi-Replies" -- reply to several messages in one outgoing mail ==

When participating in discussions on mailing lists, it often saves time and space if one replies to several messages in one go, as follows: You mark the messages you want to reply to and start the reply. The editor then opens a single reply with all the messages quoted. A separate quote header ("xyz wrote") is inserted for every message. You then edit out the unneeded quotation from each section, inserting your reply. The message is then sent back to the sender of the first message in the selection or all recipients (but see below).

This feature might need a separate menu entry and/or button, or should be restricted to mailing lists only -- depending on configuration or usability issues. Maybe TB could also guess if the user wants this functionality by looking at the recipients of the marked (replied to) messages -- if the recipients for all mails are the same, the above described use case is entered; if not, the old behaviour is used.

== Email Response Tracker ==

Here's how it should work:

'''When sending an email''', there should be an option (only if a corresponding switch in the Thunderbird preferences is not switched off) to switch on response tracking, plus some clickable fields for specifying the maximum amount of hours or days until a response is expected (maybe even a text entry for numbers of hours and days).

Optionally, Thunderbird may add an additional text line like "please respond within XXX days" to the sent email. This text should be configurable, and Thunderbird should insert the amount of hours or days into that text at a specifiable place.

'''After sending the email''', Thunderbird should check the inbox for a response for those emails that are to be tracked.

If the email arrives within the specified time, the response tracking is switched off for that email. If there is an email for which no response arrives within the expected time frame, a popup or an email in my inbox will be created to remind me that there was no response for an email - subject and sent time will also be mentioned. Plus, the email in the Sent folder will be marked so that one can easily see for which email no response has arrived. Emails for which no response arrived for a multiple of the tracking period (configurable) should be marked differently, and response tracking should be switched off for those emails.

An additional option when sending the email or in the preferences will make Thunderbird send a automated reminder email to the recipient each time the tracking period is expired, in addition to the popup or reminder email to the sender.
Plus, Tunderbird optionally marks all email senders in my inbox and/or in my address book as "very reliable", "not always reliable", or "unreliable".

I think the email response tracker can be very powerful when using it together with the "Ability to setup Workflows" idea and also in conjunction with the "Reminder Flag to follow up emails" idea.

--[[User:Fingerling|Fingerling]] 14:01, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

That would be a '''''fantastic''''' feature. I've long wondered why email clients dont to that.
--[[User:duncanshannon|duncanshannon]] 23 Jun 2006

That is exactly what i need for overviewing and optimizing my work. I spend many hours a week just for checking the overdues.
--[[User:e9826017|e9826017]] 24 Jun 2006

== Miscellaneous Stuff ==

I would highly appreciate to see a function that all open (unsent) mails are automatically saved in the background while editing and recovered to the draft folder when Thunderbird restarts the next time after Thunderbird itself, the OS or the power supply had crashed.
--[[User:Longnose|Longnose]] 22:32, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Improved handling of quoted text passages in the plain text editor. The angle brackets marking quoted passages should not become part of the text and thus move around when such passages are edited, but stick to the left margin like the bars in the HTML editor do. Also, editing quoted passages often leads to "comb quotes" when the mail body is rewrapped at sending. In short, the angle brackets should be decoupled from the text during editing and rewrapping and only be inserted into the actual mail body afterwards.

Groupware integration (sunbird, lightning); administration of IMAP ACLs and sieve scripts with a GUI; write access to LDAP addressbooks including creation of address lists--[[User:Bollin|Bollin]] 13:48, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

A function which automatically changes the sender identity specific to the folder i'm in, when i create a new email (at the moment it changes only specific to the accounts). (see the bat).--[[User:RMM|RMM]] 13:40, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

I really miss the easy backup and restore options known from The Bat. For Mac OS X i would like a better integreation, easy migration from mail.app to thunderbird and the Option to use the Mac OS X address book.--[[User:Jan-42|Jan-42]] 13:30, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

hello, I wish to have the posibility to add a photo to a contact in the adressbook (don't know if this is already realized in 1.5). 
An other more complex idea is that Thunderbird could be able to sort your mails automatically to multible different folders after a learning period, similar to the actual auto-learning junk filter. --[[User:Nimix13|Nimix13]] 10:03, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

filter mails from IMAP-folder automatically to offline folders --[[User:Skurt|Skurt]] 09:14, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

set more then one person from adressbook to BCC with sparse clicks. building groups of adresses would be great --[[User:Skurt|Skurt]] 09:13, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Import/export adressbook to Outlook, synchronization would be greatest --[[User:Skurt|Skurt]] 09:13, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

To make the migration from Outlook Express to Thunderbird easier for non IT freaks, it would be nice to integrate the "Contacts sidebar" extention and have the 3-pane-window as default look... --[[User:yann|Yann]] 29 Nov 2005

<strike>Change the Address Book. Currently if you have an address in more than one Address Book (e.g. friends and company) and you have to make changes (email-changed...) you have to make this changes in EVERY Address Book. Something like categories or links would improve the usability. I would prefer categories like the Address Book in KOrganizer. --[[User:AliB|aliB]]</strike> (moved to topic completely new adress book) --[[User:Bierdrinker|Bierdrinker]] 06:53, 22 Dec 2005 (PST)

I would like an easy way of reporting spam to DNSBLs (i.e. spamhaus.org). An assistant might help removing personal information from the mail (i.e. the reporter's email address) and send it to several DNSBL servers at a time. (rumpelstielzchen, 29 Nov 2005)

I currently miss an easy way to "convert" a POP3 account to IMAP. Many mail providers support both, so switching from POP3 to IMAP should be made simpler. Furthermore, it should be possible to explicitly archive mails from IMAP accounts (a kind of "offline" mode that stores them on disk only and removes them from the server). A lot of IMAP providers severly limit the disk space, so archiving mails within Thunderbird gives you the "best of both worlds" (POP3 & IMAP). --[[User:phantasm|phantasm]] 29 Nov 2005

The Bayes Filter should not only classify Mails als SPAM, it should be able to learn classify Mails as I move them to Folders (e.g. "Newsletter", "Work", "Friends" ...a self learning Inbox Filter)
(GOI)

Would be great if Thunderbird would support email templates. For example I create everyday a report containing the current date in the subject. Creating a template with the subject "Report: <date>" would be great. --[[User:AliB|aliB]]

I'd love to see an option to hyperlink phone numbers in the address book. Either to "sip:" or better still to any URL, so that a CGI script could connect to an Asterisk server to initiate a call.--[[User:Libits|Libits]] 05:41, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

It would be nice if the addressbook is integrated with the evolution addressbook (for the GNOME Desktop).--[[User:Driessel|Driessel]] 03:42, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

It could be also interessting if calendar appointments could be storred in the evolution-datacenter-server.--[[User:Driessel|Driessel]] 03:42, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

More integration in the corresponding Desktop would be nice --[[User:Driessel|Driessel]] 03:42, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Perhaps these things could already be handled with with the existing plugin structure? If not it would be nice to to make this possible with some extensions. --[[User:Driessel|Driessel]] 03:42, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Spotlight integration, Metadata support, Slideshow features like mail.app
optional Dashboard Widget, better integration into existing iWork & iLife product
--[[User:Chunk|Chunk]] 05:17, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

''UI Face Lift for the 3-pane Window'': I like the 3-column view that Outlook 2003 has. It features a column with the mail folders (left), one with the headers, but every msg gets ''two'' lines (middle), and one column showing the actual message. --[[User:F00f|f00f]] 14:20, 29 Nov 2005 (CET)

''UI Face Lift for the 3-pane Window'': One key navigation in the Folder Pane would be a great navigational improvement: I filed this as an RFE a while back: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=219352
--[[User:smagdali|smagdali]]

I would appreciate a more flexible way for date-formating in the message list. Another nice feature would be the possibility to sort messages in the order of reception. --[[User:F00f|f00f]] 14:20, 29 Nov 2005 (CET)

I would appreciate microsoft entourage and apple mail support for the 'import of local mail' tool (Mac OsX version).

Mail notification and filters: Currently I'm notified of a new mail regardless of wether it's filtered away to another folder or not. I would like to filter unimportant mail and only be notified if a mail is filtered in a special folder or not filtered at all. : [[User:Swift|Swift]] 05:30, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Another features:
- The ability in MS Windows to minimize Thunderbird to the Systray like MS Outlook.

<strike>- Prevention of showing HTML E-Mails (show text only).</strike> View->Message Body As->Plain Text

- Ability to show additional Header Informations in an extra windows - not on the message itselfs

<strike>- Ability to mark Messages (Done, Undone, Status : red/green/yellow...)</strike> Try the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 keys.

- Ability to say 'download all folder contents' on IMAP
Thanks !
--[[User:Neversaid|Neversaid]] 05:37, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Generate a task in Evolution, Outlook or Sunbird from an email message. This should be done through an extension --[[User:Driessel|Driessel]] 05:39, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

RFC 3028 Sieve/MANAGESieve Support
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-martin-managesieve-05.txt

Support maildir format internaly. See [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58308 Bug 58308]. People have given enough arguments why this would be nice, but it would make it possible and fairly easy to write a mdimporter for mac os's spotlight (spotlight integration). [[User:Ibn|Ibn]] 14:39, 29 Nov 2005 (CET)

Better integreation in Mac OS X:
1) Spotlight plug-in to search Thunderbird's e-mail (as mentioned above)
2) The Option to use Mac OS X's address book instead of Thunderbird's. --[[User:Setrok|Setrok]] 05:46, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

PS: @Neversaid: A shortkey to change quickly between Plain Text/HTML view (only for this message) would be nice. I normally use the Plain Text view, but sometimes a messages requires (grumble) HTML. In that case, such a key would be nice.--[[User:Setrok|Setrok]] 05:50, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

display connection errors in a dropdownlist above the statusbar and do not open a messagebox (try navigating in an imap-account when disconnected). Could look like "The Bat!" ([http://www.ritlabs.com/images/products/sd_thebat/main_menu.gif screenshot ] - look at the dropdownlist at the bottom containing "FETCH ...").

ability to store searches in subfolders, even if real subfolders in imap-accounts are not allowed (e.g. gmx.net imap).

I would like to specify in which folder to store the answered mail (the original) together with the copy of the outgoing message. Like in the mailer mulberry: I copy the respective mail AND my answer in a folder I select (this feature is in the mulberry email window available as "Copy to: (list of all folders) followed by a check box "_ Also copy original message"). --[[User:gep|gep]]

You can specify to store a copy of an outgoing message (Options -> Send a copy to -> ...). But you can't change the settings after you have chosen a destination, and you can't see wether you have chosen to save a copy at all. It would be nice to have an indicator in the status line or at least be able to check the settings in the menu. --[[User:Swift|Swift]] 07:03, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Related to the previous entry: when a copy of an outgoing message is enabled, a copy will be stored even if I only store a message as draft. In my opinion a copy only should be save when I really send the message. --[[User:Swift|Swift]] 07:03, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

i would like to see the cabinet concept (like virtual folders that can group folders from different account (not quite like the favorites mentioned!)) of mulberry implemented in thunderbird. This includes the possibility to tie identities to cabinets/folders. --[[User:bnz|bnz]]

I would appreciate a feature to delete all mails in junk folder with one click in the contextmenu of the junk folder or with a shortkey. (see Mail.app Mac OS X) --[[User:Elmexz|Elmexz]] 06:54, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Additionally to the "Empty Junk Folder" feature Elmexz mentioned, a global setting that Junk is really deleted (and not first sent to Trash) that works for all delete methods (contextmenu, "Automatically delete junk messages older than..." feature etc.) would be nice. --[[User:Stebs|Stebs]]

To extent Stebs proposal further; I would highly appreciate the feature to permanently delete a mail (not sending it to the trash folder) by holding e.g. shift or ctrl when clicking on the delete button with the mouse or pressing the delete key on the keyboard. --[[User:Jott|Jott]] 01:36, 3 Feb 2006 (PST)

I'd like to have a data source interface as provided by the KDE Kontact suite: One can chose between different data sources and has a flexible tool to access and merge his data.

I am using kaddressbook with an imap addressbook ressource. Since thunderbird is already able to handle imap folders and even store them in offline mode, it would be cool to be able to use addresses from such an imap folder in my addressbook.

The same holds for sunbird: Korganizer can store its appointments as ical-Files in an imap folder (basically as e-mails with ical content). If Sunbird were able to use an imap folder (provided by Thunderbird) as data source, I could also synchronize my calender data.

While you are at it: Storing the mail filter rules on the imap server would be great too. (If it's an easily parseable format maybe someone even writes something to update mailfilter or procmail scripts for serverside filtering) --[[User:Elm|Elm]] 16:32, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Make it possible so that while viewing Message Headers sorted in descending order (=default, and automatically reset after "compact folder"), deleting a Mail does move Focus up to the next newer Message (and not move down to the next older one). --[[User:Stebs|Stebs]]

Hierarchichal unread messages count indication.
Having nested folders, you can't see, when the parent folder is collapsed, how many unread messages are in the parent folder. If the account is collapsed there is no indication that it holds unread messages.

== Native Widget Support (GTK+) on Linux ==

I would be really nice to have native GTK+ widgets for the file dialogs in thunderbird (ff, too). In windows everything works quite well, so I would be happy to see this for linux, too.

== handle of mails ==

It would be helpful to have a possibility for marking a mail with a different state. The best would be to give the user the right for creating the different states.
for example.: Todo; answer later; private; etc.

other is give a mail a answeringdate like it is coming in at that day.

other would be to send a mail at a different date.

Possibility to change the subject in an recieved mail. or to have a second mysubject-line for comments.

(Added by Don Dillin): Further to last comment, above:
Really would like Thunderbird to have a feature LONG AVAILABLE in MS Outlook:
Need ability to EDIT the subject of any email item in the INBOX (AFTER it has been received) and then be able to save that email in the INBOX with the revised (edited) subject field. This feature has been available in Outlook for 10 years, since Outlook 97, and every version since, and is invaluable for later search and retrieval of messages when the original "Subject" field was null or insufficient. This is a critical functionality deficiency in head-to-head comparisons with Outlook, when T-Bird is so rich in other feature areas.

Thanks to whoever might be able to do something about this! Please add to planned features ...

== handle of attachments ==
<strike>a good thing would be to have the rights to delete an attachment in the mail. so it is possible to keep the mail-message without the attachment.
It would be good to make a note in the mail that there was an attachment.</strike>

Sorry for this rude striking, but this is already possible with TB 1.5 (and we talk about TB 2.0) --[[User:Stebs|Stebs]]

It is possible, sort of. But: Detaching doesn't work properly, in my experience. What's more, that message should, in my view, not pop up at the top of the list as if it had been the last one received. And anyway there should be an option to completely delete any reference to there having been an attachment in the first place. --[[User:Peter Beattie|Peter]]

A nice feature would be to strip attachments from mails automatically and save them to an extra folder. This would ease virus scanning, keep mailboxes slim and therefore speed up TB dramtically. However, I don't know whether the mailbox format allows references to files in a folder, but if, it would be most valuable.

Save Attachments of Selected Mails 
Maybe this one does work already too, but I can't find how to do it. I want to save all attachments of mails I selected. Would be a nice feature.

I think that what the original comment might have meant is that Thunderbird should have an option to not save attachments to the sent-mail folder. I would ideally like a global preference which could then be checked or unchecked for every individual message. I am wasting a lot of upload and download time with big attachments which I don't need saved in my sent-mail folder, but where I do want to keep a record of what was in the message body. The only thing I can do is abort the save to sent mail process, which sometimes causes Thunderbird to crash, or to detach the attachment after it is saved, at a large cost in time and bandwidth. I also agree with the comment above about the difficulties with the detach feature. --[[User:Reykvikingur|Reykvikingur]]

How about being able to view the filename (or maybe also properties) of an attachment on mouse over (or right click)? Sorry if this has been mentioned elsewhere, Luke

Download of attachments shouldn't be necessary when reading the mail.
I had to download a big (24MB) attachment three times: When viewing the message
the first time, then I wanted to save it (waiting again) and after reading
a different message I had to wait again when reading that message (yawn).
I'm using IMAP. Downloading once should be enough, right? And not when
viewing the email the first time but only when I want to save it.

== Addressbook Management ==

In the current Thunderbird, I often get stuck when managing Email lists. Suppose you want to create an Email list for 10 out of your 200 entries. You have to open each addressbook entry individually, copy the Email address, open the list again, and paste it as a new list entry.

It would be much smoother if Email lists could be handled by drag and drop, and if the List entries worked just like the address fields in the compose window.

Anybody who regularly works with Lists under Thunderbird should be pleased by such features.

'''Standard8 responds:''' Well actually, you can drag and drop already - open up the address book view and select an address book, then you can drag entries from the view on the right pane to the mailing list on the left pane. --[[User:Standard8|Standard8]] 13:52, 30 Dec 2005 (PST)

UncleFu86 thinks: There also has to be a [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=266891 Adressbook entry update]!!
Maybe also like this: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=256831

'''Standard8 responds:''' This is being thought about, but we could do with more volunteers to help with it. See [[MailNews:Address Book]] for more info --[[User:Standard8|Standard8]] 13:52, 30 Dec 2005 (PST)

Clemente thinks this would be a nice feature: Create a list in the Adressbook from the recipients of a mail. All adresses in "From", "To" and "CC" except my own should be added to a list with one click.

Metasailor googled this topic, came here and signed up just to request this feature. I agree with Clemente. I have been in bunches of different mailing lists, and would like to add all of the folks on them to my address book AND make my own mailing lists. If Addressbook has an option for me to create lists from the recipients, and/or then edit the lists, merge them, and manage them, that would be just too awesome for words.

This is also of great added convenience if I'm managing multiple accounts with Thunderbird, including Google and Yahoo accounts via the Webmail plug-in.

== Configurable display for mail header fields ==

It would be great if there would be the possibility to add special header fields to the header display, which is currently containing subject, from, to and date. An example would be the display of the user agent or any other header, if existent.

== Support for Mixmaster / Mixminion remailers ==

What about support for anonymous, secure remailers like mixmaster / mixminion? It would be a major contribute to be able to use those from within thunderbird.
--[[User:Eisman|Eisman]] 23:04, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

== Customizable print output ==

It can be very usefull to customize the printout. I suggest a template like system, so that a user can change the look of a printout without programming abilities.
----
Agreed. I like the way Outlook prints out the messages. I would love to be able to have the sender be large, in the top corner, and the subject right under it. Then the date in the opposite corner. Put a border around it all, kinda like Lotus Notes. Let it be something that the user can define, based on each part/section of the message.

== Pocket PC sync ==

Sync Address book and Calendar like Palm-sync in MOZ

I, too, would like the ability to sync contacts and calendar with my *shudder* Windows Mobile --[[User:k0rtnie|k0rtnie]]

== Update Vertical View Layout ==

I like the vertical view layout, but it's not useable on 1024x768 pixel screens. The middle column with subject, from, date infos is to wide. Two lines (one for subject, one for from, date) will be the answer to 1024 screens. [http://www.microsoft.com/office/outlook/prodinfo/overview.mspx Example (Outlook)] (see also [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945 this bug])

== Backup recovery/profile import ==

The last time I totally rebuilt my workstation (formatted HD, new XP installation), I just had a backup of my profile dir. After installing TB, I was forced to create a new email account, then I replaced this dir by the backed up one. Please tell me it's already possible in the current release to import a saved profile in a more comfortable way - otherwise, I'd appreciate such a feature in a future release.

It would be very nice to export / inport all user data in a EASY way... If you plan to make a new installation of your OS, you would like to save emails, accounts, rules and so on. there are some extentions, but it should be integrated... It would be a good function for people who don't have good IT-knowledge --[[User:yann|Yann]] 29 Nov 2005

I agree here totally: It took me (a Computer Scientist!) over an hour and a lot of luck to restore my profile after a new installation. Thunderbird needs a simple "Backup Profile" and "Restore Profile" functionality! --[[User:Kyron|Kyron]] 03:52, 27 August 2006 (PDT)

== Intelligent folder handling ==

The next step for email clients would be to massively facilitate folder handling. For example, when dragging an email onto folders, it should be possible to type the initial letters of a folder name (while pressing the mouse button), and the matching folder(s) would automatically be expanded and scrolled to. For corporate users with a large set of folders, this would be very helpful.

Even better would be a Bayesian filter (much like the junk mail filter) that detects the most likely folders for an email, and shows them as drag-and-drop targets in a toolbar above/below the email content, so that the user can drag the email into one of these most likely folders. If he wants to use another folder instead, he can use the regular folder list.

But these Bayesian filters could do even more: When the most likely folder (or set of previous emails) for a new email is determined, the previous emails (and their replies) could be used to pre-fill a new reply email with the correct address (taken from previous replies).

Another thing: How is copying of emails to local folders done right now? If this is a full copy, an improvement would be to have aliases (placeholders) that would point to an email. In this way, I could file an email under several folders (e.g. under 'customers/ACME' AND under 'complaints'), without copying it.

+ This is partially handled by [http://quickfile.mozdev.org Quick File], at least for moving/copying messages and navigation. There are attempts underway to integrate QF into TB2. [[User:Ptomli|Ptomli]] 16:35, 8 Feb 2006 (PST)

== Searching for addresses in message window ==

I hope, that I haven't missed anything.
Sometimes I get e-mail with a very big distribution list. To check whether a specific recipient is addressed, I'd like to search for it using <ctrl-f> in the message window. Currently I have to do it via the message source <ctrl-u>.

== Improvements to search folders / vFolders ==

Search folders should not only be cached, they also should be kept up to date when new mail arrives. This way you you can see in what kind of category a mail falls without moving it to a different folder. A bit like the views-concept of the Opera mailclient or the vFolders in Evolution.

An really useful search folder would be one that matches all messages not matched by all other search folders. This is an default vFolder in Evolution and should be in Thunderbird as well. So maybe some automatic search folders for unmatched messages, contacts, priorities, attachements and stuff could also be included or made possible to create.

When creating search folders it should be possible to choose which folders to include in the search. Either give some specific folders or all existing folders in one account or even in all accounts.

Also add some functions to the context menu of those folders. Like delete all, mark all read and so on (which should be on every folder by the way).

Wouldn't this be quite easy to implement if vFolders were based on tags.

Performance of search folders should be fast even when dealing with large numbers of messages (eg. 100,000 messages for users). When the user clicks on a search folder, the contents should be viewable immediately, and should be complete -- currently a search is performed and can take many seconds to complete. The search folder caching should update all relevant search folders at the time when a message arrives, so searching at the moment the user clicks on the search folder should not be necessary.

== Multiple email addresses for sending ==

I've got lots of email addresses at different providers, but they all share the same server side inbox (e.g., they are all collected by a Yahoo! mailbox). Wouldn't it be nice to be able sending emails with all of these email addresses without having to create a dozen inbox accounts? At the moment (TB1.3) you can specify several SMTP server but you can't use them unless an account. --[[User:Manuel Strehl|Manuel]] [[User talk:Manuel Strehl|(talk)]] 03:56, 30 Nov 2005 (PST)

Maybe what you're looking for is the "Identity" thing in Account Options? --[[Peter Beattie|Peter]]

Try the [http://absorb.it/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=VirtualIdentity VirtualIdentity] extension.
--[[User:Vor0nwe|vor0nwe]] 08:47, 14 Dec 2005 (PST)

I know some guys wich have to handle their messages with POP3 and SMTP. And I am not able to configure it correctly to handle it with "more than one smtp-server" to work properly! Maybe it is better to solve the problem with "connecting an smtp-server with the catching account like outlook (express). In outlook express every emailaccount is connected with incomming (pop3/imap) and outgoing (smtp) account. --[[jamfx]]

== IMAP: Let me chose in what folder to save sent messages ==

In order to hold threads together I would like to be asked before sending a message in what folder to save the message. If it is an answer or a forward, the folder where the original message lives in should be the default.

[[User:kreatifworx|kreatifworx]]: That is exactly what I would like to see. I use three email clients on three different computers (unfortunately I have to) and every client software has created its own IMAP directories like "sent", "outbox", "trash", "junk" and so on. It would be very fine if I could eliminate some of these redundant directories.

== New structuring and visualization features ==

Implement new mail structuring and visualization features like done in
[http://www.research.ibm.com/remail/index.html IBM remail]

== Colored EMail index ==

In the mail index, the text color should be customizable for each message. Depending on whether messages match a certain pattern. For example, with a certain configuration all mails from the linux kernel mailinglsit should be shown in red and all from the thunderbird developers mailing list should be shown blue.

I'd also like to be able to mark messages so that they appear with a solid bar of colour behind them; someone seems to have hack for this with the userchrome.css file on linux, but I haven't seen it for windows. i.e. I would like mails to appear as they do when you first mark them, with say white or black text against a solid red/blue/yellow etc. background. I'm requesting this because it would make them more easily visible; I can't always pick them out at a glance even when I've marked them. Sorry if this has already been requested elsewhere, Luke

== Synchronize locale messages with POP3 server account ==

Since 90% of the users have POP3 accounts it should be considered to add a better synchronization of locale stored messages with the messages on the server account (see also "http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=135107&highlight="). The intention ist to give the user the most possible control over his POP3 account and allow to retrieve messages to several computers. This also allows to use the POP3 account as a backup store in case of a locale failure, allows to mark messages as locked (never deleted), etc and allows to delete stray messages on the server which should have deleted before.

== Folder selection through popup box when folder pane hidden ==

This allows to still be able to switch between folders even if the folder pane is hidden. This popup box may be show always or only when folder pain hidden (see also [http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=18172&highlight= Folder selection through combo box] and [http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=60707&highlight= Combo box for folder selection]).

== Verbose E-mail folders ==

Currently, you can only browse through your email by clicking the emails and reading them, or you must read the often not so useful subjects. I suggest to introduce a view into thunderbird with summary panels for every email with the traditional information, together with attachment names, first few lines of the email, maybe link to meeting scheduled in the mail etc.

== unify mailing list, newsgroup, and feed interfaces ==

(from [[http://www.melez.com/mykzilla/2005/11/handling-mailing-lists-newsgroups-and.html my blog post on the subject]])

Users participate in discussions and receive announcements via a variety of delivery methods, including mailing lists, newsgroups, and feeds. Although these methods are all technologically different, users interact with them in roughly the same ways. They subscribe to and unsubscribe from a source of discussion/announcements, collect its messages into folders, sometimes save those messages indefinitely, and other times periodically delete old messages.

Users don't care about the technology providing communication, they care about the communication itself. So the UI of a messaging client like Thunderbird shouldn't arbitrarily differentiate between delivery methods but rather focus on what users actually want to do with the messages they receive. Thunderbird's UI should include the following features:

* ways of subscribing to sources (in this one regard, the UI may vary noticably between methods, since users tend to stumble upon them in different ways, and it may be difficult to hide some details of the subscription process);
* when a user subscribes to a source, the client automatically creates a collection (a.k.a. "folder") in which to store the source's messages;
* global and per-source options (with sensible defaults) for receiving messages in the Inbox, in a collection, or in both places;
* readily-available contextual options (f.e. toolbar buttons, context menu items, buttons embedded into the message display, etc.) for managing sources (i.e. unsubscribing from them, changing their settings);
* when a user receives a message from a discussion/announcement to which he isn't subscribed, readily-available contextual options for subscribing to it;
* global and per-source options for deleting messages after a certain amount of time, a certain number of messages, or a certain amount of storage space;
* a way to browse the list of all subscriptions and manage them;
* a distinction between turning off message reception (either temporarily or permanently) and removing the source and its messages completely (not sure which should be called "unsubscribing"; probably the former);

Note that unsubscribing from a mailing list is technically very different from unsubscribing from a feed, since mailing list subscriptions are stored on a list server. But from the user's perspective, it's irrelevant where or how the subscription is stored, since either way she wants the same thing: to stop receiving the messages. Users shouldn't have to learn two different UIs for doing the same thing just because the technology behind their behavior differs, just like they shouldn't have to learn different ways of accelerating depending on whether their car has a carburetor or fuel injection; Thunderbird should handle those details under the hood.

For feeds, that means no longer polling the feed. For mailing lists, it means interacting with the server to cancel the subscription. And even though there's no standard way to unsubscribe from a mailing list, most lists are run by one of a small set of list server packages which are identifiable from the headers they add to messages, so it's possible to implement a few package-specific handlers that can automate unsubscribing from 99% of lists.

== better Thunderbird source->folder mapping management ==

Thunderbird users may have only a handful of accounts, but they have numerous discrete serial sources of information, including mailing lists, individual newsgroups, and feeds. With filters, the global Inbox, and Forumzilla's arbitrary feed->folder mappings, users have a great deal of flexibility about where they put their messages. But the more source->folder mappings they add, the harder it is for them to remember which mail goes where, and adding mappings is challenging for ordinary users.

Thunderbird's UI for source->folder mappings is scattered across multiple Account Preferences pages and Filters dialogs. Forumzilla adds yet another dialog for managing feed subscriptions. Users need a better way to view these mappings and change them.

I suggest we add a "sources" pane to the left of the Thunderbird folder pane. The pane, when displayed, would feature a list of sources with arrows pointing from them to their folders. Users would be able to drag arrows to different folders to change where sources write their messages. And they'd be able to double-click a source to get more detailed configuration options, which could be just the existing account, filter, and feed preferences dialogs.

Changing a source->folder mapping for a feed means changing its "target folder" preference. For a mailing list it might mean creating or updating a filter. But these are backend differences; to the user, it's the same action, and it should work the same for all sources.

== Mark unanswered E-Mails automatically clearly visible ==

Unanswered but read mails should be '''automatically''' clearly marked as unanswered.
This should occur in a visible way, like you normally label Mails! (Or like in Outlook!) This helps to "work off /execute" the remaining E-Mails.
If some one migh change this appearence he should be able to do it in the Options Menu.

== E-Mail context menu options to add ==

I would like to be able to use a ?Copy E-Mail Address“?and ?Configure message filter(s) based on this message“ "dialog" via the context menu of a message which is just hovered over via mouse in the Inbox or equivalent folder. This would provide a more efficient working capacity by - amongst others - guarantee a faster message filter implementation.

== Different Certificates for different Identities ==

You can define an identity, but you can't add a different certificate to this! Enigmail perhaps allows several PGP setting for this identitys too. so This whould be an nice enhancement for me ;)

== Restrictions to E-Mail Sending through an "Administrator", Enigmail, LDAP ==

There should be the possibility for the Administrator of the Mozilla Thunderbird Installation / Options / Settings to block the attempt to send messages to certain E-Mail Adresses. The E-Mail Adresses itself shouldn't be available to save in Adressbook or somewhere else.

The second thing is, that there should be a filter so that to some E-Mail Adresses you '''can only''' be sent with PGP/GPG, to some only without and also one setting for changing an account as like from this account you only can send with PGP/GPG.

The point about this is, this should be somehow available to administrate apart from the other settings. But at least it would also be okay to integrate the things (except of the last, which is possible in common via enigmail also now) without a separated administrator area...

Also there should be more help to successfully use / install an LDAP Server.

== Insert a Export- and Importfunction for E-Mail! ==

Please insert a export- and importfunction for e-mail, especially
to backup POP3- or IMAP-servers.

== Write/Update Support for IMAP ACL (shared folders) or LDAP ==

To maintain a network centered contact directory, independent of clients
or operating systems, writing to shared folders or directories should be enabled. Of course there are many configuration issues involved; probably LDAP "schema" files would have to be imported.

Could these be "power user" features with configuration by editing some text oriented "conf" files without the need of UI tools?

== More intelligent column options for different folders ==

It seems to me to be an absolute pain in the butt that e.g. whatever changes I make to the column display in a newsgroup also affect the columns in my primary inbox. There should be options to copy the relevant setting from another folder as well as to make e.g. everything within a NG domain follow the same rules. (This is basically what [http://mnenhy.mozdev.org Mnenhy]'s Folder Storage options do.) --Peter

== Selective quoting in replies or forwards ==

Most of the time you don't need to quote *all* of the text of the replied-to message, but only, say, a paragraph. It would be excellent to be able to select just that in the original message, then click Reply and have only the selected bit show up as quoted text in the reply message. --Peter

Let me add my push for this... It was a much-used feature in Eudora, and since a lot of Eudora users are migrating to Thunderbird, lets add this capability. It's really handy when you have a very long message, especially with lots of forwards with gunky address lists, rather than go into the forward or reply message and make a huge, scrolling delete of unwanted material... just do as Peter says. Highlight the part you want in the original message, click forward or reply and there you have it... ready to add to or send on. --Jack

== Allow Adress Book import from Outlook without it beeing the default E-Mail Client ==

Outlook is still used a lot for Calendar/Adress Book, so a real Adress Book syncronisation would be best. Until this works though, a workaround would be to let Thunderbird Adressbook-Import backup this Registry Value: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail]@="Mozilla Thunderbird", set it to "Microsoft Outlook", do the import and then resetting the previous Value.
That would prevent the annoying neccesarity having to manually set Outlook as default E-Mail Client. Added a comment to corresponding Bug# 124486 --[[User:Stebs|Stebs]]

== Improved sorting and grouping of messages ==
It would be great, if Thunderbird could group/thread messages and sort threats by different criterias. Thus it will be possible to group the mails of one sender and sort the groups by date by the latest message of each group (as The Bat! does it).
I hope I put this proposal at the right place! See also http://tinyurl.com/dvkpk and http://tinyurl.com/ba34h (german Thunderbird-Board).

: I'd like to second the call for a self-threading feature, and provide an example of how this becomes important to myself (and likely others):
: I do a lot of online purchasing on various websites, some are designed well enough to provide me with a single email containing everything from confirmation to postal tracking number. Purchases from others, especially those who serve only as intermediary, results in many emails ''from different email addresses'' '''and''' ''over a span of time'' (these two combined is what actually makes my current Thunderbird very difficult to use).
: A case study: Today I'm having some trouble with an item I was sent on eBay.com. My mailbox has emails from: eBay (confirmation that I won the item), the seller (an invoice), Paypal.com (reciept), an email or two from the United States Postal Service (tracking of the package), an email from myself to the seller about how the item was not as described. Now that I have a problem and need to provide eBay with all this information, I've got no easy way to collect it. Searching can get one or two per search term, but that's not really simple. I ''could'' have created a folder for each item I purchase online, but that's really overkill. I'm ''almost'' happy with Gmail's mechanism for "tagging" and item, but I think the combination of moving email in folders and being able to actually decide which items do or don't go into a thread is far more useful.
:The way I imagine this implemented is to have the following abilities:
:# Create thread from message(s) : this creates a thread whose name is identical to that of the message subject
:# Rename thread : obvious, to allow a more readable/searchable title
:# Add message(s) to thread : possibly by drag-and-drop
:# Remove message(s) from thread : obvious
:See [[#Step_4:_Threading.2FGrouping_of_Messages|Major Usability Redesign of Folders & Threads (in 4 Steps)]]
: Many thanks to the Thunderbird team for this awesome product. I hope to join some day (but have only just graduated college and yadda yadda yadda). I don't know how complicated this feature would be to implement, but if one of the developers tells me it would be relatively simple, I'd be glad to have you tell me to do it myself. Send it to my Gmail account: ''mkazin@...''.
:-- [[User:MJKazin|MJKazin]] 08:17, 23 July 2006 (PDT)

==Display free space on IMAP server in Thunderbird's main window==
It would be nice, if you could see in the main Thunderbird window, next to each IMAP account, how much space there is available on the IMAP server for this account and how much of this space is still free. Currently this information is hidden in the preferences dialogue of the IMAP folders. Most mail providers have huge POP3 accounts, but only comparatively small IMAP accounts. So it would be useful, if there was an easy way for keeping an eye on the free IMAP space with Thunderbird.

== Mailbox Dispatcher ==
There is just one reason i am not user Thunderbird: It does not have a mailbox dispatcher like TheBat for example. I am just using a modem so downloading large files is a problem and besides I would rather like to know which mails are on the mail server before I download them. Just using the "filter" options is not enough.

== completely new address book ==

A great step to make Thunderbird more comfortable would be a completely new address book like the one there is on Mac OS X.
In Apple's address book you can create as many entries for a contact as you want, e.g. several email addresses, the date of birth and the like.
Wouldn't that be nice? I can imagine that this could also advantage the development of syncing applications for mobile phones, PDA's and so on.
[[User:kreatifworx|kreatifworx]]

Currently if you have an address in more than one Address Book (e.g. friends and company) and you have to make changes (email-changed...) you have to make this changes in EVERY Address Book. Something like categories or links would improve the usability. I would prefer categories like the Address Book in KOrganizer. --[[User:AliB|aliB]] Categories would especially usefull for importing contacts from Outlook. Without categories switching from Outlook can be a real problem.
(moved here form misc) --[[User:Bierdrinker|Bierdrinker]] 06:56, 22 Dec 2005 (PST)

[[User:Rnapier|Rnapier]] adds: Rather than extend built-in address management capabilities in Thunderbird, I believe it would be better to hoist all contact management functionality out of Thuderbird and integrate with external tools via plugins (built-in OS address books, ACT!, Palm Desktop, etc.) Then if there is a desire, we can begin a separate contact management project to provide all the functionality listed above.
:[[User:Rnapier|Rnapier]] 09:11, 17 Dec 2005 (PST)

This is also a great idea, but: different built-in OS address books have different capabilities, so what do you do in case you would like to have your addresses synced on several computers? And if a built-in address book has being changed? Someone would have to take care of these cases at any time.
[[User:kreatifworx|kreatifworx]] 00:17, 16 Jan 2006 (PST)

An integrated, cross-platform, stand-alone address book would be a wonderful new Mozilla project. How many address books do you have? I have my Thunderbird address book, my Palm address book (plus its desktop version), plus a database-based one that I use for address labels, etc.... Every time an e-mail address changes, there are at least four places I want to put it. Ugh!

My idea of a Truly Terrific address book: small, fully portable, configurable mini-database that can (1) interface with Thunderbird's compose function, (2) drag-and-drop to Thunderbird, (3) sync to/from Palm, (4) print a simple envelope directly, (5) print simple address labels directly, and (6) export one or more addresses in RTF format or some such for use in a word processor for merges, etc. Searchable, of course, and with some kind of alias system so one database entry can appear in multiple categories, as noted above. Plugins could exist for people who for some reason have to use Outlook, GroupWise or whatever.

==Make Thunderbird a "Complete PIM": Calendar and Todo List integration - Sync with PocketPC==

To Replace my current PIM , Thunderbird (plus addons) would have to be able to also manage a Calendar and a Todo List
All three components should have a seamless support for reminders, priorisations et al.

Also, today I sync my PIM with an iPaq Pocket PC which is not yet possible for the Mozilla Tools up to now

08:15, 9 March 2007 (PST)
I second this, and would be interested in beta testing or providing any help I possibly can to get this underway. --[[User:k0rtnie|k0rtnie]]

September 9, 2007 I agree with the above, but I would also like to add that I would LOVE IT if Thunderbird also included a place to post Memos/Notes, that are NOT linked to any messages. In others just a Memos/Notes section separate from the emails. I currently use Palm Desktop Version 4.1.4 (PalmOne has not updated this piece of crap for 4 YEARS!!!!) and I HATE IT!!!! Mainly because it's search tool SUCKS!!!! You can't do any advanced searches, but rather only one word or phrase. That is so lame. But yet I'm sort of stuck with it because I have stored EVERYTHING in it for years, and unless I want to use Outlook, which I don't want to do. I want to use Thunderbird/mozilla for everything. It Kicks. Just needs to be more like a P.I.M./Personal Information Manager, including a calendar, todo and Memos as I stated. -Rick

== Auto compress folders after relative changes in size ==

At the moment the auto compressing of folder will only be applied after an absolute value of the file size. More interesting is an automatically compressing when the folder size is increased by a value or after a number of changes (new e-mails). Important, if one collect e-mail by e-mail over years without a general clean up of the folder. An automated periodically compression is OK and necessary but not every times.

== Show size and First Headline while downloading mails ==

I find it very useful immidiately have a short view about the size end object (headline) of every mail while downloading. That enables me to stop a download soon. Useful when You have a very slow connection.

== Integration with native Addressbooks ==

I would suggest a better Integration with the local address books of the most common IDEs. Thunderbird should be able to use the Evolution, KDE, MacOS, Outlook or Windows address book. This would realize a better Integration in the Desktop. --[[User:Driessel|Driessel]] 00:52, 11 Dec 2005 (PST)

I'd like to add onto this suggestion. Contact management isn't a "mail" function. Users use contact information for many non-mail applications such as IM, calendars (birthdays), mailing labels, phone numbers, etc. Trying to manage contact information in the mail app is extremely limiting. A better solution is to rely entirely on external apps for rich functionality, while continuing to provide the current built-in functionality as a basic stub. If Mozilla would like to create a feature-rich contact management solution, that belongs outside of Thunderbird IMO. -- [[User:Rnapier|Rnapier]] 09:44, 17 Dec 2005 (PST)

When I was using Mozilla Mail I managed to link my .wab address book into Mozilla's address book; I can't figure out how I did it let alone replicate in Thunderbird. What I most want is a way of sharing an address book between users

== create an email group in the address book from an email ==

From an email I receive that goes to many people I'd like to take over ALL email addresses into the address book and then have a group created.

I'm clear that this might be misused. So it could be limited to be available only when my own email address is in the To or cc field.

Thanks

== Reminder Flag to follow up emails ==

I often deal with mails that need some sort of follow up.

A reminder flag with a date is desperately wanted!

It could then show up as a reminder pop up or at least a folder showing all reminders (for each account as well as ALL accounts together).

Thanks

== sorting messages by subject (as thread) ==

This is already possbible right now to a certain extend but not fully as required practically.

(1) I would need to be able to edit the subject line (as requested by others here already)

(2) I would need an option to enter words or abbreviations that get stripped off the subject line as I work with people in Germany a lot, where there is no "Re." ... there it's either "Antw." or "Antwort" or the like. So if I could edit this list myself (in the preferences), that would do a terrific job.

(3) finally - the top would be a display as a thread, but that's not essential.

Thanks

See [[#Step_4:_Threading.2FGrouping_of_Messages|Major Usability Redesign of Folders & Threads (in 4 Steps)]]

== Editing incoming messages ==

A client of mine works with Outlook mainly because of this functionality: since he is using email as a real conversation tool and an essential tool to work on documents really, it is essential for him to be able to edit a message someone sent to him.

Editing as a plain new message (i.e. more or less a response) as it is possible today is not the same.

If this for some reason is not possible, the edited mail message could be a copy that lives parallel to the original mail (same folder, etc.) and that has some sort of clear mark, that it is NOT the original message.

Thanks

Agree. My request for Post-it note capability would accomplish the same. But, some means of making notation incoming mail is desperately needed. The "copy" or "forward" work-arounds are clumsy and cluttering and often confusing, just by the nature of being a work-around rather than a solution!

Addendum:
Shortly after I enter the above, I got a response to a Mozillazine forum query about the subject. The following link extension has been installed and used. It fits my needs and others's too, I presume

https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/759/

== Several well described feature requests in German ==

I have described several missing features in German in my tip collection for Thunderbird:
http://borumat.de/thunderbird-email-tipps.php#fulltoc-anliegen
Maybe some of you devolopers can read German and regard it as useful?
--Andreas Borutta

== Insert text as external quote ==

The usual quote initial for a quoted text which comes from an external source, e.g. a website, is "|".

I suggest to add a new command, "insert as external quote".

If it were added, the command "Rewrap" should work for such external quotes as well.

A more detailed description of the suggestion enriched with examples can be found at http://borumat.de/thunderbird-email-tipps.php#externes-zitat-anliegen
This text is in German.
--Andreas Borutta

== Protect specific lines being wrapped ==

Sometimes special parts of text should not be wrapped.

In the news- and mail-client "40tude Dialog" the user could protect marked lines with a command from beeing wrapped.

I suggest to implement this into Thunderbird as well.

This suggestion you could find in German on http://borumat.de/thunderbird-email-tipps.php#umbruch-ausgewaehlter-zeilen-verhindern enriched with examples.
--Andreas Borutta

== Show subject in threads only one time - show names in position of subject ==

In the view of an expanded thread the subject is repeated multiple times. That is redundant. It reduces the readability.

I know a way to display an expanded thread quite more readable.
Only the first subject is displayed.
In the first answer the name is shown at the positon of the subject. The column with the name will stay empty.
Screenshot:
http://borumat.de/bilder/thunderbird/subject-nicht-wiederholen.png

If a subject changes inside a thread, the first changed subject will be displayed again with two columns: subject and name

--Andreas Borutta

See [[#Step_4:_Threading.2FGrouping_of_Messages|Major Usability Redesign of Folders & Threads (in 4 Steps)]]

== Heading of Accounts (IMAP) ==

The Headings of Accounts is in bold-face.
For better working this should by normal-face or - optimum - individual configuration in user-settings.

== New Mails in IMAP-Folders ==

It is very difficult to see, when new Mails in an account are available.
Some themes provide somewhat better optical reminders, but this is still not enough.

Best method will be:

- Account-Heading not in bold-face
- if new mails are available, open the folder of this account
- change face of account-heading to bold (or other color)
- mark input-folder of account with a thumb, bold-face or other color.

== Delayed message delivery ==

Being able to set a certain time and date in the future for TB to send a particular message -- just as e.g. Eudora does -- would be nice to have. (And should be easy to implement, I imagine...) --Peter

== Remove LDAP, add it back as an extension ==

See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=282223

In general, Thunderbird needs to have more extension points. In this case, an easy way to add in additional providers of address books and address lookup would be a huge benefit. Perhaps a new LDAP extension would result, or perhaps some other type of address store would be created (e.g. simple web service system, or ...)
Judging by the comments here, address lookup and the address book appear to be among the bigger grievance points. This would allow for a lot of experimentation in this space.

== Tagging and Hierarchical search ==

I notice that better tagging support made the officially planned feature list. Along with this, it would be good to see a lot of the UI and searching features that the leader in this space has done (GMail).
* make it simple to tag things
* eliminate custom folders, there are only tags

Along these same lines, add in hierarchical search.
Start from multiple roots, and drill down until you find the mail you're looking for:
* Contacts
** John
*** Tags
**** Project1
**** Project2
** Anne
* Tags
** Project1
** Project2

Every one of these levels would display all of the messages below (allow sorting by all columns, including date). Each level would also allow arbitrary searching (right-click on John below contacts, select search, and then enter in text based search against that context).

== Mail-History ==

I'll found it very usefull to have a Mail-History... e.g.:

Dezember 12th 2005:
- username@provider.com
- Mailheader 1
- Mailheader 2
- username2@provider.com
- Mailheader 1
- Mailheader 2
...

MCXSC

== vCard export/import ==

I think a vCard import/export is very usefull... Thunderbird 1.0.x doesn't have any function for it... an there are no extensions.... It's really usefull, e.g. to exchange contacts...

MCXSC

from Thunderbird-User1:

Thunderbird 2.0 must have a vCard import/export function. Almost every MacUser complains about that, because their contacts are saved as vcards, and also iPod-User or users of different Mail-Programs which use vCard have often talked about this very important feature. Additionally you get more business users who use vcards. So please implement this must-have feature into the next generation of Thunderbird.

Thunderbird-User1

:Not just for Mac users. While Organizer (faithful old friend that it is) does CSV files, it is lots easier to do vCard exports from its phonebooks; should also import easier.--[[User:Djenner|Djenner]] 19:20, 25 August 2006 (PDT)

08:18, 9 March 2007 (PST)
I very much agree with this statement. I'm not sure if we're allowed to vote. :P
--[[User:k0rtnie|k0rtnie]]

== Shared address book support ==

Similar to a previous Feature request (LDAP as extension), but more to the point.

Would like to have some sort of shared address book support. At a minimum, this would:
* query against an external source when looking up email addresses (possibly with an extension to allow multiple types)
* Allow for the launching of a tool to manage this external address book (e.g. URL or simply an external app)

== Some things, which would be great.... ==

1. The compression feature is a great method to reduce storage size, but it's very unpractically. I think in the next release there should be a autocompress feature after deleting a various number of messages, not about the complete size of the profile.

2. The possibility to export complete folders with right-click (or all message older than ..) in an archive, that should be also opened as like an additional profile. Like the feature in Outlook to export all message older than .. in an separated .pst-file.

3. The possibility to show additional header information and the complete mailsource with an rightclick of a message. Not with Ctrl+U or clicking in the menu.

== Separate Window for E-Mail header before fetching mails ==

I would appreciate a separate window showing a list of new mails on the POP-Server (which is generated using only the mail headers) with the ability to easily remove some mails from the list which causes them to be removed from the POP-server.
A separate window would lead to a much more comprehensible behaviour compared to the "Fetch headers only" option which silently deletes mails from the POP-server if the header-only mails are deleted or moved to the junk folder.
So many users have asked for this feature in the german forum.
Here you can view a screenshot of such a window:
http://files.korni-welt.de/auswahl.gif

some possible options:
*delete msg from server
*download msg from server
*remain untouched on server
*download and remain on server
*move directly into junk

== Integration of a Calendar + Birthdays ==

Integrate a Calendar like the iCalendar plugin into thunderbird, such that reminders are able when the calendar is not open. Another important thing for me is to have a birthday field for my contacts. These birthdays should generate automatically a repeating calendar entry. Then it would be perfect for me.
Another nice-to-have thing is syncronisation with PDAs but yet not so important to me.

I wish not only birthdays but other anniversary fields too. (In Hungary we have namedays.)

- There's already a Calendar Extension for Thunderbird. Lightning is a project to integrate the Calendar into Thunderbird fully.

== Server protocoll ==

One reason I prefer AK-Mail to Thunderbird: There is a log of the server communication. Would be great, if this is possible in a future version of Thunderbird. It helps to analyse errors...

POP3: Verbinde zum Host-Rechner [pop.gmx.net] am Samstag, den 24. Dezember 2005 11:46:40 
POP3: 11:46:40 [rx] +OK GMX POP3 StreamProxy ready [...] 
POP3: 11:46:40 [tx] APOP [...] 
POP3: 11:46:40 [rx] +OK mailbox has 2 messages (186120 octets) 
POP3: 11:46:40 [tx] STAT 
POP3: 11:46:40 [rx] +OK 2 186120 
POP3: 11:46:40 [tx] LIST 
POP3: 11:46:40 [rx] +OK mailbox has 2 messages (186120 octets) 
POP3: 11:46:40 [tx] UIDL 
POP3: 11:46:40 [rx] +OK mailbox has 2 messages (186120 octets) 
POP3: 11:46:41 [tx] RETR 2 
POP3: 11:46:41 [rx] +OK message follows 
POP3: 11:46:41 [tx] QUIT 
POP3: 11:46:41 [rx] +OK bye 

== Automated deletion ==

One reason I prefer AK-Mail to Thunderbird: It supports automated deletion of messages from the trash folder of an individual account:

There is a per-account setting "Delete messages from trash folder, after they have resided XX days in the trash folder". This way the days of being in trash are relevant, not the date of the message! It is a nice feature to keep the trash fullness low, but provide the chance of restoring messages within some day-range, if I recognize having deleted them by accident.

== Robust automated fetching and sending ==

One reason I prefer AK-Mail to Thunderbird is the possibility to configure independent intervalls for automated fetching and sending messages -- per account.

When fetching or sending the unsent messages fails, there is no annoying message-box you have to click away each time, but there is only a log entry to the account log. This is nice, because I have here often connection failures with my DSL. The e-mail client should be able to fetch and send whenever possible and don't annoy me, if it's not possible. If I want to, I'll have a look at the log...

== Linking of attachments to the file system instead of copying ==

One reason I prefer AK-Mail to Thunderbird: It is possible there to link attachments instead of copying them into the message. This way it is possible to create template messages with linked files. When I finally send the message, the current version of the file is taken from the file system.

== Custom Tabbar Location ==

Many people might like the upcoming tabbar for tabbed messages on top of the pane, but many eudora users will prefer them under the message pane. It would be great if this customization option could be part of TB 2.0 right from the start and the position wasn't hardwired.

== reply with template ==

Although filed in Bugzilla as [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21210 bug 21210] I would like to have it in TB 2.0, integrated in the concept of discussions/threads.

== Double Key Encryption by Default ==
I propose that future releases of Thunderbird incorporate default encryption and signing of all email through a peer-to-peer, double-key encryption system, similar to PGP.

I'm proposing a very simple system, essentially:

#) Thunderbird will include a double-key encryption system
#) Thunderbird-originated emails will include a line "public key available"
#) Thunderbird clients will automatically exchange keys when they spot #2
#) Future messages between the two will automatically be encrypted

The result would be that all Thunderbird users would communicate securely between each other. Hopefully, a critical mass would be attained, and all email clients would have a the same compatible encryption scheme.

For this to work, encryption must be ''default'' rather than an optional plug-in or extra effort if we are finally going to solve the vulnerability of totally open email.

The system must be so simple as to be essentially transparent. What I'm suggesting is VERY simple: '' After the first email, the Thunderbird clients exchange public keys. All email after that is encrypted with no effort by the user.''

I feel very strongly that routine encryption of email is long overdue. The first time I used email in the late 80's, I was uncomfortable with the total lack of privacy. I can't believe this hasn't been solved, yet!

Can anyone else jump on this bandwagon with me? I honestly believe that adding this one feature could have a profoundly positive impact on everything from commerce to human rights.--[[User:Calan|Calan]] 22:41, 11 Jan 2006 (PST)

As I wrote to you personally: How do you plan to solve the problem, that some (most?) users may also check their email with other email clients or via web-access (e.g. hotmail, yahoo)? --[[User:Eisman|Eisman]] 23:57, 26 Jan 2006 (PST)

== Microsoft Exchange ==
I propose that the next version of Thunderbird should be able to talk to Mircosoft Exchange using its native protocol, perhaps using the GPL Ximian-Connector from Novell.
Yes I know that Exchange supports IMAP and POP3, but a lot of companies do not enable them for security reasons

I would love to see this implemented. Our University is migrating to Exchange and I'm currently having to downgrade everyone from Thunderbird to Outlook Express. Not pleasant I can tell you. -- Trippynet, Nov 07 2006.

Why don't you try MS Outlook 2003? This integrates real well with Exchange 2003 and supports a lot of good features. I would like to see Thunderbird on Exchange as I have a client who is using it. For now, I will set him up with POP3 to my Exchange Server so he can keep using it. I would never use Outlook Express unless you want your users exposed to spam and all the other bad stuff that is out there.
The term "downgrade to...." is an understatement!
Charles

In my company, they are moving all servers to Exchange (non-IMAP/POP), so I will no longer be able to use TB, and this is not anything I will have control over. A plugin for Exchange connectivity would indeed be of great value to me.
Yannack

My school doesn't have POP or IMAP enabled (for security reasons, like Yannack said) so a plugin for exchange support would be greatly appreciated and Thunderbird would be copacetic to the business world, instead of using Outlook. -- niftymatt

== RSS offline support ==

It would be great to incorporate in future Thunderbird realeases offline RSS reading support.

== UI changes mentioned in last item of article ==

Aka Gmail-like message grouping by conversation, and also possibly integrating the message list pane and the message display pane into a single conversation pane, wherein individual conversations can be expanded/collapsed, and also perhaps in collapsed form, a small preview of the message content is shown in the conversation line.

Conversation lines thus do not have to be a single line in height; they can be two or three lines -- think Gmail message search results display.

Bug 241197 [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=241197] is a very good place to start.

If implemented this can put Tbird head and shoulders over the rest of the email crowd :-)

== per folder (and per sender) hooks (like mutt) for identities ==

There's already a bug for this ([https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200872 Bug 200872]) but I thought I'd add it here too... the ability to add hooks like Mutt supports so that I can say "all mail to @bugzilla.org should come from bugzilla@mydomain.ext" and not need to remember to change the drop-down to the correct address.

Tony Firshman: Having moved from Demon's now unsupported Turnpike, I miss the per-folder identities. This meant one could set _all_ default values when writing emails. I use different identities for public mailing lists, where archiving is often ridiculously open - ie quoting sigs literally. I also like to fudge the "Reply to:". Also in TP mailing list folders, the To: is pre-filled. I have to set up dummy accounts with unused root folders to be able to set default ID. I cannot though set default "To:". Messy.

== Tagging, annotations, and information management ==

'''Tagging''' has already been mentioned multiple times and seems a very important feature for any information system that contains data with '''multiple associations'''. The problem of information management and retrieval for emails is actually very similar to the problem of organizing bookmarks (see http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/evolution-of-bookmarking/).
The ability to quickly add and edit tags (projects, events, locations, groups, names) associated with an email, bookmark, etc. provides a selection mechanism that is more specific than free text search. The "traditional" Inbox, Sent, and other folders of multiple accounts can even exist besides the tagging but the folder names and account names need to be integrated as (default) tags.
'''Annotations''' are as powerful as tags but rarely used so far. The key issue for both tagging and annotations is the user interface. It needs to be a '''"permanent" tool''' like the "new" find, the Firefox extension "Flat Bookmark Editing", or tools in Photoshop that provide direct access and NOT a dialog.
The search should by default include all main folders such as Inbox, Sent, etc. and sort the results by time. To select emails by tags and to have the results from Inbox, Sent, etc. in one list seems to me even more interesting than some proposed features of IBM's Remail project.
A method to save tag combinations in a list (may be with a name) for later searches would be equivalent to dynamic folders and may provide a solution for some of the above feature requests.

== New message popup to include message info ==

It would be nice, if whenever I get a message from somebody that when it shows
the New Message popup and says, "1 new message" that it tells me who it is from
and maybe the first part of the message. Sort of like outlook does. This would
really be ideal for me cause if I am watching a movie.. It pops up and says you
got 1 new message. But I have to get up and go to the computer to figure out if
it is important or not. If it had who it was from, I could tell without having
to get up.

If you have multiple messages, ie. "2 new messages". Then just popup a window for each message.
:Just adding another vote for this feature. It's immensely helpful to know whether or not I should divert my new attention to that incoming message or whether it's just more spam. For me, the alert is useless without this because there's always new mail lately, it's just a matter of who it's from.

== Return receipt mail tracking ==

If I send a return receipt mail, I don't want to check manually later if I got from all the addressed persons return receipts. I also don't want to see the return receipts in any of my folders.
I would like to have a visible distinction (eg. by colors) of the unsuccessfully sent mails in the sent folder, which have not received the return receipt yet.
It would be nice also if I can set a timeout value for an important mail, in which if a return receipt is not received then the email is automatically resent.

== Insert signature here ==

In conversations between two Thunderbird users with the setting "Forward messages: inline" set, the signatures will just heap up in a useless mess at the bottom of the e-mails since the signatures are always inserted at the bottom of the mail.

Furthermore, when replying customers' e-mails the signatures are also inserted below their messages which is kind of awkward. A better solution IMHO would be the Outlook Express way where a toolbar button inserts the signature where the user wants it to be. [[User:NisseSthlm|NisseSthlm]] 10:38, 25 Jan 2006 (PST)
:I just realized that there is an option in the Thunderbird settings where you can choose to insert the signature above or below the quote, Outlook Express style. [[User:NisseSthlm|NisseSthlm]] 07:35, 17 April 2006 (PDT)

Good point. You can use Quicktext - Thunderbird Extension in the meantime:
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=thunderbird&category=Newest&numpg=10&id=640

== Easy language switch UI ==

For those of us using more than one language on a daily basis, the inline spell check tool becomes useless half the time. If I want to write a message in English with spell check activated, I first have to open the '''Options...''' dialog and choose the English dictionary. When I'm done writing that e-mail, I have to open the '''Options...''' dialog again and change back to Swedish dictionary. With that many steps (lazy bastard), my dictionary is set to Swedish and will stay set to Swedish, making it useless when writing English e-mails.

I'd like the dropdown menu availiable in the '''Options...''' dialog but placed on the message toolbar.

This option should furthermore change the one word ("wrote") written by Thunderbird when replying a message with the "Forward messages: inline". In Swedish the "XXX XXX wrote:" line would be "XXX XXX skrev:". [[User:NisseSthlm|NisseSthlm]] 11:05, 25 Jan 2006 (PST)

----

I am also struggling with this when having multi-lingual mail output. My approach to solve this would be slightly different: An additional language field in the address book would be great, which would then be used as default setting for spelling and, as mentioned above, generated comments.

== Full text indexing of messages ==

Add the option to full text index incoming messages. Thunderbird maintains its own fulltext index. So instead of going through all physical messages on a search the index is scanned. This will speed up searches dramatically.

== S/MIME X.509 handling ==

I suggest makeing it possible that encrypted mails stored unencrypted after decoding it. Maybe the mails should be stored in a new folder.

The main problem is, that for security reasons, the privat certificate isn't stored on the notebook. In fact it's only stored on a smart-card (a-trust) that is used with an external card reader with a keypad on it to type in the code. If now, for some reasons, this card is broken or the validity of the certificate will be void, there's '''no way''' to read all the previously decrypted mails again.

So I think, that storing mails unencrypted is a very important feature

== email address and identities per SMTP server instead of POP/IMAP ==

I use one single IMAP server that automatically fetches mails from my private and work POP3/IMAP accounts. Unfortunately, sender addresses can only be set per POP3/IMAP account (via identities). That doesn't work well because I can only use one SMTP server for all my email addresses. To solve this, I have created multiple "fake" POP3 accounts and associated them with real SMTP servers. Why don't you move the "identities" feature from the fetching server (POP3/IMAP) to the sending server (SMTP)? It's more intuitive because you send mail via SMTP not via POP3. Also, Thunderbird does not automatically choose the right email address when replying to mail (which is stored on my IMAP server). It's always the default account's address, so if I forget to set it to the correct sender address my mail does not get through mailing lists, for example. It should also be possible to choose the default sender address independently of the default POP3/IMAP server (i.e.: put all that stuff in the SMTP server settings). Thanks!

== IMAP address book (and for Sunbird calendar, todo, etc.) ==

It would be nice to have other address book backends. With LDAP I cannot edit/create contacts (and I currently cannot easily get a list of all contacts). An IMAP address book based on vCards would be a great feature, but it must be standardized because other mailers should implement that, too. This should also allow for PIM features (calendar, etc.), so you can have everything stored on one single account (there aren't that many Exchange servers for personal use, so IMAP is the best compromise).

== Integrate Quick File ==
Quick File is an existing extension to enable keyboard based filing and navigation. See [http://quickfile.mozdev.org/ Quick File on mozdev].

There is a [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=325930 bugzilla bug] for discussion of this.

== Views as main UI ==
The combination of Views and vFolders is one of TBs strengths. With tags, it's get even better. Use it.

Rather than the 3-pane window, TB should have a default window based on different views of your mail. The 3-pane window shows the accounts and folders you have, the default window should show valuable information your mail and messages. For instance it could tell you that there is a total of 43 new messages, 5 of them is from ''People you know'', 22 is from ''A Mailing List'', 8 is from ''Another Mailing List'', 3 is from ''A Feed'' and 5 is from ''A Newsgroup''. Each view from the default window could then be opened in a new tab.

Exactly what should show on the default page should be configurable. It doesn't necessarily have to be new mails, it could be mails marked ToDo (as in ''You have 5 mails marked as ToDo''), or anything else the user may create a custom view for.

In addition to a new default window there should be a Favorite Views toolbar and a dropdown menu of all views (much like bookmarks in Firefox). The 3-pane window should still be an option as it has it's uses, and many users may prefer it. The new default is better for users accustomed to gmail and other Tag/Search-based services, the 3-pane window is for people who is accustomed to folders.

== Ability to customize the Background Color ==

A lot of people find tiring for the eyes to read on a white background. I don't use Thunderbird just because of this problem! (with Foxmail and others I can use the light gray background I put on windows settings).

Good work,

Arzigogolo

== Considering Sproutit Features in Development process ==

Please think about [http://www.sproutit.com/ Sproutit] from [http://www.demo.com/demonstrators/demo2006/63034.html Sprout Systems, Inc.] and ask yourself how to implement the best and most useful features from their program to Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0!

Look at a review from Brian Benziger [http://www.solutionwatch.com/319/sproutit-mailroom-for-small-business-email-management/ here].

Thanks for considering this.

--[[User:UncleFu86|UncleFu86]] 05:25, 14 Feb 2006 (PST)

== Import/Export vcard format to/from Thunderbird Addressbook ==

Applications like Palm Desktop or Lotus Notes usually import and export contacts using vcard (VCF) standard format (rev 2.1 or 3.0).

It would be nice to get this feature added to the import/export features of the Thunderbird address book. Files accepted or generated should be for suitable for single and multiple contacts.

Importing contacts from such applications right now is cumbersome. In windows you can import them from Outlook Express and then import the OE address book from Thunderbird. :-(

Pin

== Simple Mail Access Protocol (SMAP) ==

Support SMAP in addition to IMAP.

See also
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Mail_Access_Protocol
*http://www.courier-mta.org/cone/smap1.html
--[[User:Mozifix|Mozifix]] 02:11, 17 Feb 2006 (PST)

== UI Liftup and stuff ==

1. View pull down menu. (all - unread - important...)
This menu should be replaced with buttons for each entry. In addition an ability to add custom labels should be possible. Buttons should be made on "on" - "off" paradigm, which would enable the possibility to "combine" views like for example "all read" that have "attachments" and are labeled as "to do". Each category would refine the previous view. Left mouse button click would ad/remove this category from selection, while middle mouse button click would clear all except selected. (I expect right mouse button click to open customize)

2. Same changes would be appropriate for the search window + highlighting keywords.

3. Proposed windows layouts are good, (the third all vertical panels is by my opinion unfuctional) but I miss the functionality of the client. For example one very important column in the message view is the entry "mailbox" that the mail belongs to. This would allow filters to be applied for all mail in all mailboxes if user chooses so. This could be again selected as in 1 and 2 with some pull down menu tith checkboxes with all the mailboxes. You simply click the mailbox that you want to be a part of the "all together global" view. This does not mean, that mail is gathered in one mailbox, but merely that results are global for all mailboxes. When grouping mail all from all mailboxes are structured, if you do not want that, you simply do not mark mailboxes and all are shown seperated as now. The email box column should be first and very clear - icons?

4. Force mail, to thread! Sometimes thread gets busted for no obvious reason and the mail has to be "changed" with an extension or by hand. There should be a feature, to allow forcing mail to be part of some thread. That would give users even more power of structuring.
 See [[#Step_4:_Threading.2FGrouping_of_Messages|Major Usability Redesign of Folders & Threads (in 4 Steps)]]

5. Local Folders - mailboxes panel should combine "unsent messages" and "drafts" into "Unsent & Drafts" with ability to send unsent at specific time and date and to warn users for long time not accesed drafts. In case that is a problem, then there should be a possibility to not show some mailboxes or even removing them (e.g. - I never have unsent messages). The info bar should have some info on the size and number of all entries in the mailbox or it's folders.
 See [[#Step_2:_Combined_.22Unsent_Messages.22.2C_.22Drafts.22_and_.22Sent.22_Folders|Major Usability Redesign of Folders & Threads (in 4 Steps)]]

6. Tabs for different profiles - when more than one person sits behind the computer turning on and off the mailboxes is just waste of time.

==General Plug-In able syncronization system==
This has been said several times on one way shape or form so far, but a feature that would put thunderbird over the top for many people is the ability to syncronize data with other devices like a laptop, a phone, a pda, whatever. I think a generic sync system can be built into thunderbird that would allow other devlopers to add device specific communication modules. say for example, my motorola phone. if thunderbird had such a sync system, i could build a motorola plugin that would query the phone for the data it has, pass it to the sync routines, and recieve back the changes that need made to the phone. the sync system would take care of the stuff like who overwrites what, conflict detection, confilict resolution, etc. all my plugin has to do is know how to connect to the device, query the data, and write the changes to it. --willie

I totally agree to that and i still don't understand why this hasn't been implemented yet. I think this is simply something many people need and I don't know any satisfying solutions for this problem.

== New Approach to 3 (or more) Pane UI creation ==

Hardcoded 3 Pane views will never please everyone (unless you hardcode all combinations of layout plus contents). I think there may be a developer toolkit that has this idea, but I don't know the name and will describe instead. The idea is to start with an empty sandbox. Two splitters, one horizontal and one vertical in a toolbar can be drag/dropped onto the sandbox to divide it and subdivide it.

If I wanted a 3 pane view with the message list end to end on top horizontally, I would drag first a horizontal splitter to so divide the box; then I would drag the MessageList widget into that top pane and instantiate it. I then want the folder tree view on the bottom left; drag a vertical splitter into the bottom half of the box, and have two new panes. I'd drag the FolderTree widget into the left, and then drag the MessagePane into the right pane.

Result is a "T" view (one I've never seen but I believe is most space conserving, and takes into account reading ergonomics). Splitters slide of course.

Of course, this can be expanded quite a bit. The 'sidebar' is just another split pane with a particular widget app dropped in it; it doesn't need to be nailed to the 'side', but rather where the user wants it.

Another example: an "H". Drag a vertical, another vertical, and have 3 vertical panes. Then drag a horizontal into the middle pane. Put any widget anywhere you want.

[[User:Alta88|Alta88]] 18:09, 27 Feb 2006 (PST)

== Compatibility of the addressbooks of Outlook 2003 & TB 2.0 ==

There should be a full compatibility of the addressbook with Microsoft Outlook 2003 to support the spreading of TB and to make it really timesaving!
(Export possibility as *.xsl (Excel), Microsoft Access file, *.bcm (Outlook 2003 Business Contact Manager (~CRM)), *.pst (personal folder) and *.wab (Outlook Express addressbook)) --[[User:UncleFu86|UncleFu86]] 14:05, 2 Mar 2006 (PST)

== Discussions : all or watched unread ==

Hello,

I often use the Display menu, Discussions option, to switch between "All" and "Watched unread".

It would be so nice to have a button and/or a keyboard shortcut to do that instantly ...

== UI Redesign: View Tabs - View By Contacts, View By Attachments, Etc. ==

I'd like to see tabs at the main application level. These tabs would allow you to find messages by attachments, contacts, date, etc. Individual mail folders or accounts could be pulled to the tab level as well.

It's a feature I've first seen done well in [http://www.caelo.com/products/about.php Nelson Email Organizer] but it only works with Outlook. A [http://www.caelo.com/images/nelsonscreenshotano_72.jpg screen shot can be found here]

I think this product has some excellent ideas that would take Thunderbird beyond anything Outlook does right now. I know some of the features could be difficult to implement, but I'd like to at least see the Tab concept be taken to the main UI level and not just the message tabs that are being disucssed now.

== Birthay Field in address book for yearly events in Calendar Plugin ==

The most important reason for me to use a addressbook in relation to a calendar is to keep track of birthdays and anniversaries of friends, family, and colleagues.

Thunderbird has an address book, but it doesn't have fields for date of birth or anniversaries.
The nice Mozilla calendar Plugin for Thunderbird doesn't have an address book, forcing you to manually enter every contact's birthday/anniversary.

Sad but true, but this simple features is a reason for me (and a lot of other people), still to use a old fashioned outlook instead a modern open source product like Thunderbird+calendarplugin!
Imho it would be not that big problem to implement a birthday field which can then easily integrated in the calendar plugin as yearly event!

==Don't wrap plain text attachments==

Thunderbird needs an option to NOT autowrap plain text emails.

The best option for this might be to make a menu option for turning on text wrapping. If it is turned off, then one could paste in a patch and it would not wrap the lines. If there was a paragraph or two at the top, then another menu option "rewrap text" while selecting the part you want to wrap would still work. Note, this is a general problem for Linux kernel devopers and free software developers in general. For example see the thread: http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/2/21/360 [[User:Jeff Carr|Jeff Carr]] 12:51, 6 April 2006 (PDT)

== Phishing/Spoofing Reporting Tool ==

A feature that I don't see in any mail clients at the moment is a straight-forward way to report phishing attempts to the appropriate people. Currently, I'm innundated with over 50 phishing attempts per day across a several accounts, and if there was a button (or a menu option) that I could choose to "report phishing" that could, based on the supposed return address, select from a table (that would exist in an external file, updated from someplace on the internet) the correct forwarding address and wrap the message appropriately, then forward it to the right address (be that "spoof@ebay.com" or "abuse@chase.com", to name just two), it would cut down on the amount of effort that must be put in to reporting these things, and that in turn might encourage more people to report these scams as early as possible and reduce the chance that some people will fall for them.

I agree. Firefox 2 is supposed to include a phishing filter, so I was hoping that something like that might also leak into Thunderbird 2. After all, e-mail is where a large amount of the phishing initiates.

== Export is crucial for businesses ==

Exporting of mail and preferences (including rules) are crucial. We know Mozilla would prefer to not have people migrate away from tbird, but real world requires the ability to do so easily. I have found no easy way to do this in Linux.

== Add tags this way ==

There is already an extension that allows you to add tags to Thunderbird. It's called HeaderTools and in it's latest version (0.56) it's easy to add tags to mails. Check this [http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=2255007#2255007 thread] for more info.

With a few UI-improvements this extension does everything that is planned for tags when it comes to TB 2.0. Should save the developers a lot of work.

== New search options ==

I'd like to see 2 new search options in Thunderbird 2.0:
Subject or To or CC
Subject or Sender or To or CC

Also the original bug 279855 has been fixed.

The patch for Thunderbird 1.5(.0.2) works for me for 3 month without any problems.

A patch is available at:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=279855#c8

I would like a "search everywhere" option (like in Eudora) (which ammounts to search in the whole message source)

== Address book improvements ==

It will be fine to implement tree structure for address book or implement grouping addresses by firm for example.
I'm using a few accounts with TD - one for private mailing, another for bussines etc. It will be very usefull to associate default mail account for sending message with vcard.
Sorry for my english.

== Allow Different Location for Address Book / Email ==

One feature that I would find helpful is the ability to create an address book at another location -- for example, on a network shared drive. On my home network, I store most of my files on a common network fileserver that is backed up on a regular basis. By allowing me to store my address book on this drive would make it available to all of the computers on my network as well as ensure that it is backed up with all of my other personal data.

The feature could be implemented either by allowing the folder Thunderbird uses to be changed in options or using standard File Open/Save dialogs to manage address books.

== Catalog and list management ==

If a group of users like to make an arrangement for a social event, they need to collect and merge all answers and changes for this event from each user in separated list. For example:
If a user has some friends and need to know what the others can bring along for the next party. Then he send an email to his friends and asks for ideas. All friends normally send a message back to all others (Reply All) and checks the incoming message of the others for collisions, e.g. to many drinks and no food.
An easy list filter can collect all emails for the specified list (special ID) and should merge the special list entry of each user-email (in a separated data structure). Furthermore a pure list GUI would help to keep track of it.

== Take into account the studies & experiences of the IBM Remail Project! ==

I think it would be VERY important and useful to take into account the deliberations the Collaborative User Experience (CUE) team in IBM Research made in / at / with [url=http://www.research.ibm.com/remail/index.html]Remail[/url]!

Please also notify me about your progress / idea concerning this appeal of mine!

Thanks in advance!

--[[User:UncleFu86|UncleFu86]] 04:53, 4 July 2006 (PDT)

== application/mbox MIME support ==

I'd like to encourage the adoption of [ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc4155.txt RFC4155], which defines an application/mbox media-type for email systems. Essentially it defines a MIME type for *.mbox files, which gives you a hook into mailfolders on a filesystem, similar to the way that Web browser have hooks into *.html files.

Some of the ways that this could be used in Thunderbird:

Read/Search mail messages in a folder that has not been imported into the client (EG, download a mailing list archive in Firefox and have Thunderbird display the folder as if it were part of the local mailstore)

Archive an existing folder to a disk-based folder, such as when a project has been completed, with awareness that it is in fact a mailstore object

Import a folder, such as a historical archive or a mailing list archive, etc.

Send/receive folders as email attachments

Most of that is possible today with extraneous tools, but it would be nice if Thunderbird had direct support for this kind of feature set without requiring the user to import a folder for direct manipulation.

Better support for raw message/rfc822 filesystem objects would be cool too, of course.

Thanks

ps--yes, I'm the author of that RFC

== Differentiate between sent and unsent-but-saved drafts ==

It'd be nice to be able to distinguish between sent drafts and unsent-but-saved drafts in my Thunderbird drafts folder.
 See [[#Step_2:_Combined_.22Unsent_Messages.22.2C_.22Drafts.22_and_.22Sent.22_Folders|Major Usability Redesign of Folders & Threads (in 4 Steps)]]

== Post-it style note for Incoming e-mail ==

there is a frequent need to make a note on a piece of incoming mail and then keep it in incoming or a follow-up folder for additional action as cited in the postit. Keep in mind, software for data processing should be an emulation of what would be a normal "by-hand" process - only smarter and more efficient. Follow-up stickys on hard copy files are an everyday process - probably in the millions daily. We need it in our paperless workplace.

== Major Usability Redesign of Folders & Threads (in 4 Steps) ==

=== Step 1: Combined Sender/Receiver Column ===
'''Problem:''' Currently, in each custom mail folder there is a column for the sender of the message. For outgoing messages this is always ''your'' name. But you can't see the receiver! (Sure you can display the column for the receiver, but the result are two redundant columns with only one information, since in one of the two is always your own name).

[[Image:CombinedToFromColumn.gif|Screenshot: Combined To/From-Column]]

'''Proposed Improvement:''' Combine the sender and receiver columns to one "who" column. This column would always show the other person's name, and never your own. To differentiate between incoming and outgoing messages, use emphasis (e.g. print outgoing messages in italics) and/or prefix outgoing messages with boldface/italics "To: " and/or use another (small) column showing an icon. Best solution, of course, would be to let the user select the way of emphasizing (italics, color, icon(s), etc.).

This was already filed as: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36489 Bug 36489] (for SeaMonkey), [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=274232 Bug 274232] (for Thunderbird), and [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=359270 Bug 359270] (for Penelope, the Mozilla follow-up to Eudora).

This step is, by and large, resolved with the extension [http://www.ggbs.de/extensions/ShowInOut.html Show InOut]. So my suggestion is to include this extension's functionality into Thunderbird and set it as the default behavior.

=== Step 2: Combined "Unsent Messages", "Drafts" and "Sent" Folder ===
'''Problem:''' Currently, the folders "Unsent Messages" and "Drafts" are (almost) empty for (almost) all users (almost) all of the time. The purpose of having three different outgoing folders (Unsent Messages, Drafts, Sent) is only to differentiate between the status of the mail.

This has already been filed as [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=197228 Bug 197228]
and was suggested before, see point 5. at [[#UI_Liftup_and_stuff|UI Liftup and stuff]]

[[Image:CombinedOutFolder.gif]]

'''Proposed Improvement:''' Combine these three folders to one "Out" folder. And show the status of the message by using emphasis (bold face for messages not yet sent) and/or a (small) column showing a status icon.

'''Rationale:''' From a logical point of view, an outgoing message not yet sent is equivalent to an incoming message not yet read. But only the latter are displayed in bold face in one combined "Inbox" folder (containing read messages as well as unread messages). So why not use the same simple system for outgoing as well?

'''Note:''' By using different status icons, you could easily differentiate between sent drafts, unsent-but-saved drafts, messages ready to be sent, messages whose sending failed, etc., as suggested at [[#Differentiate_between_sent_and_unsent-but-saved_drafts|Differentiate between sent and unsent-but-saved drafts]]

=== Step 3: Combined "In" and "Out" Folder ===
'''Problem:''' Currently, if a user sticks with the default folders "Inbox" and "Sent", incoming and outgoing messages are strictly separated. But if the user creates custom folders, they contain both incoming and outgoing messages. This is inconsistent.

'''Proposed Improvement:''' Combine the folders "Inbox" and "Out" (from Step 2) to one "Main" folder. The differentiation between incoming and outgoing messages is achieved through emhpasis (e.g. italics, see Step 1). And the differentiation between sent and unsent is achieved through bold face (or icon, see Step 2).

'''Rationale:''' Any custom folder is a combined incoming/outgoing folder. Why shouldn't this system work for the program's default folders too?

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=301084 Bug 301084] is related to this step: The bug requests the option to automatically store replies in the same folder in which the original message is stored in. I'm suggesting the same thing for the default In/Out folders too.

=== Step 4: Threading/Grouping of Messages ===
'''Rationale:''' Most email communication is threaded: I write a message, I receive a reply, I reply again, and so on. Single messages are the exception, not the rule.

'''Problem:''' Currently, threaded messages are treated as exceptions. The message grouping function is ridiculous & unusable.

'''Proposed Improvement:''' See points 1. to 4. at [[#Improved_sorting_and_grouping_of_messages|Improved sorting and grouping of messages]]
and point (2) at [[#sorting_messages_by_subject_.28as_thread.29|sorting messages by subject (as thread)]].
 Point 4. at [[#UI_Liftup_and_stuff|UI Liftup and stuff]] is a duplicate.

'''In short:''' The entire system should work as the folder tree in Windows Explorer: Expand&collapse threads, drag&drop messages, rename, and so on.

'''Suggestion on the display of those threads:''' See
[[#Show_subject_in_threads_only_one_time_-_show_names_in_position_of_subject|Show subject in threads only one time - show names in position of subject]]

I list this as Step 4 here, because to me, such a grouping/threading feature only makes sense if it encompasses incoming as well as outgoing messages. There's no point in having "parallel" threads in the folders "Inbox" and "Sent".

'''Overall:''' In order not to confuse users, maybe you could keep the existing system as well and let the user choose the "Folder Setup" between "Outlook-style" and "Improved Usability" ;-)

--[[User:ThomasLandauer|ThomasLandauer]] 10:18, 16 August 2006 (PDT)

Hey Thomas -- have you put all this information about UI and usage overhaul together? This is not less than MIND-BOGGLING, and should get as much community attention as possible.

This is especially valid for the part:

'''The entire system should work as the folder tree in Windows Explorer: Expand&collapse threads, drag&drop messages, rename, and so on.'''

Your above steps 1 through 4 actually are a '''complete revolution''' and redefinition of what an e-mail client actually should do. I KNOW that one day every proper e-mail client will be acting '''exactly''' like this (because mine, and probably yours as well, does already; and since this is like "the invention of the wheel" to me ;).

Although your article possibly points a long way into the future of e-mail, I hope that it won't take like 5 to 10 years to accomplish these fantastic features...

Only thing is now, how can we carry this discussion into the brainstorming process of Thunderbird v.3, effectively?

May I finally add my screenshot visualizing ''some'' of your proposals already below? http://home.arcor.de/david-peters/TB.png

== Auto-Hiding Preview Pane ==

The preview pane should have an auto-hide-option. Set, it should not be drawn by default and only appear whenever the user selects a message (maybe after a short delay of a second or so). It should dissappear again either after the user clicks on a respective hide-button or as soon as he starts scrolling.

Example: This way, the user can go through his folder more easily (more space). He may select a message to briefly check its content (the preview pane pops up), see its not the one he is looking for, start scrolling again (or hits the hide button) and the preview dissapears.
This is a very effective way of implementing the preview, other mailing apps (i think pocomail?) have it. It should of course be toggleable, maybe even making switching between fixed, auto-hiding and no preview possible via keyboard shortcut (think F8).

== Status Log ==

There should be an option to display a log that contains the last status message (like the one displayed in the status bar). A user might return to his desk after some time and find it sensible to see wether TB did check emails, when it did, how many new messages where there and how many where successfully fetched.
This may give a better experience to some users, especially the rather unexperienced ones: A programms actions (if so important and essential to the programms intention like the ones mentioned are to TB) must be transparent to the user.

== Search Messages results previewed in new message area pane ==

After searching emails for specific content (or a sender, etc.) the results appear below in another pane, which lists all of the emails that fulfill the search criterion.

But in order to view any of these emails, one must click on each and open it in a new window.

It would be much better if there was a third pane that showed the contents of the selected email, so that one could quickly go down the listing and see the contents of each email.

== Importing Mail from Mac OS X Mail ==

When I was moving all the mbox's from folder to folder, with little instruction where exactly to put them, I almost gave up and stuck with Mac Mail. It took an entire night- this is very important. I had more then one account on Mac Mail, making it hard to switch.

== Implementing md5-checksum creator for e-mail attachments ==

I'd like to see the automatical copy&paste of the md5-checksum of the imported attachments into one's E-Mail, so one could send the e-mail immediatly and fast with automatically integrated, correct md5-checksums to someone else!
This would enchance security issues greatly, while saving a lot of time for users using md5-checksums a lot of times! --[[User:UncleFu86|UncleFu86]] 12:30, 25 September 2006 (PDT)

== Ability to select from multiple VCFs to attach to an outgoing message ==

I have several functions in my job, and have two official titles which I use depending on whom I'm communicating with. It would be great if, for each outgoing message, one could choose from a pop-up menu which of several VCF files (or none) to attach to that particular message. All for the same identity.

Also, as mentioned by others, I would very much like to see VCF import capability into the address book. Drag & drop import/export would be fantastic.

== Microformats support: iCalendar / vCalendar / iCard / vCard ==

:(is this page intentionally kept unstructured? is it a good idea, to make a separate section for the addressbook, for example?)

Looking at http://microformats.org gives many hopes for standardising the field of contact and event management fields, especially after what Google Calendar has created. For me, the clear need is to make the Addressbook an external application, and make Firefox, Calendar/Sunbird, and Thunderbird use it. I have put the iCalendar support also here, because email client has to pupport it, in order to understand the "event" microformat attachments to emails. Interchangeability of the contacts and events/appointments should be a cooperative aim for the information exchange application creators, like the RSS technology. It's not about proprietarisation and dominating the market. It's about possibilities for the user. What do You think? (sorry, I haven't signed at first) (it is now 13:04, as I write it)--[[User:Njpl|Njpl]] 04:04, 1 October 2006 (PDT)

== Back und Forward buttons / History of "visited" folders ==

I think it would be swell if Thunderbird sported a history of the last visited folders and gave us a forward and back button to navigate that history. I often find myself wondering where that last message I looked at was located before that new email arrived. Clicking on "Back" in this moment would save hours of my life time. The history wouldn't have to be very long and it doesn't have to be saved between sessions. 20 entries should do just fine. --[[User:Manni|Manni]] 23:15, 15 October 2006 (PDT)

== Offer a default Domain option ==

Please add a preference in which you can define a default domain to be added to all addresses which don't have one. Eudora has this feature. For me, T'bird is unusable without it.
--[[User:Mkmelin|Mkmelin]]: isn't that what the mail.identity.default.autocompleteToMyDomain pref is for?

== Thunderbird should recognize that an email address is already known.==

Right now (1.5.7) I always press ADD TO personal ADDRESSBOOK and in the same moment Thunderbird creates the second, third, fourth entry about the very same email address.

As Gmail user I am used to alaways press the ADD to ADRESSBOOK - Button, whenever it is visible.

The only workaround is to filter unknown persons into an extra folder, what I normally wouldn?t do. It?s not such a big problem for myself, but it prevents me from installing Thunderbird to a secretary office, where Outlook 2003 is still in daily use by some girls who don?t know yet about my plan to give Thunderbird as gift to them. [[User:Steffen Kaufmann|SK october 21th]]

== Add personalized categories for contacts ==

Thunderbird could have more options to categorize and manage contacts. Contact list is great but could be completed with categories : when you can add category to contacts, you can create a contact list yourself in 2 clicks when writing a new message. It's a great idea for managing contacts efficiently when we have so much contacts... the contact list is a list ready to send, the category are a efficient search and managing help.

The search box could make advanced searches with categories. THIS would be very professional, txs!

'''''NOTE: TB Addressbook''''' 1.5.0.8 '''''already has a "category" item!'''''

Unfortunatly it's not presented on the standard TB/AB UI.

Currently it's not a problem to enable it with a user-written extension .. that's I have done based on the extension "MoreColsforAddressbook".

Because this TB-item is widely unknown -- as the usage is -- it's not clear if in the future this item will be part of the standard definition!

Please see on ''mozilla.dev.apps.thunderbird'':
[http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.thunderbird/browse_thread/thread/548e829a9960447/9281235a93662d66?lnk=gst&q=neandr&rnum=5#9281235a93662d66]
Comment by >>Mark Banner Di 28 Nov. 2006 16:04<<
-- [[User:Neandr|neandr]] 02:50, 15 December 2006 (PST)

== Show contacts of a contact list in the To: field when sending message ==

When sending a message to a contact list, it's great to have the possibility to delete just one or two person in the contact list without modify the contact list itself, or it's just important to see who's on the list.

So if thunderbird can show and let choose the contacts of a contact list when sending message, it would be great!

----
The way outlook do this is by giving a [+] in front of email list name in To/CC entry box.
Clicking on the "+" expands the list into individual mail ids

[Added] I also vote for such an option but I would like a different behaviour: it should be possible that when adding a contact list to the recipients field that all entries are expanded into single lines, rather than one line which shows the name of the list. It would then be easy to delete some entries or change To to BCC or BC.

== Notification icon ==

For God's sake, PLEASE get Thunderbird on Mac OS X to not show the Local Folders folder (and dock icon) as unread if one has quickly manually selected (and either moved away from or deleted) all unread messages. Although the blue indicator turns off successfully if one selects items slowly, it will not turn off if one has selected and moved away from or deleted the last unread message. This is especially annoying if one frequently receives junk mail and wishes to quickly delete the junk mail. Thank you!!!!

== Scan to Email in Windows==
I got a "scan to email" option on my scanner which I'd love to use. When I choose "Scan to Image" the standard scanner wizard is started and saves the file to some location. If there would be some trick to get the wizard attach the image to a new email, it would be quite a great feature which wouldn't require much work.

Of coure, I don't think that Thunderbird should containt a full scanning software, but this trick would make it a bit better. Thanks.

== Allow reply header option like outlook ==

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=67089 bug 67089]

-----Original Message-----
From: SenderName <senderemail@yourisp.com>
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2001 8:42 AM
To: YourName <youremail@yourisp.com>
Subject: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hi,
Original mail content

== Easy switch for outgoing mail server. ==

People may be using a Laptop at home or at office.
Email client should make it easy to switch outgoing mail server.
May be something similar to [https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/125/ SwitchProxy Tool].

== Contact's default account ==

Would it be possible to add the ability to set a default account for each contact in my address book. For security reasons, my employers use a separate mail-server for 'internal' and for 'external' mail, and further, I sometimes send email to test/dev systems. It would be very nice if tb would select the correct outgoing server for the contact, instead of my having to manually select each time.

== True portability ==

After using Portable Thunderbird for a while so that I can access my accounts and mail from three different computers, I started to wonder why Thunderbird isn't more portability-friendly to begin with.

Since I don't want to run Portable Thunderbird off my USB all day at work, I synch my profile to Portable Thunderbird every evening and run that at home. But it's not entirely smooth: Portable Thunderbird always wants to rebuild summary files (which can take a while for a big Sent mail folder, for example), etc. And even then, odd things happen - read mail is sometimes marked unread, etc. And trying to copy files between computers without Portable Thunderbird is truly maddening!

IMAP is fine if you can count on unlimited storage and bullet-proof Net access 24/7...but many users would benefit from structuring Thunderbird so that the profile folder is completely independent of where or how it's installed. The user should be able to simply copy his/her profile folder from one computer to the next and voila. To keep this trim, it might even be desirable to keep extension and theme data in a separate folder, which likewise would ideally be completely portable.

== Mail file structure ==

Is one large file for each mail folder really the most efficient way to go? Almost every major problem I've had or heard about with Thunderbird comes from some kind of corruption or other problem with these files, which can get huge. Plus, this structure necessitates all kinds of other things like file compaction, attachment stripping, etc. The profile folder is confusing with contents-less folders, summary files, duplicate file structures for individual accounts and global folders, etc. I would love to see this smoothed out and streamlined.

This is one of my largest gripes. Access is really slow with large folders/files. Is SQLite a possibility? There is a JDBC port that may be integrated into Thunderbird. Third party programs would also be able to access the data easily (not that accessing a text file is difficult, but parsing is a mess!)

Of course, SQLite storing all information in one file is also prone to expensive data losses.

== Strip attachments enhancements ==

The ability to strip an attachment from a message is great, but could be improved: (1) option to automatically strip attachments from messages as they're saved in the Sent folder, (2) filter that can strip attachments from all messages in a specified folder

== Address Book Features ==

I would like to have the option to "tag" each contact as "primary contact" and have a list of my primary contacts appear on the main window in a cell below the folder structure. From this "primary contact" list along with the complete address book, double clicking a name would create an e-mail. I would like to see multiple selection e.g. single clicking on multiple names would then give the option to add those selected contacts in the cc or bcc fields.

== Address Book Option: HTML Mails ==

In Thunderbird there is a setting how to react when a HTML mail is to be send to a recipient who does not wish to receive HTML formatted mail (settable by the "Recipient refuses HTML"-popup-menu). However, if the according setting in the addressbook is left at the default value 'unknown HTML preference' Thunderbird automatically assumes that the recipient refuses to get HTML-Mails. I propose to add a setting where one can choose if 'unknown' means 'recipient refuses HTML mail' or 'recipient accepts HTML mail'. This setting could be accessed by a checkmark in the settings dialog besides the "Recipient refuses HTML"-popup-menu.

== Multiple Install Instances of Thunderbird ==

One of the features I've most enjoyed about my long time client, Eudora, was the ability to install and run multiple instances of the program, if you so choose. This has allowed me to keep my various business accounts completely separate from my various personal accounts. If I want to access my business e-mail, I simply open that instance of Eudora. No configuring of multiple logons, servers, etc. Simply open one program for one e-mail account.

It also greatly simplifies the backing up of my e-mail, complete with all settings and customizations, since you simply back up the entire folder - without the need to search for additional parts and pieces.

Qualcomm has stated that they are releasing Eudora to the open source community, and I've read that the Thunderbird team will be taking a crack at it, either incorporating features of Eudora into Tbird, or visa versa. If any Eudora feature makes it into Tbird, I hope this is the one. And, if any features are going to be removed from Eudora, please leave this one.

I use Tbird at work, as I only have the one account to contend with there. But, at home, where I shuffle a minimum of six accounts at all times, I still use Eudora, simply for the reason noted above. Otherwise, liking the feature set and functionality of Tbird immensely, I likely would have already switched.

== Password Protect Message Panes Upon Bootup ==

It would be nice if there was an option to prohibit access to Thunderbird when it is booted unless a password is entered. This would be helpful in case there were confidential information stored in email messages on the hard drive.

== Server side mail filter support ==
I think that integration with server side mail filter will be a real good thing. The integration will use the existing filter wizard and a checkbox indicate that the rule will be stored on the server. The checkbox is active only when a server protocol is supported.
The Cyrus Sieve via timsieved can be the first system to be integrated.
--[[User:Malix|Malix]] 18:57, 14 Jan 2006 (PST)

A further enhancement to this implementation would be to automatically parse any server side script (either Thunderbird generated or otherwise) to see which folders are destinations for server side filters. Thunderbird could then automatically check these folders for new mail messages. This would suppliment the ability for a user to manually specify which folders to check via the folder properties dialog. It may be that some users would not like this feature and so it should be a user option e.g. "Check filter destinations for new mail".
--[[User:Coling|Coling]] 22:25, 25 Jan 2006 (GMT)

==Merging "Message Filter"-entries / creating rules from multiple messages==
Just select e.g. 2 messages and select the menu "create filter from message".
Would also be nice if you could select 2 (or more) filter entries and make one of them. --[[User:AliB|aliB]]

== Allow Filters not only for Inbox ==

It would be nice to be able to set up Filter Rules that work on an arbitrary Folder, example:

For Folder |Sent| :

[ ]Match all of the following [x]Match any of the following

|Age in days| |is| |30|

Perform these actions:

|Move Message to| |Trash|

--[[User:Stebs|Stebs]] 30 Nov 2005

I agree. I had to disable a filter for moving in my Sent file to another folder in order to have a filter based on a particular domain for the Inbox of one account. Looked for an extension that would handle this, there was none. Can we please make this a feature?

--[[User:M7csat|M7csat]] 13:02, 5 July 2006 (PDT)

I would use this tool exactly the same way: deleting sent mail after some number of days. Currently, you can set up this filter and it works, but it has to be run manually. Filters that can run on a specific folder and *according to a specific schedule* (on startup, on shutdown, daily, weekly...) would be a great improvment.

== Allow adaptive filters not only for Junk ==

Similar to not only allow Filters for any folder it would be nice to have different adaptive filters apply to different folders/collections of messages. So one could possibly train a filter to match the most interesting items on an RSS stream, and use the same filter on a folder where the mails from a newly subscribed mailing list with similar content goes. Used in this way, the adaptive filter would be a positive filter, which could be used in filter rules. Each adaptive Filter would have name and a message could be matched by more than one filter (where the highest priority rule succeeds).

This kind of adaptive filtering would greatly improve searching through news items as tastes and interests would manifest themselves in the adaptive filters.

--[[User:heron|heron]] 30 Nov 2005

I support this suggestion. To take it a little further. From using other email packages, being able to do relative date filtering is a plus [if XXX days (weeks, months) then move (delete, copy, foward)] . It allowed me to execute an action based on age of email, e.g., automatic deletion after 30 days old. The big plus here is, managing the volume of email, espeically if you have limited space.
--[User:benjiesp] 12 MAY 2006

Thanks

A negative filtering like junk would be very interesting for the items on amo-feeds. --[[User:Archaeopteryx|Archaeopteryx]] 05:39, 10 October 2006 (PDT)

== Extended Filter options ==

Filters in current versions of TB have an option for 'any of the following' or 'all of the following' which is either a giant union or intersection of all filter rules. It would be very useful if we could make more complex boolean expressions, like adding OR and AND between the different rules. Furthermore, it
would be helpful if you could import filters into filters.

It would also be nice to create filters from mails, e.g. mails from any of the recipients of a certain message should be moved to a folder.

If it's possible to link a filter to a list in the addressbook, e.g. if the sender matches any of the members in the list, move the mail to a folder, that would save the double work to manage the list both in the addressbook and the filter.

Added comment: Also Demon Turnpike-like regexps in text is needed. This would allow something like pe[n]+*s to cover pennis, pen1s and so on. I find some of my Turnpike single expressions turn into a dozen in TB.

It would be nice if you can start some script action, depending on your filter rules. E.g. start an alert bell if a mail comes in from a special sender. Scripts would ideally not be limited to some Thunderbird sub-language, but could actually run files on the filesystem (such as Microsoft Entourage 2004 does). Thus, one could expand on the alert bell idea to have a script selectively run (e.g., Applescript on Mac OS) to turn up the computer's speakers and speak out the name of the sender.

== Filter for all accounts ==

If you create a filter for e.g. "username@provider.com", the filter doesn't have any affect on account "username2@provider.com".

There should be an option, if you want to create the filter for only this account, for some special (menue-list) or for all accounts...

It's very useful, I think... I think it could be alredy in Thunderbird 1.5? Or isn't the idea bad? ;-)

Dear, MCXSC

== Possibility to set "Junk" flag via filter ==

Hi,

it would be great, if you can create a rule in the "filter" area, that sets the "Junk"-flag for e-mails.

s.g. All incomming mail should automatically marked as junk, if the subject line is empty.

'''Edit by schiieech:''' That?s allready included in TB 1.5. It is called "Set Junk Status to".

== Editing Message Filters - Move To: Folder PopUp too short ==

Using Thunderbird 1.5b on Mac OS 10.4.3, when I edit a message filter, and choose (from the lower pane) Move To, the right pop-up displays my message folders as expected, but the list is so narrow that the folder names are truncated so much as to be mostly unreadable. Resizing the dialog window makes no difference.

I'm a newbie to both Thunderbird AND this wiki, so I hope I've put this in the right place.

== Auto Forward From Drop In Folder or Report as Spam Button ==

Many of us have server spam filters. By simply forwarding a Spam back to a particular address on the server, it is reported to that system as spam or ham for future reference.

It looks like Thunderbird is so very close to having this, but it requires a filter action to do the auto forwarding.

I would like to be able to set a filter on a folder, where any message I move into that folder is forwarded back to my spam reporting address. Alternatively, have a single button for forwarding any particular email back to the server's spam address.

This would be useful for many anti-spam systems. One could use this to both whitelist and blacklist via SpamAssassin. Report spam to Dspam. End the arduous task of selecting forward and then beginning to type in the spam reporting address and then clicking on send.. one drop or one click would be awesome.

== "I don't know" category for spam filtering ==

This is one of the most useful features of SpamBayes, and I haven't seen it implemented in any other Bayesian spam filter. The idea is that instead of setting one threshold between "spam" and "not spam," you can set two thresholds - one for "anything below this is certainly not spam," and one for "anything above this is certainly spam." Anything between the two thresholds falls into the "I don't know" category.

Note that this feature does not require any change to the basic Bayesian algorithm that assigns the scores; it simply provides more flexible handling of the messages once the scores are assigned.

With this in place, SpamBayes currently achieves nearly 100% accuracy for me - in the sense that no spam is ever filed as not spam, and vice-versa. A very small percentage of my email goes into the "I don't know" category, where it is easy to review. Also training only the messages that fall into this category is a pretty easy and effective training strategy.

With this one feature, I believe I could stop using SpamBayes, and take advantage of the tighter integration of the Thunderbird spam filtering.

== Message Filters: Make "Match all of the following" the default ==

When a new filter is entered using multiple rules, the choice "Match ALL of the following" should be the default, not "Match ANY of the following". The reason: If the user forgets to check this setting altogether, the suggested new default will touch the smaller number of message and thus cause less damage. --[[User:Jos|Jos]] 11:30, 3 Mar 2006 (CET)

== More capable filtering ==

I used Eudora for years and the only thing I truly miss now that I use Thunderbird is the really excellent filtering abilities Eudora has. Even Outlook has much better filtering than Thunderbird. This is a major reason why several colleagues I know refuse to switch to Thunderbird. It is also the only issue that regularly causes me frustration with Thunderbird.

To start with all incoming Emails really need to be tagged with their "profile" so that this never gets lost. Basically this just means that the email account that received the message (POP, IMAP or whatever) gets permanently assigned to the email no matter where it ends up in the folders or whatever. This information is incredibly helpful later for good filtering and to figure out what email address to use as the from when replying.

Selection criteria suggestions for filters:
<ul>
<li>It should be possible to indicate if a filter applies to incoming, outgoing or both</li>
<li>You should be able to select "is in my address book" or "isn't in my address book" for To, Cc and "To or cc" in addition to "from"</li>
<li>It needs to be possible to use which profile (see above) a message belongs to as a criteria.</li>
</ul>

Filter action suggestions:
<ul>
<li>Bounce message to (same as Forward but does a bounce instead)</li>
<li>Set profile / account to - allows the profile which gets assigned automatically to be changed by a filter (which can be very handy)</li>
<li>Set subject to - allows user to change the subject of the message. Some token should be assigned to allow inserting the old subject into the new one (so that text can be added to the subject).</li>
<li>Play Sound - Plays a custom sound if the filter criteria matches</li>
<li>Speak - Very unlikely to get added, just thrown in since its is a new feature in Eudora and would be cool. Basically speaks the from and subject contents aloud. Useful for really important messages.</li>
<li>Print - immediately sends the message to the default printer. Useful for automation such as when sales orders or such are received.</li>
<li>Pop-Up Message - Displays a pop-up notification message regarding the message (this could contain the from & subject fields or whatever). Useful for really important messages.</li>
<li>Launch Application - runs a application specified by the user. Email info can be passed on the command line by allowing the user to indicate a tokenized command line as part of the application they specify.</li>
<li>Stop Filtering - Prevents any further filters from being run on the message. Unless this is encountered all filters which apply are executed. This is very useful to prevent "default" rules which are frequently added at the end of the filter list from being executed.</li>
</ul>

One primary requirement is that it be much easier to manage filters when a user has many email accounts / profiles. I've been forced to duplicate the same filter across many email accounts which is difficult to manage. Since I use the shared inbox extensively but it is impossible to use which account received a message as a criteria I am unable to really utilize the new filters on the global inbox capability in TB1.5 which is unfortunate. Trying account / profile information to emails and allowing filters to use this along with some of the other above suggestions would make filters much more useful in v2.0.

Filtering capabilities such as the above would allow many power users who are currently stuck using other clients the choice to move to Thunderbird. These should be very useful to a broad range of users who rely on Thunderbird.

<hr />
I agree, the feature that keeps me using kmail is the ability to use a filter
to pipe a message to a program (script). I believe that using a pipe is often
more useful than the "command line" approace in Launch Application above.

[Added] More options to adjust if and what kind of information is displayed upon new message arrival seems to me crucial for many users as email has become such an attention-draw-off with new emails arriving every few moments e.g. if you subscribed to some newsletters. I think it would be great if options to modify mailbox alerts would be merged with the message filter. E.g. I would like an option to disable mailbox alerts for all messages I move to a different folder. Or to only show alerts for messages with high priority.

== Message Filters should have sortable views ==

Problem: If you have a great number of message filters it is a '''VERY''' hard to track down a filter if you want to update it (I have over 200 - covering mailing lists and work contacts - each message is sent to its own folder)

1) It would be very nice if the filter sort view option was restored (it was removed a while back)

2) Add a search option for those of us with a large number of filters

3) Allow the actions of filters to be nested

4) Create/Edit filter option when dragging a message to a folder

-----
I would just like to reiterate this contributor's plea. I've been ALL OVER the Mozilla site trying to find out how to do this, and it surprises me that such sorting isn't available yet. I migrated from Netscape, where it was possible to sort filters by name. I don't have the technical prowess to suggest the "how" but I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing for the improvement. Thanks.

==Drag&Drop surface for creating filter rules from adressbook==

There should be a graphical possibility to create simple filter rules:
A window with (vertical) split view: the adressbook on the left, the mail folders on the right. Then simple mail filters (move mail to folder, if adress matches) can be created by dragging single / multiple adresses or adress lists from the adressbook onto the folder, where the according mails should be moved to.
A dialog window should warn in case of collisions (e.g. mails from one adress are already moved to another folder).
There should be a possibility to view the existing filters, too. This information could be displayed e.g. on mouse-over or the folder could be expanded/collapsed (+/- button) to view the assigned mail adresses.

--[[User:Clemente|Clemente]] 16:09, 2. May 2006 (MEST)

== Email notification sounds ==

I second the suggestion above for
*Add custom sound files as a selectable action in the filters. So that rules can trigger a different wav file for each sender.
The closest thing currently available is a [https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2085/ randomizer]. -[[User:Monkey1|Monkey1]] 00:51, 26 May 2006 (PDT)

== Permit the dumping/filtering of non-text email ==

Add a filter that would strip (and delete) the html copy of a message when both text and html versions are included. And, when no text version is provided, convert the html version to pure text by stripping the html tags and retaining the resulting text as the body of the message. Selecting only the first and filtering when the resulting message is null would eliminate html-only messages.

==Filter enchancement: execution after reading==
Filters for inbox are executing after receiving. In my office where TB runs
permanently and I'm not always front of my screen, I miss some mails because
they are already filtered and moved to the defined folder. This follows into
to lost the message in the way, that I can not react just-in-time. It would be
better, if I can define for '''some''' of the filters that it shall be executed
in inbox '''after''' reading the message. --[[User:Celald|Celald]] 02:54, 26 October 2006 (PDT)

==Establish a standard COM/OLE interface for automation from external programs.==
An automation model loadable thru the standard component methods from Borland Delphi and C++, VBscript, VBA, etc would allow Thunderbird (and Firefox if you must) to act as a component of a larger system. Current methodology seems to be to try and focus all development within Thunderbird, almost like an O/S within and O/S. Outlook offered plugins, but also offered the Outlook Object Model and MailItem/Folder interfaces and Imessage interface. I personally prefer to just have an external app launched or messaged by the mail client and to then automate the mail client, keeping all of the automation logic in the backend processor instead of in the mail client or its add-ins. This allows programmers to perform tasks within the application from languages and environments with which they are already familiar and to easily integrate application functionality into existing system. For example, message sorting into folders based on business rules, and triggered by external events, like shipping system updates. This external approach also seems to limit the impact that individual application changes have to system operation.

Example of what I do now: Outlook launches an external Windows app (order manager) with every new message (via Rules Wizard). The external order manager app uses msoutl9.olb type library imported as components into Borland C++. This app opens the inbox and reads the new messages, looking for order confirmations sent from a website. The order confirmations are XML attachments and are processed into a MySQL database. The emails are sorted into folders based on order number, for easy retrieval later if needed. The UPS shipper program exports data into the same MySQL database. The order manager program scans the shipping tables for tracking numbers as orders come in, or when an operator tells it to update. Once the orders are in shipment status the order manager generates email messages in the outlook drafts folder and then sends them. This has the added benefit of archiving both inbound and outbound emails for each order within the outlook folders.

What I'd like to do:
Use Thunderbird instead of Outlook.

Additional automation such as calendaring, memos, and to do lists are also possible with the OOM.

== Only Text Mails Bug ==

I'm not sure if this bug is already reported, but when I do copy&paste into a mail that is marked as "Text only"--rather than HTML or RTF--and I do copy&paste, the inserted text seems to get handled as RTF.

This is terribly bad. It might be a good idea to replace the RTF-Control with a Text-Control and disable all Formating-Buttons when the mail is set into the Text-only-Mode.

[[User:MovGP0|MovGP0]] 23:57, 23 June 2007 (PDT)

== UI Enhancements ==

I've noticed that some semantic identical elements are not handeled the same way throughout Thunderbird.

;Example
* When I rightclick on a mail adress in the previw window of a mail it does other things then when I do the same after opening the mail. Also, after rightclick on a mailaddress in the maillist leads to a completly different context menu. From the user view, this is complete irrational.

A possible way to solve this would be specialized components. There should be a dedicated Mail-Control that is useable from XUL which gives a well defined set of functions. Dependend on the context, some features might get disabled.

;Examples
* If the address is already in the contact list there is no need to do it again
* It should be possible to reply to a mailadress even in the preview
* When composing a new mail, it should be possible to change the contact data directly by right-click on the address/name. There should be a kind of auto-complete when entering new data.

''see also:''
* [http://haystack.lcs.mit.edu/ Haystack] -- very buggy and not user friendly, but it shows the way.

[[User:MovGP0|MovGP0]] 00:37, 24 June 2007 (PDT)

== Semantics ==
I think that it would have much sense to have a simple computer-wide semantic-store where the contact-data is stored, so that the controls can query for needed data globally. The computer wide storage is needed to exchange the data with Firefox and Calendar.

Also there should be support for microformats and RDF, ie. when there is a calendar or contact information is embedded in a xhtml-mail than this contact data should get recognized and extracted for import into the calendar-application and the contact-data.

[[Image:Mozilla Thunderbird Semantics Draft.jpg|500px]]

''Stores:''
* [http://razor.occams.info/code/semweb/ SemWeb] (using SQLite)
* [http://www.glscube.org/ GLS³] (GNU/Linux Semantic Storage System)
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy3rJjQ0j9I WinFS Promo Video]

''Components:''
* [http://gnowsis.opendfki.de/wiki/GnognoComp Gnogno GUI Components Framework]

''see also:''
* [http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/ Dublin Core]
* [http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/ FOAF]
* [http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard hCard Microformat]
* [http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfcal/ RDF Calendar]
* [http://microformats.org/wiki/hcalendar hCalendar Microformat]

[[User:MovGP0|MovGP0]] 00:37, 24 June 2007 (PDT)

== 'Delete Junk' item on context menu for Junk folder? ==

Just like on the Trash folder, it would be nice to have an 'delete junk' item on the pop-up context menu for junk folders.

==Quality of pasted images==
When you paste an image into Thunderbird compose window, image gets very compressed and looks very unprofessional. I did find workaround, but it's very slow and requires a lot of additional steps. I do screenshot, then I go to photoshop, save image there, then in compose window I insert image, and then it looks perfect.

Here are the differences btw what I get in both cases:

hotimg5.fotki.com/a/70_21/138_211/thunderbird.png

Would be nice that Thunderbird would not be so aggressive on compression, or would give ability to control compression level. And the best would be, if Thunderbird would switch to PNG compression instead of JPG, and again, may be provide an option to choose, which one option user wants.

--[[User:Ddon|Ddon]] 21:08, 11 July 2007 (PDT)

== Ability to click on URL in subject of email ==

'''Problem'''

From time to time, when someone wants to send URL to someone, they just paste it in a subject of email. So, when you receive email like that, you have to copy URL from subject, which is not very user friendly.

[[Image:Subject-url-thunderbird.png]]

'''Proposed Improvements'''

1. Parse URLs in subjects and make them clickable in a subject field.

or

2. Provide ability to go to URL in a right-click menu:
[[Image:Subject-url-thunderbird-sol.png]]

--[[User:Ddon|Ddon]] 21:13, 11 July 2007 (PDT)

== File Send To ==

Adding linking features from the OS on which it runs. On Windows XP, you may use the ''Send To'' feature directly on a file and will make a new email with the file already attached, you may find the feature in: Context Menu (everywhere you can manipulate a file) and Windows Explorer.

[[Image:SentTo.png]]

== Allowing OS Items in Contextual Menu ==

Dear Contextual Menu Code Authors and Maintainers,

Please allow your contextual menu to include items the OS wishes to include.

OS X includes the option for users to customize their contextual menu. I have customized my contextual menu in various ways, but none of them are present in Thunderbird/Penelope since it does not poll the OS for what else to include in the contextual menu.

Long live contextual menus! Long live open source.
http://free.abracode.com/cmworkshop/on_my_command.html
TIA

== A large e-mail structure with many folders really slows down Thunderbird. ==

I have my mail store on a W2003 server share. When starting Thunderbird scans all folders.

Using ethereal it shows that opening the mail store takes 6 seconds and around 9000 network packets.

Using ethereal is shows that moving a message of 10Kb takes 2 second 347KB of netwerk data and 740 network packages.

The scanning through all these small files is a very inefficient, risky and susceptible to integrity problems.

Using a database tools like SQLite could be a solution.

Talk:Firefox:Places:Scratch Pad

2007-11-24T02:02:43Z

Tdot: /* Bookmarks and Information Management */

Label (aka. metadata) based bookmarks orgranization is definitely the way to go. We should dump the folder based orgranization scheme completely and replace it with labels (aka. metadata), since most websites fit into many categories.

If we do decide to to use labels, we should separate it from search keywords. Also, autocomplete should be provided for label entry in the bookmark property dialogue.

Lastly, we should consider modifying the sidebar code so that it displays on top of the content pane instead of beside and force the content pane to resize. People usually only need to see the sidebar for a short period of time and resizing the content pane is very disorienting for the user.

== Hierarchical tags ==

I think we should have not only "flat", keyword-like tags (like [http://gmail.google.com gmail] tags, or [http://del.icio.us/ del.icio.us] tags), but also hierarchical tags, like categories used in webpage directories, like [http://www.google.com/dirhp Google Directory] or [http://dmoz.org/ dmoz.org]. Sometimes multiple tags (and selecting by multiple tags) are preferable to hierarchical structure, but sometimes hierarchical structure (hierarchical tags) works better. And hierarchical structure is easier I think for browsing.

Better yet, take a look at http://www.namesys.com/whitepaper.html ("Future Vision of ReiserFS" by Hans Reiser, from The Naming System Venture), which is about finding information, combining flat tags, key/value pairs (one can think of it as of attributes) and hierarchical categories. del.icio.us has beginnings of something like that, with the only possibility is to combine multiple tags into a tag intersection, and to select tags either from anyone, or from specified user.

An example of search could be ''Typesetting/TeX/MetaPost/'' (from dmoz.org), ''<nowiki>[</nowiki>politics france history<nowiki>]</nowiki>'' (from del.icio.us), ''domain/mozilla.org'' (example of keywords), or ''<nowiki>[</nowiki>"/History/3 days ago" site/en.wikipedia.org<nowiki>]</nowiki>'' (searching history), in notation used in mentioned paper. And we should have the notion of current "directory".

: [[User:Jnareb|Jakub Narebski]] 08:20, 11 Apr 2005 (PDT)

== Bookmarks and Information Management ==

Adding tags to bookmarks sounds great. A del.icio.us like interface with keyboard support and tag links for adding (and removing?) would be wonderful. The Flat Bookmarks Extension should become the standard because changing text is much faster. But my most important wish is that a bookmark should be loaded and editable in the sidebar as soon as its website is loaded. This could be used for fast annotations/citations and might be the first step in creating an information manager that makes bookmarks an active workspace and not only a passive storage.

What I miss in del.icio.us is a user definition of main tags so that they are always in a separate line on top of the tags. Also, I miss the definition of filters including statements like "wiki.mozilla.org = dev Firefox" to add tags automatically before I choose a few specific tags. To have a combination of a hierarchy and flat tags would be very interesting but a search of ordered tags might do the trick: "social+bookmarks" as a flat search that would also show bookmarks with the tags "bookmarks social software" while "social bookmarks" would be an ordered set of tags that can also be an expression for a hierarchy such as “dev Firefox�? for the main tag dev and the project Firefox.

For some more details and the background, please check out: http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/evolution-of-bookmarking/

== Comment ==

everybody wants the new firefox to do everything for you that just gets annoying try using msword. I agree that bookmark management would be nice (like flock) http://www.flock.com
-brkwtzandrew
[[User:Brkwtzandrew|Brkwtzandrew]] 11:21, 6 Nov 2005 (PST)

Places

2007-11-24T02:01:38Z

Tdot: /* Discussion Elsewhere */

Places is a new system for storing bookmarks, history, and other information about pages. It is currently enabled in trunk builds, and will debut in Firefox 3. This document covers the design and user-interface of Places. Developers should read the [http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Places developer documentation].

Status: History-on-Places was enabled on the trunk in January 2007, and is in Gran Paradiso Alpha 2. Bookmarks-on-Places was enabled in May 2007, and is in Gran Paradiso Alpha 5.

Places discussion and communication occurs in the [news://news.mozilla.org/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox mozilla.dev.apps.firefox] newsgroup and on this wiki.

= Goals & Objectives =
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

= 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 (1-3%), 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:History Use Cases]]
* [[Bookmarks Use Cases]] (not specific to places)

== Functional Requirements ==

The requirements for Places in Firefox 3 are detailed in the [[Firefox3/Product_Requirements_Document#Places|Firefox 3 PRD]]

= Design =

* [[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]]
* [[Places:Manager]]

More design information is on the [http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Places Places developer wiki].

== Special Containers ==

XXXdietrich - move to developer wiki, replace with an design page for extensibility

* [[Places:Bookmarks Containers]]
* [[Places:Live Bookmarks]]
* [[Places:File System Container]]

= Implementation =

Places is currently enabled on the "trunk" build of Firefox (aka Firefox 3 aka Minefield aka Gran Paradiso), and powers History and Bookmarks, as well as providing plumbing for Livemarks, Annotations and Microsummaries.

== Builds ==

Trunk builds are considered unstable and are recommended only for developers and those testers who like to live dangerously.

Please [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox&component=Places file bugs] in Bugzilla.

== Code Location ==

<pre>mozilla/browser/components/places/</pre> for the front-end, <pre>mozilla/toolkit/components/places/</pre> for the back-end.

== Team ==

* [http://dietrich.ganx4.com/ Dietrich Ayala]
* Asaf Romano
* [http://www.xulplanet.com/ndeakin/ Neil Deakin]
* [http://blog.mozilla.com/thunder/ Dan Mills]
* [http://blog.mozilla.com/sspitzer/ Seth Spitzer]

With help and guidance from:

* [http://maxradi.us/ Brett Wilson] (former backend contributor)
* [http://www.melez.com/mykzilla/ Myk Melez] (microsummaries)
* [http://www.franklinmint.fm/ Robert Sayre] (feeds)
* [http://steelgryphon.com/blog/ Mike Connor]
* [http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg Alex Faaborg]

See the Places [http://tinyurl.com/2lm8z3 bug list] for current work.

== Meetings/Discussion ==

* [http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox mozilla.dev.apps.firefox]
* [irc://irc.mozilla.org/#places #places] on irc
* Weekly meetings on Thursday at '''2'''pm PST in [irc://irc.mozilla.org/#places #places]. See [[Places/StatusMeetings]] for the logs of the past meetings.

== API Changes ==

The APIs for accessing Bookmarks have been replaced. Some history APIs remain the same. See the [http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Places Places developer wiki] for more information.

* [http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Places:History_Service Places: History Service]
* [http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Places:Bookmarks_Service Places: Bookmarks Service]
* [http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Places:Annotation_Service Places: Annotation Service]
* [http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Places:Livemark_Service Places: Livemark Service]
* [http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Places:Favicon_Service Places: Favicon Service]
* [http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Places:Tagging_Service Places: Tagging Service]

= Impact =

== 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 ==

XXXdietrich - point to thunder's page, and the relevant perf bugs.

Bookmarks can have a non-trivial impact on performance, see [[Places:Performance]] for more information.

= Discussion & Implications =

* [[Places:SecurityReview|Places Security Review]]

== Discussion Elsewhere ==

* [http://robert.accettura.com/archives/2005/08/01/intelligent-bookmarking-draft/ Intelligent Bookmarking (Draft) - Robert Accettura]

* [http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/evolution-of-bookmarking/ 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 6-10, 1996, Paris, France. ([http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=5092164817324641042 Google Scholar search for the article] if it moves)

* [[User:Dria/On Tagging|Deb Richardson's "On Tagging"]]

* 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/ ERD (possibly obsolete)]

= Archived Build Notes (obsolete) =

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:

* It is recommended that you delete the file "storage.sdb" 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.

Milestone 1 (12/15/2005):

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.

Bookmarks Use Cases

2007-11-24T01:59:28Z

Tdot: /* Favorites and Web Index in Two Different Interfaces */

This page is meant for describing particular behaviours you would like to see in a revamped Bookmark system.

== Reintroduction of a Necessary feature==
<ol>
<li>why can't you use Alt-Enter to access the properties of a bookmark? </li>

<li>I really like Firefox but I find that it is missing one key feature for me to transition from Mozilla 1.7.12 to Firefox 1.5.0.4, that is the lack of the same Mozilla "Bookmark This Group of Tabs" feature in Firefox.

Now I know that Firefox has a "Bookmark All Tabs..." option but unlike Mozilla it creates a folder just like any other and has an option to "open in tabs" at the bottom of the folder. I can see why they did this and it would be nice to be able to enter a bookmark group to access only one tab... Yet it is something that is really rarely needed and could be done by hovering over the tab group for a short while.

Now this might seam like a minor gripe considering all the other positives Firefox has over Mozilla, Yet I am truly addicted to the bookmark group in Mozilla and there are a few main reasons behind this:
*it looks different than the other folders and is easy to distinguish
*one simple click on the bookmark group to open it
*The "Bookmark This Group of Tabs" defaults to show you the file tree (for lack of a better term) giving you a quicker way to save the bookmark group.

Now I have been unable to find any extention that would allow me to use the same Mozilla bookmark group functions inside of Firefox. Is it possable that this could be included? Pretty please! </li>
</ol>
I REALLY would LOVE a solution to this Please help.... Thanks! -- [[User:UKPhoenix79|UKPhoenix79]] 23:21, 13 July 2006 (PDT)

== Smart Folders and Tagging ==

I would like to be able to sort my bookmarks into "Smart Folders," and have those folders contain bookmarks based on various criteria, including by way of a user-definable "tagging" system.

For example, let's say I have a few dozen bookmarks. Some tagged with "News," some with "Games" and others with "Ottawa." Some of these bookmarks are Live Bookmarks, and others are just regular old bookmarks. I would like to have one Smart Folder that contains all of the "News" + "Ottawa" bookmarks, another with "News" + "Games," another with just "Games," a fourth with just "News," and a final with all the Live Bookmarks, regardless of tagging or other criteria.

=== Basically already available ===

You can create a bookmark to a url like [find:datasource=rdf:bookmarks&match=http://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#Name&method=contains&text=Mozilla].

This will give you a "folder" with all bookmarks containing "Mozilla" in their name, dynamically generated. I don't really know how flexible this can be used and where you can find more documentation about it, but the basic functionality is available.
:Um... how do you do this?

== More on Smart Folders ==

Smart Folders are sounding a lot like vfolders/iTunes Smart Playlists/stored queries. Some other cool things that could be done with smart folders: "All bookmarks I've visited in the last week", "Top 10 Bookmarks I've most frequently visited". More complex stuff maybe? "All bookmarks I've visited and spent more than 10 min on the page". (How do you track how long you spend on a page?)

Another cool thing: When bookmarking, have it check del.icio.us and then return a dialog that goes something like this:
"This page has been tagged accordingly:
[x] web [x] css [x]news [ ] html
Add own tags: [............]"
This feature would save quite a lot of people a lot of tagwork.

(Perhaps just the framework for such integration could be put in place. It seems to me that integration with del.icio.us or any other non-mozilla site should be an extension, not part of the core code.)

== Add Bookmark Dialog ==

The "Add Bookmark" dialog should have some way to add comments or tags. And these comments or tags should be searchable from the side bar. Just a small dialog box below the "Create In" dropdown would be great.

== Add/Edit Bookmark in Sidebar –�Information Management ==

Bookmarks could become an active workspace when the �Add Bookmark�? form would be placed in the sidebar and when the same form in the sidebar would be used to show all saved tags and descriptions simultaneously with the opened website. The Flat Bookmark Extension is a good example of improved usability within the bookmark manager because it avoids the extra step to open the dialog every time a note needs to be changed. Unfortunately, it is not yet integrated in the sidebar nor associated with the opened website. The flat editing of tags, annotations, citations, notes, etc. in the sidebar every time the website is loaded would make it to an information management because it can recall information and changes are easy to enter. Direct access to the description field and to the tags of a bookmark could be a major step forward and improve the usability of web browsers.

== Keyword Option for Bookmark Folders ==

What about adding keywords to bookmark folders like we have for bookmarks? That would be smooth. Then you can open a folder from the search bar. This would be very useful for opening a group of bookmarks in a subfolder, instead of accessing from the bookmarks toolbar. The keyword should trigger the "open in tabs" command.

See: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213402 bug 213402]

''Don't like surprises, just want the keywords added to folders, bring up bookmarks sidebar if and only if needed, but not the
opening of all bookmarks in that folder.''

I like typing in a single letter within a folder on the personal toolbar to get to the area I want (actually usually one letter beyond what I want) and if there is only one bookmark beginning with that letter it goes to that bookmark, I add a fake bookmark for such cases to stop that from happening so I can examine my choices. To open an entire folder of bookmarks; likewise, is going to open
up a can of worms -- would not like 500 bookmarks opened up into tabs. There
is a suggestion elsewhere to add use of Ctrl select to select individual
bookmarks but is dependent upon bookmarks not disappearing once a selection is made and that would be further jeopardy if all bookmarks in a folder are automatically opened.

== Keyword Shortcuts in Sidebar ==

The [https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1043/ KeywordBar] Extension
(for sidebar)
including double-click to place keyword shortcut onto the location bar,
and the 
[https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/622 Locate in Bookmarkfolders] Extension to locate the folder of the keyword
or other bookmark within the Bookmarks Manager should be incorporated into Firefox. These inclusions would give the keyword shortcuts (%S) a much more deserving prominence in Firefox.

== Unread Items in Live Bookmarks ==

For me to use Live Bookmarks instead of just defaulting to my RSS reader, the "new" or simply "unread" bookmark items would need to be differentiated from "old" or "read" items. If I could just visually and quickly scan for new items, I would be much more likely to use Live Bookmarks.

It would be nice if bookmarks supported the CSS ''':visited''' pseudo-class, which would be an elegant way of solving this enchantment and would probably be useful in general.

If live bookmark items were marked "read" or "unread" as described above, I'd love to have a button on the toolbar called "Next unread" to jump between all the new items. If the button showed a count of the unread items, that would be even better.

== LiveBookmarks Homepage ==

I'd like to click in a LiveBookmark Folder and go to the feed's homepage, e.g. If the feed url is http://www.mozilla.org/rss.xml clicking in the LiveBookmark folder should lead to http://www.mozilla.org/

== Aggregated Live Bookmarks in a Smart Folder ==

I'd like to be able to designate a Smart Folder for Live Bookmarks that would display all items (possibly even only the "new" or "unread" items) contained by that set of Live Bookmarks at once (instead of having to open each Live Bookmark individually).

For example, I have three Live Bookmarks, each of which contains 10 items in total. The first has three new items, the second has 2 new items, and the third has 6 new items. If I designate a Smart Folder to display all "new" Live bookmark items, it would look something like this:

<pre>
> My Super Smart Folder Name
> Bookmark 1 New Item 1
> Bookmark 1 New Item 2
> Bookmark 1 New Item 3
> Bookmark 2 New Item 1
> Bookmark 2 New Item 2
> Bookmark 3 New Item 1
> Bookmark 3 New Item 2
> Bookmark 3 New Item 3
> Bookmark 3 New Item 4
> Bookmark 3 New Item 5
> Bookmark 3 New Item 6
</pre>

Being able to specify how those items are sorted as part of the Smart Folder properties would be an extra bonus (e.g., by date, by site, alphabetically, or whatever).

== Bookmarks Combined From Several Files ==

Currently all bookmarks for a user (well, profile) are stored in ''bookmarks.html''. It is possible to share that file with others (by doing things that Firefox remains blissfully unaware of, such as using symlinks or synching the file), but that only works for sharing the ''entire'' bookmarks; I've encountered several situations where I wish to share just some of my bookmarks, a subtree of them say:

* I use Firefox at both home and work. Generally, I do different things in each place, so they have different bookmarks: at work, I have lots of prominent links to internal systems, which I hardly ever need to access from home. However, there are some bookmark folders I'd like to have in both places, such as those with links to technical reference material like the W3C specs.

* Everybody in the team at work needs bookmarks (with keywords for URL searches) to the same internal systems. We've all had to accumulate these individually. It would be nice just to have them in one place, so we know they are all exactly the same (and new people can easily be given them, too).

* Sometimes, I give presentations using Firefox for rendering HTML slides. I have a separate profile for that, with settings more appropriate for use in front of an audience on a big screen, but it'd be nice to have a subset of my normal bookmarks available.

Obviously, this wouldn't be trivial to do, and is very hard to do well. At the moment, I don't think it's possible at all. The bare minimum support that I think is needed from Firefox is the ability to combine bookmark subtrees from different sources. That is, that at some point in ''bookmarks.html'' there can be a 'linked folder' which renders just like an ordinary folder but whose content is stored in a separate file; ''bookmarks.html'' just contains the folder's label and the path to that file.

Then all the synching can be managed outside Firefox (or with extensions or whatever) —�so long as the basic 'subtree combining' feature is there (even if it requires manually setting up) other things can be added on top of it.

This could be done in conjuntion with tagging. Create an option to export either subfolders or bookmarks with certain tags into a portable XML file that can then be imported elsewhere.

== Remote Bookmarks ==

Building on Live Bookmarks, it would be great to be able to store your bookmarks on a server, but be able to interact with them through the normal bookmarks manager.
Adding and deleting bookmarks should work as usual, but with the results being stored remotely, on a server (such as http://del.icio.us).

I agree! I use different computers at home, work, and school, and love having access to one respository of "bookmarks," stored online. Having a slick interface to such a repository would be an excellent, often-used feature.

This is the one reason that I have abandoned traditional bookmarks in favor of a web-based solution, [http://www.myhq.com myhq.com].
Another option is to use a third-party toolbar such as http://toolbar.a9.com/

Building on this idea further: There are some bookmarks that I would want to share with others. It would be nice to syndicate them with RSS and display them on a website as a feed or formatted with CSS. This could be through a service or via a plugin for blogging software.

The other point here is that there are cases where I don't want to share my bookmarks. E.g. links to financial information, services like my web host and my flickr login. I keep these in a separate folder so I would only need to exclude that folder from export.

On the synchronization of bookmarks, you might want to check out how that is handled in [http://mirror.open-xchange.org/ox/EN/community/ Open-Xchange.]

I would love to be able to get rid of bookmarks folders altogether with tagging. As such I wouldn't want to have to keep private bookmarks in a different folder than public/shared bookmarks

I, too agree with this. Have a simple xml file (hopefully hosted by mozilla, but of course with its limits... maybe google could help out ;) ). When you load firefox, firefox would check for any changes to the file on the server. If none are found, it stops. If changes are found, it downloads them.

Saving bookmarks could either be instantly (this may cause a small wait period for slower users), when the bookmark list is not being used, or 'onClose' if that even exists.

Using [http://www.opml.org/ OPML] might be a win for this over RSS. OPML allows for hierarchical data like bookmark folders. Also bookmarks are more of a list type thing than a feed type thing. Of course you could have both.

Including features found in: [http://sourceforge.net/projects/bookmarksync bookmarksync] would be great. This is a big issue for me, too. - and being able to edit and change the hosting server as a preference would be great. thx.
Looks like [http://www.sync2it.com/b2/index.php synch2it] has done more development on the client and server side, too - features from here should give good ideas. The #1 most important bookmarking feature for me is when I need to synch bookmarks between my home computers, my work computers, and my laptop, and extra nice if I can get to them when I'm an internet cafe.

Being able to specify a particular bookmark folder to point to a particular file on a WebDAV server would be useful. The code would seem to be around as part of the Sunbird project where it is used to sync up local and remote ical files. That would make it easy to share a sub-tree of your bookmarks between locations/computers/people and give some control over who gets to add/change and who gets to read only.

The first post pretty much had it! You should be able to edit your bookmarks through Firefox as per usual, and then an extension or something would silently sync your bookmarks with a server somewhere. This way no matter where you go you could always have your same bookmarks available to you. Also, on the idea of making your bookmarks publicly available, all you would need to do is add a little locked/unlocked button besides each bookmark to control which ones are public and private.

== Relative Bookmarks ==
Provide Relative Bookmark features for '''profile''', '''chrome''', '''cache''' folders, and portable device '''drive letter''' (Firefox Portable), along with user assigned folders to provide better access from any computer and with various portable devices.

profile://. (for the profile folder itself)
profile://.. (up one level from the profile folder)
profile://bookmarks.html (simple way to locate bookmarks)
cache://. (experienced users may move the cache file)

This would greatly simplify locating these folders for user browsing and editing as needed, and identifying the profile actually in use. 

=== Additional Relative Bookmarks features for Portability ===
For a presentation file:///c:\big\pathname\file.htm#relativebookmarks might be referred to by that name on the c: drive and on a portable device have part of filename given a shortcut type descriptor
presentation://file.htm#relativebookmarks
which would facilitate use of existing keyword shortcuts
presentation://%S
presentation://chapter4/%S
Note %S currently provides for fragment id (file.htm#id); and %s currently does not.

The means of bookmarking a string reference to a relative tag, so existing
bookmarks remain as they are but could be treated differently on a portable device. Any bookmark starting with c:/site could also be found with the '''portable://''' prefix.

presentation = file:///c:/big/pathname/
portable = file:///c:/site
portable2 = http://www.example.com/user3/

And specifically to address reassignments when using USB devices used in such implementations as Firefox Portable (http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable) one must
currently use SUBST to alias a drive or a pathname in a command
window external to both Firefox and Firefox bookmarks.

To alias a drive letter to a path on the active drive (external to Firefox)
SUBST W: \firefoxportable\data\profile

To alias a drive letter to the current drive letter (external to Firefox)
SUBST X: \

This assumes that you would be able to have specific drive letters not assigned (W: and X:) so that you can create aliases.

The above usage implementation suggestions should not conflict with the use of user defined keyword shortcuts of portable:, presentation:, presentation:b, which when used as keyword shortcuts have a space immediately after the shortcut. The use of colons in all my keyword shortcuts has proved very advantageous to me.

== Meta Description ==

The default description for a bookmark should be filled in with the description provided by the meta tag.

It would also be useful when looking through the bookmarks list if the description for a bookmark were displayed when a user pauses on the bookmark (i.e. alt text). The only time one sees a bookmark's description is in the bookmarks manager. This should be integrated as standard, and would be very simple to implement as well.

== Richer Links ==

Right now, the only relationships possible between bookmarks are ordinal (they can be in a series) and hierarchical. Only the title and description may be specified by the user. The meaningful relationships between two sites/bookmarks are not constrained to this set. Allowing the user (or website providing the link) to provide additional information would allow bookmarking to more accurately represent the mental relationships the user has between sites.

Propositionally, support for bookmarking xlinks would provide the informational basis for these enriched relationships.

Examples of user interaction possible with interrelationships:

A user drags a link to a bookmark region, which expands to show a "space" of bookmarks. The user places the bookmark in a rhizomatic relationship to another bookmark. That information is stored in the bookmark as it is saved.

A laptop user bookmarks a page "within 250 feet of this location." in the future, whenever she is in that physical region, the bookmark moves to the top of her bookmarks list.

A website designer could specify the relationships between her pages using xlink; when bookmarked, a user could navigate the site from the bookmark without loading the site.

== Editing and Synchronization ==

Mainly, my largest issue now is that I always keep a very close watch on my bookmarks, and when editing them, I find the two-pane navigation helpful, but ineffective. The reason I need two panes is because when moving bookmarks from a temp folder to its final location, I need to see both folders at once - I hate having to drag and drop while waiting for auto-scrolling. If the two panes would both be expandable to view folders and bookmarks it would be much more useful!

Right now the left pane is useless to me, because I can already see the folder structure in the right pane.

My bookmarks file has been organized and reorganized for almost four years now, and at 300k I don't have time to clean it out all of the time. I would love a field on each bookmark to either show the last date I edited it, or the last date I visited that address. Then I could see which bookmarks I have not seen in a long time, and then delete those as I obviously don't need them. That would be an amazing feature!

I use the bookmarks synchronizer extension all of the time, so I still need to have that ability.

I have a large number of bookmarks that point to a mirror server. If that server goes down or its domain changes (this has happened more than once), I can open my bookmarks file in an ASCII editor and globally change the domain of all affected bookmarks to another mirror. PLEASE do not change the format of the bookmarks file in a way that will prevent me from doing this without at least adding a global change capability to the Bookmarks Manager.

== "Bookmark current site here" ==

When the user opens the Bookmarks-menu and ''right-clicks'' on a '''Bookmark folder''', the '''"Bookmark current site here"''' option could appear in the popped up '''context menu'''. (Or is "Add Bookmark here" better?)

This is a very simple suggestion, but I want to record it here anyway, so it won't be forgotten. I used to like the "Add bookmark here"-extension (though I don't know if it's still maintained). It'd be cool to have it built in by default ( -- perhaps with a modification: In the extension, the option appeared ''among/below'' the actual bookmarks, but doesn't that clutter up the menus too much?)

Currently (using a Nighly from the Deer Park trunk -- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050705 Firefox/1.0+), when right-clicking on a Bookmark folder, the '''New Bookmark''' option appears in the popped up context menu. The user can fill in a new Name, Location, Keyword and Description.

Something like this is what I'm looking for -- though I would want the Name, Location etc of the '''current site''' to be '''pre-filled in as default values'''.

Bookmark Synchronization API - I would love to see a simple API for adding new bookmarks and deleting existing bookmarks via an external application. Two simple functions that would greatly simplify cross-browser synchronization.

== Standard Extensibility from Chrome ==

Having looked up a bookmark node by ID/URL/etc., found it via iteration, whatever... an extension should be able to watch for onclick events, et al (the addObserver notes imply bookmark changes only, not events).

Bookmark context menus should be extensible via normal XUL overlays.

This is an area where the current code is just terrifying.

== Visual Bookmarks ==

Visual bookmarks are a screen shot of a bookmarked webpage created the last time it was visited or when the bookmark is created. The idea is that visually oriented people --aka designers-- would likely remember a website more by it's design and appearance than the name or current title of the website that they saw for the split second while they click '''OK''' on the '''Add Bookmark''' Window. Another reason for visual bookmarks is when people are use to a website for it's design and have stopped visiting it regularly for a while, and when they are fumbling through their bookmarks looking for it again it may have changed it's design. With '''Visual Bookmarks''', a screen capture could be made of the old design to help them realize that what they are looking for well, isn't anymore.

To implement it there should be an array of options like file format, screenshot dimensions, history, and update interval. File format/saving options are self explanitory and really a high quality JPEG or PNG would be best. The dimensions of the screenshot would be equivilent to setting the inner part of the window to exactly 900x900 or 3600x800 and taking the inner screenshot from there; assuming they entered 900x900 or 3600x800, it could be anything. It is important that they are NOT setting the window size as menu bars etc would be variable between clients and frivilous. A screenshot history option are how many out of date screenshots to keep, perhaps a redesign locator which could compare screen shot similarities to detect a design change, but that is probably FAR to ambitious. The update interval would be the frequency screenshots are to be updated, set globally and per screenshot.

The output of these screenshots would appear perhaps when a bookmark is hovered over or in the '''Manage Bookmarks...''' window.

Alternatively, the page itself could be saved as an html file instead of an image. This will not only serve the purpose mentioned above, but also allow access to the text on the page(for copy/paste etc). I often bookmark pages because they contain some useful snippet of information and not because I plan to visit them repeatedly. Having a saved copy of the page gives the user offline access to the contents on the day the page was bookmarked. This would be some kind of a simplified archival system.

=== Color in bookmarks ===
I'd like to also see the possibility of color in bookmarks, so it becomes easy to for instance separate bookmarks for hotel sites from bookmarks from airlines sites in a travel bookmark folder

== Automatic Grouping of Bookmarks ==

I would love to see a system that would allow automatic grouping of similar bookmarks, being too lazy to keep my ever growing bookmarks properly categorized.

In another section someone has suggested tagging for categorization. I have situations where a site I visit is both a source of news and a source of reviews for instance. How cool would it be if you typed a bookmark tag into the address bar and it opened, in tabs, all the bookmarks that had that tag?

How about mozilla learning how you categorize your bookmarks? Say you have a bookmark folder of all your css design tips. After a while, mozilla would smarten up, and the next time you bookmark a similar site, it would offer to automatically put that site into your css design tips folder. Could this be done with some bayesian filtering?

== Search Behavior ==

I rarely resort to search except when I can't find a bookmark. Move, Properties and Rename are currently "grayed out" in bookmark search (filtered) results. I've found the bookmark, but it's clumsy to manage it. The only way I've found is to copy the URL, Delete the bookmark and then bookmark it again. Enabling those options, or at least the "Move" option would be a big help in keeping large collections of bookmarks tidy.

In general it would be nice to access bookmarks by a search field (not in bookmark manager) - could even be in the bookmark toolbar, optional.

== Shortcut to Bookmarks Manager ==

Need a shortcut key to the Bookmarks Manager ("Manage Bookmarks...")
would affect additions to keywords in HELP, Bookmarks menu and View menu. Bookmarks (Ctrl+B) is not the same as Bookmaks Manager.

Also a means of referencing Bookmarks Manager or a specific webpage
on starting up Firefox from the desktop (shortcut url) as there are
many that seem to think a Favorites folder on the system desktop (Windows desktop) is where to start off from.

== Enhanced Bookmark Search ==
Enhanced Bookmark Search (Extension) could use some improvement in filtering capability (AND logic), but should be incorporated into Firefox.

== Shortcuts ==

It would be nice to be able to assign shortcuts to bookmarks and bookmark folders.

If "shortcuts" means virtual bookmarks that point to other bookmarks such that, when the target bookmark is changed, the shortcut is automatically changed too, this is [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34059 bug #34059]. At least part of this was a capability in Netscape 4 and should definitely be implemented. Note that the [http://pyxml.sourceforge.net/topics/xbel/ XBEL] standard supports the old Netscape aliasing of bookmarks.

The ability to open external programs and documents (like Windows shortcuts) on the computer would be very useful. There are some extensions currently that do similar things to this.

A strong second on this suggestion. The ability to import MSIE Favorites is crippled without this.

== Bookmark Maintenance ==
Over the long term, the bookmarks list becomes less useful as it becomes weighed down with the cruft of bookmarks that have lost usefulness for various reasons including:
* The page is gone (404)
* The page has moved somewhere else (301/302)
* The information has fallen out of date
* The user has forgotten why the page was worth bookmarking
* The user lost track of the original bookmark, making redundant bookmarks
(no doubt this list can be expanded)

:: The GNOME Epiphany browser detects when a link has moved and offers to update the bookmark location. That's pretty handy.
:: [[User:Mikelward|Mikelward]] 03:14, 7 June 2007 (PDT)

Eventually it becomes easier to Google for the links anew rather than hunt through the unweildy bookmark list. Faciliating management of these issues would be very helpful for maintaining a streamlined, functional list. Some possibilities:

=== Live Collections Using Advanced Metadata ===
Similar to the Live Folders concept mentioned above, but allow bookmarks to be automatically collected based on metadata ''other than'' just tags (such as server-provided data).

For instance, periodically do HTTP HEAD requests to bookmarked addresses, and flag those that return statuses other than 200 OK. Collected into live folders based on their status codes, the user would be able to easily cull dead links and decide whether to update the moved ones.

Likewise, allow bookmarks to be grouped based on criteria such as last access date (to cull, or rediscover, links you never use anymore), the page's Last-Modified date (to identify resources that have grown irrelevant), and duplicate/similar addresses (including those that have obviously different URLs but would become redundant based on a 301/302 status update).

If the client-side metadata (such as last access) could be shared across workstations (i.e. between work and home computers), that would also be cool.

=== Visual Cues in Bookmarks Menu ===
Favicons and screenshot previews are helpful visual cues about a bookmark. Extend this concept to other metadata. For instance, maybe the user would want 404s to be grayed out, and recently-visited links to be bolded. Or certain tags might be asssociated with small graphics similar to favicons, so the user can quickly skim down a long list, identify the few bookmarks that meet his/her criteria (ex. "IE + hacks + 4stars")--even through he doesn't recall their titles.

This could also be done through the use of super-imposed mini-icons over the favicon. It would be similar to the shortcut arrow that windows and mac users are familiar with. Perhaps a tiny '''(X)''' in the bottom right side of the favicon for a bookmark that was a 404, or a colored star system for the rating, etc.

=== Bookmarks Menu Sorting===
Allow user-defined sorting of the Bookmarks menu. Chronological order quickly becomes non-meaningful in a long list. Allow sorting by title, domain, or date, etc.

A pair of persistent no-sort options too, please, on a folder by folder basis. No sort folder contents only, no sort entire folder substructure. I often do not want particular folders sorted, particularly when exporting bookmarks to edit them into a web page. If you also increased the size of the manager's description form, I could go back to using the bookmarks tools as a handy outliner like I did in Mozilla. A related enhancement: enable separate exporting of bookmarks folder substructures with a templating capability so users and developers can more easily define export formats, and add export to clipboard (rather than a file) as an option. Fore some ideas on implementation, see the CopyURL-Plus extension, the handiest browser extension on my desktop.--Marbux

It would also be useful to be able to sort the folders/subfolders separately from the individual pages. (naowro)

=== Mac-Compatibile Shortcuts in Bookmark Manager ===
Add support for command-deleting (the standard Mac shortcut for "delete selection") of bookmarks and folders in Bookmark Manager.

== Sorting ==

I like to keep my bookmarks (mostly) sorted alphabetically (by Name), per folder. Right now, I need to do this sorting manually! The Bookmark Manager provides for a sorted *View* but this does not actually sort the bookmarks themselves. They still appear unsorted in the Bookmarks menu. What I would like to do is make any selection of bookmarks in the Manager, and be able to sort them alphabetically, once and for all, Sorted view or not. Being able to sort an entire folder without first having to make a (rather huge, in some cases) selection would also help, but this alone is not enough. Sometimes I keep several sections in a folder using Separators, and I want each section sorted separately.

We already do Sorting with View, so it seems simple enough to go the extra mile and save the sort result to disk again. Actually I'm surprised no one has come up with this before, I've wanted it for a long time, and sorting is a basic function of any information management system.

In addition to saving the sorting with a view to disk (for both the manager and the bookmarks view itself), the ability to apply differing sorting algorithms (alphabetically, last visited date etc.)

== Multiple Keywords ==

Having a keyword for a bookmark is great. Sometimes however, there are sites for which multiple keywords would make sense, and I can never remember the one that I actually used. It would greatly help if the Keywords field would accept multiple keywords, perhaps separated by a space or a comma.

[New "I"] A feature that I would find useful would be a cross-referencing indexing system-- Keywords would be entered for each bookmark (or Tag). The bookmark would be added automatically to folders titled with each keyword. For example-- if a bookmark had keywords of {photos, winter, camping, cooking}, it would appear in folders Photos, Winter, Camping, -and- Cooking.

This would NOT duplicate the bookmark, but just add it to an additional index. That way, a change under one folder would appear under all folders. [Yes, I've just designed in a database.] And deleting one entry would remove it from all folders it appeared in (with a suitable warning about removing an entry from multiple folders).

Within each folder I could sort the accumulated entries according to any attributes of the original entry.

== More on sorting ==

Sorting should be as flexible as possible: in addtion to the existing sorting, you should be able to sort folders by one specific criteria, or just a group of selected folders or bookmarks within one folder (by doing CTRL+item selection and then right click + "sort selected items by...")

Related firefox bug:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=265401]
has been closed as WONTFIX. Please vote for this bug to get this resolved.

== More on bookmark maintenance ==

Having an automatic checking of bookmarks option would be nice, so you could get a warning if one URL you have bookmarked is now re-directed or is no longer available.

== "Open in tabs" option improvement ==

In addition to the existing option, it should be possible to open selected items (bookmarks or entire folders) in tabs (by doing CTRL+item selection and then right click + "open selected items in tabs"). This option should be available through the Bookmarks Manager too.

== Bookmarks access ==

Would it be possible to have the "Bookmark this page" and "Manage Bookmarks" items from the Bookmarks menu always fixed, so they don't disappear when scrolling down the Bookmarks menu?

== Temporary/Time Based Bookmarks ==
I think many of us frequently need to save websites we wish to return but don't want to keep them bookmarked forever. For instance when I comment on blogs I often like to return to reply to the discussion later but if I kept every article I'd commented on in my bookmarks it would rapidly grow unwieldy. An earlier contributor uses bookmarks for keeping a 'to visit' list and would like to be reminded about the contents of the list when non-empty. Similar use cases would be remembering items you are comparing to purchase, funny pages you want to show friends, long articles you are reading, remembering conferences or other events that will lose relevance shortly, and remembering stories to write a blog entry about.

In firefox 2 this sort of use is very cumbersome. With 'add bookmark here' bookmarks can be added efficently enough but every time one wants to remove bookmarks you need to go to the manage bookmark's screen. Some more efficent means of removing temporary bookmarks is needed, perhaps several. The following features all seem good:

1) Expiration times for bookmarks, when created you can specify a date on which the bookmark will be deleted/become invisible.

2) Folder based expiration times, particular folders could time out bookmarks when they age past a certain date.

3) Most recently used display with bookmarks disappearing after they fall below some threshold.

4) The above but at the user's request.

5) Easy option to delete without entering the organize bookmarks page.

Of course all of these really need appropriate sort option.

:: How about a special tag called "temp" that only keeps things for one or two days?
:: How about a tag "new" that is removed as soon as you click on it?
:: How about per-tag expiry rules?
:: [[User:Mikelward|Mikelward]] 03:12, 7 June 2007 (PDT)

== POST bookmarks ==
Some website searches dumbly use POST instead of GET so you can't just associate a simple keyword and smart bookmark. Making it possible to store POST requests would prevent me from writing boring javascript bookmarklets.

== Links to other bookmarks and folders ==
It would be nice to be able to create the equivalent of symlinks for individual bookmarks and folders. A use for this would be to include a current bookmark or folder on the Bookmarks Toolbar Folder without having to make another copy of it. This would close
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=298009 bug #298009].

== Offline readable ==
In the bookmark properties dialog, I'd like to see a check box asking me if the page should be offline readable. This would be similar to the "Select this folder for offline use" option in Thunderbird. As far as I know, other browsers like IE (sorry) have had this feature for quite a while.
This option should not only be present in the properties dialog of an individual bookmark but also in the properties dialog of a bookmark folder.

== Personal Toolbar Folder / Bookmarks Toolbar ==
I like to keep a large number of items in the Personal Toolbar Folder, but I remove the "Name" from the properties, leaving only the favicon. However, when I hover over the favicon, only the URL is shown in the tooltips text. I'd like to be able to have the name of the site in the tooltip text, but not next to the item in the toolbar. Perhaps this could be achieved by having a "Show?" checkbox next to the Name in the Properties window?

=== Display of Folders on the Personal Toolbar ===
Kind of the opposite approach of the above, but can be worked in together with options.

Space on the Personal Toolbar is too valuable to waste on individual bookmarks,
so would like the ability to show folder names without folder icon, and they
must be distinguishable from adjacent folder names even if the name contains spaces, and must be distinguishable from individual bookmarks. I give all
folders that show on the Personal Toolbar short names. So if they could appear in a small variable width box that would be ideal. For example everything in my "K" folder actually also has a keyword shortcut. Some like blogs have additional
subfolders, several of which are groups of bookmarklets. My bookmarks Toolbar looks something like: (the first two have leading spaces to maintain sort order)
   [ HOME] [ View] [Blogs] [Design] [Effects] [G] [I] [ID] [K] [R] [T] [zA] ...

There are actually individual bookmarks on far right, all of which are on the extended toolbar, perhaps with more space the favicon only might get some of them on the primary portion of the toolbar.

== Bookmark Display ==

In a [http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=5444 poll] conducted by MozillaZine last year about home pages, a number of respondents indicated they use their bookmarks file as their home page. The ability to do this should not only be preserved but enhanced. One enhancement would be to fix [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=234831 bug #234831], to recognize line breaks the Description portion of a bookmark. Another would be to implement [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=255274 bug #255274], to have the capability of having a style-sheet control the display format (e.g., line spacing, margins, font size). Of course, all this should include making the bookmarks file a valid HTML file, including a <!DOCTYPE> declaration.

Another display bug that should be fixed is [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=245934 #245934]. The Bookmarks Manager normalized window size is forgotten if the window was maximized when it was closed.

== Bookmark Added Already Message ==

I would be happy to have a function that can check if the Bookmark I'm adding now isn't added already (in any section of Bookmark folder). Well, I know there might be a confusion because of dynamic URIs for example but could save some doubled Bookmarks...

== More on Search ==
And please include a field or property that shows where a bookmark is in the bookmark folder tree. This is needed when your re-grouping bookmarks. Currently, if you search on a bookmark and find a few related ones, there's no way to tell where they are on the bookmark tree and if they need to be moved/re-grouped to a more rational structure.

In addition, please have a look at the bookmark manager
of the old Netscape Communicator 4.78. In contrast to Firefox,
the old bookmark editor of Netscape Communicator is very fast
and convenient. Moving and copying bookmarks between
(sub)folders is much faster than with Firefox and Mozilla,
in particular, on Sun Solaris. Please learn from the old editors!

In particular, I have hundreds of folders and subfolders
with thousands of bookmarks. And the function
"Find in Bookmarks" of Netscape Communicator
allows to search for text in bookmarks as well as
in folder/subfolder titles and to jump from one
search hit to the next search hit within the tree.

Example: Using the search string "Java", it is very useful
to find all subfolders titled "Java applications/programming/etc."
contained in diverse folders named "applications" and "programming".

To sum up, make the folder titles and bookmarks
searchable at the same time! The resulting list
should return folders and bookmarks that contain the
search string anywhere in their title/name/location/description/tags.
Alternatively, the user should be able to jump from
one hit to the next hit in the bookmark tree
as it is implemented in the Netscape Communicator.

If some user does not want to find folder titles,
then the user should be able to turn this off.
But I prefer to find not only bookmarks, but also
folders containing my text in the title.

== Projects ==
I think it would be a very useful feature to be able to create projects with the Bookmarks tool. A project would be similar to a folder, only clicking that project folder would open all associated web pages, a page with relevant live bookmark feeds, and any programs or documents used in the project.

== Favorites on the Start menu ==

Since a part of firefox's appeal is its ability to run on older OSs, it would be nice if Firefox bookmarks could be put into the Favorites menu on the start menu.

== Copying bookmarks to pasteboard ==

This might be more appropriate as a Firefox extension, but as a web researcher/writer, I have often wished for an option in the context menu to copy and paste bookmarks to my text editor with the HTML markup intact. Perhaps even with options to include the bookmark's keywords, description, or other properties enabled through the planned conversion to database bookmarks storage? The [http://copyurlplus.mozdev.org/index.html CopyUrlPlus] extension is somewhat like I'm looking for, although it only works with web pages rather than bookmarks, and it would benefit from submenuing capability.

==Duplicate Handling==
It would be nice if Firefox warned you about adding a bookmark that matches one with the same URL.

I have a large list of bookmarks, e.g. 200+ with 30+ folders. Sometimes I bookmark the same page more than once (mainly by accident). it should deal with this intelligently, e.g., don't just add another entry, but preferably add any new description/tags to the old location, so that you don't have the same page bookmarked multiple times.

Added thought: It would be nice to have a "duplicate bookmark
warning", with the options |add new one here|copy existing|cancel|

==Tagging and sharing==

An interesting read is this blog entry:
http://www.contentious.com/archives/2005/04/20/furl-delicious-almost-perfect-together
which discusses one user's method of tagging and sharing. It has some good usages that should be considered for a new system.

== Extend %s Hack ==

Currently, the %s hack provides a tremendous degree of freedom for customization and is extremely powerful. But it could become more flexible when it would respond to the three cases:

# keyword only = empty string (and not %s) and it should be optionally possible to supply a different URL for this case
# keyword with option = option string, and
# keyword only but marked text in the website = marked text (the option string should have a higher priority than marked text). This should be optional by checkbox. This would extent all the wonderful search options to the text within the website so that copy and paste can be avoided.

== Dynamic Bookmarks Search -- LiveFolders ==

Adding input options to chrome URLs or a similar mechanisms would allow to bookmark dynamic search lists or "LiveFolders" and open them with keywords, e.g.
chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul?search=rediscover

== Favorites and Web Index in Two Different Interfaces ==

The redesign of graphical interfaces for bookmarks must address two different purposes. One is a menu for quick access to websites and the other is a personal index of marked websites. Both concepts are important for the interaction with the web and have been kept in one interface over time. But it may be better to have two separate interfaces.

The menu's purpose is fast access to frequently visited websites, also referred to as FAVORITES. In principle, its function is similar to program menus or to sidebars with a small number of items. In contrast to the function of favorites, there is a large number of bookmarks that have been saved because they were interesting or valuable. This personal WEB INDEX is a "permanent history" of marked websites. Searching this INDEX can provide pre-selected information very quickly. Tagging seems a perfect tool to categorize these bookmarks for the WEB INDEX in a very flexible, quick, and simple way.
For more details please see: http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/rethinking-bookmarks-ui/

== Machine-readable/processible bookmarks ==

Bookmarks should be stored in some kind of XML format (e.g. RDF / RSS / Atom / whatever) so that they can be parsed automatically by scripts or other utilities. The existing format is very difficult (if not impossible) to parse, except for Firefox itself.

== Exporting Bookmarks ==

When we export bookmarks, it would be nice to have a property on each category and bookmark that could make them private and so, not exportable. This is important because if we want to share our bookmarks there are always bookmarks that should not be shared.

If there was some automatism that would export public bookmarks to a server that also would be very interesting.

== Exporting Folder(s) for Documentation ==

Would like to be able to export a folder (with subfolders and bookmarks) as HTML
retaining HREF, TITLE, SHORTCUTURL the and ability to discard timestamps and information not
usually relevent to documentation (ADD_DATE, LAST_MODIFIED, LAST_CHARSET, ICON, generated ID).

Also see a need for a Bookmarks Documentation bookmarklet with the ability to do the same working from a selection within bookmarks.html to extract source to
the clipboard.

== Old style netscape bookmarks ==

Bookmarks should be displayed in multiple columns side by side like the old netscape used to. Or at least there should be an option to do so. I have like, 2000 entries in my bookmark file. I don't sort them, nor group them. That way I always can go to the bottom of the list and reconstruct a chronological order. So if I want to know when I visited a site, I can do so. It is very time consuming to have to scroll down through all of these. In the old netscape 4.1 they would be displayed in columns like the program list is in windows 2000. That is my single biggest gripe about firefox. How do you make firefox do this?

== Integrate bookmark backup into Firefox ==

After reading enough reports in mozilla.feedback, bugzilla, etc., it is clear to me that it would be useful to incorporate some sort of bookmark backup within the browser. This needs to be something fairly simple - just an easy one touch way to backup their bookmarks so that all is not lost in the event something happens during update, etc. As bookmarks are the lifeblood of many users, I think this is a useful thing to consider. And I realize there are extensions available to do this, but many users either do not know about them or aren't willing to go the extra length to install an extension.

== Sort entries in a live bookmark alphabetically instead of chronologically ==

I use live bookmarks to display my bookmark collection from a social bookmarking service. However inside a single live bookmark, moazilla displays the entries (each entry being a different bookmarked url) in the order in which I added them on the social bookmarking service. I would like the option to make them appear sorted alphabetically, instead of sorted by time of addition.

Bookmarks Design Discussion

2007-11-24T01:56:59Z

Tdot: /* Separating the Interfaces of the Favorites and the Web Index */

== Bookmarks Design Discussion ==

=== Rationale ===

People interact with the web very differently today than they did when the concept of web bookmarks was first created. With search engines and directories such as google, yahoo, opendirectory, etc. returning fast and mostly accurate results, it's often easier to search for a page based on keywords you remember from it, than it is to hunt through your static bookmarks.

Many people still use bookmarks in the traditional way -- bookmarking pages, manually placing them into a folder hierarchy, and then visually scanning (or searching by title) to locate a particular bookmark. The favicon in particular helps the visual scanning.

I would guess that most people don't use any hierarchy; they bookmark pages as they come to them, and they end up going to an overpopulated Bookmarks list that's all but unusable from the Bookmarks menu.

Bookmarks will be closely tied to the [[Annotations]] Service, providing ways to add additional information about the bookmarked pages.

=== Bookmark Labels ===

Instead of asking users to create a hierarchy of bookmarks, we would instead have users apply one or more labels to each bookmark. Making a bookmark will involve tagging the current page with one or more labels, instead of "Bookmark this page". The latter operation can still exist, and can apply a default "Favorites" or similar label.

Since a bookmark can have multiple labels associated with it, the interaction with the set of bookmarks will be through keyword and label searches, and not directly by hierarchy. Hierarchy can be displayed in the bookmarks menu and toolbar (see next section).

Bookmark labels can be hierarchical; for example, using <tt>:</tt> to denote a hierarchy level, a bookmark with a label of <tt>Work:Reference</tt> would have that as one of its explicit labels, but also have an implicit label <tt>Work</tt>. It does not have an implicit label <tt>Reference</tt>, however. Querying for all bookmarks with a label of <tt>Work</tt> would include all bookmarks labelled <tt>Work</tt>, <tt>Work:Reference</tt>, <tt>Work:Blogs</tt>, etc.

Within each label, order will be preserved amongst bookmarks. If a query is done for <tt>Work:Reference</tt>, all bookmarks with an explicit <tt>Work:Reference</tt> label will always be displayed in the same order, and will be reorderable. If multiple labels are included in a query, however, no order will be enforced or remembered.

An alternative to the use of : for a short tag hierarchy could be the support for ordered tags such as <tt>work reference</tt>, <tt>work blog</tt>, etc. All tags are separate and searchable as single tags. For example, a search for <tt>social+bookmarks</tt> as a flat search would show bookmarks with any order of tags (e.g. <tt>bookmarks social software</tt>) while <tt>"social bookmarks"</tt> would only show bookmarks with this sub-string of ordered tags. This concept can represent well sorted directories such as <tt>“wiki Firefox bookmarks design�?</tt>. Any sub-order of tags could be searched: <tt>"bookmarks design"</tt>, <tt>"firefox bookmarks"</tt>, etc. The support of simple wildcards or special operators would allow to search for <tt>"wiki * bookmarks"</tt> where <tt>bookmarks</tt> can have any position right from <tt>wiki</tt>. A search for <tt>"^wiki"</tt> could be used to show all bookmarks where <tt>wiki</tt> is the first tag.

==== Interacting with complex queries ====

When users view a label, either from the bookmarks manager, menu, etc., presenting and interacting with the bookmarks inside it is straightforward: bookmarks can reordered, added, deleted, etc.

When a category is a more complex query such as "Work AND Important", or "Important OR Incomplete", presentation becomes more complex. In some cases, such as RSS, the user can't even change the title or delete it. Even for local bookmarks, what happens if the user tries to add or delete a bookmark to a complex query, or reorder them?

In some cases, we can magically assign the proper labels when a bookmark is added to a complex query. If it is just an AND clause, the bookmark gets all the necessary tags. In other cases, this won't be possible. How will these "special" categories be presented so that it is clear that you can't do some things?

=== Separating out Bookmarks, the Bookmarks Menu, and the Bookmarks Toolbar ===

The Bookmarks Menu and Toolbar are only able to display a hierarchy, whereas with labels, a single bookmark may have more than one label "parent". Unlike the current scheme, the Bookmarks Menu and Toolbar will be separate from the list of bookmarks; the user will have explicit control over each bookmark that appears in the menu or sidebar (as opposed to the entire bookmarks list, which will be accessible from a sidebar or "bookmarks manager" opened in a tab). In the default configuration, things will behave much as they do now -- bookmarking a page will tag it with a default bookmark tag, and will optionally add it to the menu. The Toolbar will behave the same way, except that users have always had control over what appears in the toolbar. The only change to the toolbar is that it will no longer be a "Folder" in the bookmarks menu, but will be its own separate container.

Hierarchy can be created in the bookmarks folder by creating special query folders that will display as its children the results of that query. A simple query can be just for an individual label; however, complex queries can be possible. Additional bookmark providers can create new bookmark types and containers that can be present in the menu or the toolbar.

We will have to take care to make this behavior intuitive to users who are used to the old bookmark system and just want to create folders inside their bookmark menu/toolbar and put links in them. The menu/toolbar hierarchy should be visible when categorizing bookmarks (perhaps at the bottom of any labels) with the folders visible. People, who may not realize the correspondence between a label and the separate bookmark menu entry, should even be able to put stuff in the sub-folders of the bookmarks menu.

In most cases, the entries in the bookmarks folder will be simple "soft links" to single tags. Adding a bookmark to one of these links should add the tag. In other cases, this won't be possible (see "Interacting with complex queries" above).

==== Alternate bookmarks menu possibility ====

If linking tags gets too complicated, we could also create separate tags that live in the bookmarks menu. For example "$MENU:Programming" could be the name of the programming tag that appears inside the bookmarks menu. The difference is that this would not be linked to a separate "Programming" tag you have at the root tag level.

This case solves some of the edge cases of the previous approach where it might be confusing that the two separate things are linked. But now there is a new problem of not realizing that there could be two separate things labeled "Programming". If all interaction is done through selecting lists and autocompleted lists, this might not be confusing.

==== Separating the Interfaces of the Favorites and the Web Index ====

The graphical interfaces for bookmarks must address two different purposes. One is quick access to websites and the other one is managing a personal index. Both concepts have been kept in one interface so far but it would be better to have two tailored interfaces: one for fast access to frequently visited websites following the design principles of program menus or sidebars with a small number of items, and the other one for managing and searching the personal WEB INDEX ("permanent history") of marked and tagged websites.
For more details please see: http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/rethinking-bookmarks-ui/

=== Interaction With Other Bookmark Providers ===

Bookmark providers that provide items will be subject to the same labelling mechanism. However, bookmarks that provide containers will be a special case, since they will live a dual item/container life. RSS bookmarks in particular will, .....

Talk:Places:Firefox 2 User Interface Ideas

2007-11-24T01:54:49Z

Tdot: /* Some Thoughts */

==Discussion Thread==
[http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox/browse_frm/thread/5780124ae9f3a6a5/6edcdeb28a1b741a#6edcdeb28a1b741a 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. --[[User:Stebs|Stebs]]

We imagined exposing some of this through the properties window. [[User:Ben|Ben]]

Great! No clutter for normal Users, but the functionality is still there... [[User:Stebs|Stebs]]

Any chance of multiple bookmark toolbar folders, like the way flock does it?--[[User:Noamsml|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
--[[User:MichelJullian|MichelJullian]] 16:55, 7 Jan 2006 (PST)

Will Linux users be able to use drag'n'drop to rearrange bookmarks from the menu? [[User:Kezo|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.) --[[User:Godfreja|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. [[User:Pennyrg|Pennyrg]]

There's a lot of [http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox/tree/browse_frm/thread/fb2bc6046096beda/8e15c2b244cc1758?rnum=1&_done=%2Fgroup%2Fmozilla.dev.apps.firefox%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthread%2Ffb2bc6046096beda%2F8e15c2b244cc1758%3Ftvc%3D1%26#doc_7ab57a53de7e9b8a discussion] going on about this UI in the newsgroup. Just wanted to make sure that was referenced from here. [[User:Beltzner|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". --[[User:Richwklein|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 [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=317847 317847] --[[User:SylvainPasche|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. --[[User:wjjohnst|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? [[User:Viper550|Viper550]] 17:30, 24 May 2007 (PDT)

Talk:Places

2007-11-24T01:50:21Z

Tdot: /* Tagging: different than bookmarking */

Best not break my bookmarks boy.

----
This may be more of an extension feature than a core feature, but there isn't an extension out there that does it as well as it could be done.

It would be fantastic to have a feature that allows you to store & synch your bookmarks at a remote location in a format that can be read in a web browser. I regularly use 3 different computer for work and pop into Internet cafes while traveling, and never seem to have the bookmark I need in the right place at the right time.

The one extension I've found that comes close to this is Bookmarks Synchronizer that stores your bookmarks in an XML format. But it has a critical flaw that can cause you to lose your existing bookmarks and appears to have been abandonded after version 1.0.1.

----
Two points to make here.
First, I agree with the post above. I sometimes work from home and if I find something worth bookmarking, I usually have to send myself the link at work (or viceversa). Having an online repository would be great.

I'm afraid it may be late for the second point as you guys already are in the middle of implementation. However, I read an article by UI guru Jakob Nielsen years ago that was focused on Bookmarks, History. What I found is not what I had in mind but it mentions the same concepts. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9711a.html

----
I'm going to propose something very radical, but please give it serious thought. Consider natively integrating Firefox with the Windows 98/Windows 2000/Windows XP "Favorites" system. I realise most people consider this to be an "evil IE feature", but all versions of Windows in the past 6+ years have included Favorites as a native, OS-level feature. Favorites are included in everything from the start menu to the "main menu" of explorer folder windows. Yes, it's part of the "Integrate IE with the OS curse", but I believe it falls within the Firefox philosophy - simple, standardize, OS-friendly user interfaces.

My proposal: If a user loads Firefox on a Windows platform that supports favorites natively at the OS level, Firefox uses those favorites - either directly, or through some sort of "transparent caching". If the favorites are cached so that Firefox can optimize them, the user should not be aware of that - they should look and feel the same as Favorites, for the most part (ie/ no additional IE, no syncronization dialogs).

An option/preference would allow the user to select which bookmark system to use (ie/ where new bookmarks go). "meta data" about the "favorite" (.url) bookmarks could be cached in firefox's bookmark file or another file somehow.

I realize this is likely to be stomped out very quickly - but consider that "Favorites" are an operating system feature - supporting favorites is no different than supporting the native Windows "File Save Dialog" or rendering scrollbars with Windows XP Themes. In addition, it provides a very easy, gradual upgrade path for Internet Explorer users. They can easily "dabble" in Firefox until they are ready to take the full plunge. I can honestly say that even as a technical user, I found the lack of automatic/transparent bookmark syncronization a severe frustration when I first started using Firefox.

I'm not suggesting the Firefox team sign a deal with the devil - but perhaps it would allow users to switch to Firefox with much less pain. :-) Nothing says that the favorites and the firefox bookmark file cannot be "merged" at display time.

== Replacing local bookmarks with remote ==

I'd find it really useful if you could actually provide a way for extensions to override native bookmarking functionality and use an online provider -- like del.icio.us, for example. I stopped using local bookmarks a long time ago for anything I wanted to remember in the future, so "Places" functionality will be completely lost on me unless there's a way to get external services in there somewhere.

== Local/Absolute dual bookmarks ==

I've long wanted a way to bookmark news articles that I have stored on my hard drive along with the URL. I frequently cite URLs as sources and it'd be nice to be able to quickly check the link, then source the file from my hard drive if the URL is dead. The first implementation that comes to mind is an icon to the right of the link text that summons the local file.

Other suggestions:
When using the navigation toolbar, checking a bookmark's properties or sorting a folder by name (inter alia) causes the tree to close/collapse/whatever. This is annoying.

It would be great if we could shift-click and control-click to select bookmarks/folders for export from the bookmark manager.

It would be great if we could export bookmarks and optionally have the result look and behave as the links in the navbar and/or bookmark manager do (i.e., preserve file structure).

When copying/pasting bookmarks, it would be great if we had an option to allow the title(s) AND the URL(s) to be copied/pasted.

It'd be great if we could automate a periodic check for dead URLs, with a nice detailed report, but I'm guessing this is the sort of thing tons of people have suggested.

When saving pages maybe a way to make an article's publication date the file's creation date? I know this is outside the scope here...

I'm sure I could come up with more given time. I'm very glad to hear that bookmarks are going to finally get some attention.

----
= Tagging: different than bookmarking =

Recent thinking on the UI (as discussed in the newsgroups) has led us to shift from our initial thinking that tagging should be seen as an alternate way to create bookmarks, with tags simply acting as surrogates for bookmark folders. After looking at some hard questions about what that implied for nested folders, preserving existing bookmark heirarchy structures, and adjusting users' mental models, we began to see things differently.

Most recently, we've started to see tagging as the ability to do something else: specifically, to be able to mark an entry in your web browsing history as "interesting."

Here's the rationale: Bookmarks were originally intended to be shortcuts to commonly visited sites. But then the web got bigger, and people started using them as ways to remember interesting places. But then the web got bigger still, and all of a sudden the bookmarking system couldn't cope. Initial thoughts about tagging were: well, let's use tags and search to make it easier to handle large bookmark sets. But that led to some very good questions: search isn't as quick as click-click-click through a drop-down menu or click on a personal toolbar. The key was realizing that the use of bookmarks shifted and merged: a single system was being used to store shortcuts AND sites that were just interesting and that the user thought they might want to get back to. The goal of keeping all of these interesting sites is, well, to keep track of one's personal world wide web. To tag those pages that they thing are interesting and then be able to quickly search not the entire web, but across their already-experienced subset to get back to where they were. And that's why we think it's different.)

[[User:Beltzner|Beltzner]] 19:35, 25 Feb 2006 (PST)

Excellent point! I think any redesign of a bookmarking interface in current browsers needs to address exactly this problem. But, may be there is a simple solution: two different purposes require two different interfaces that serve each purpose best. Have a look at this little essay I wrote recently:
http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/rethinking-bookmarks-ui/

-- 24 March 2006 --

This is exactly what I think I would use. Give me a button I can hit when I find a site that is either interesting, or that I know I'll need to get back to soon. No popups. No "Enter tags" or "Rename" dialog or nothing. Just a button that does everything for me, and lites up to let me know its done. Then put a list of 'em (with readable names) in the sidebar or bookmarks menu or history menu or as a dropdown outta the URL bar. I don't really care where it shows up. I just don't wanna have to open a new window for it. That's pretty much all I use bookmarks for. And most of them I'm more than happy to be done with after 2 days usage.

-- 19:43, 8 March 2006 --

== Cheaper on bandwidth ==

I'm glad to see firefox will be heading in this direction. Let me make a suggestion: if need be to implement server side functionality in order to keep cached bookmarks current, just remember that server hosting would benefit from this feature -and most likely jump to the aid of Firefox- since it would reduce the ammount of bandwidth they would waste unnecessarily.

== Puts Places in a Tab ==

Does the Places section have to be a window? These clutter the browsing space, and I think it would be much better to have the Places section in a tab itself. Opera does this at the moment with Bookmarks and History (separately). [[User:Sgd|Sgd]] 15:52, 20 Mar 2006 (PST)

Places used to be in a tab but there were a lot of bugs related to having XUL in the content area of the window. I liked it better in a tab as well, and I hope we can go back to a tab in future releases when the bugs are fixed. ~BrettWilson

= Sidebar for Bookmarks =

Having bookmarks in a sidebar is the fastest access (one click) and can be used as a permanent visual reminder for bookmarks, bookmarklets, and keywords to activate bookmarks (e.g. "dt _ del.icio.us tag search" with the %s hack and "dt" as keyword that I write as a visual reminder at the beginning of the line followed by an underscore to separate it from the text). The menu for bookmarks requires at lest two clicks and is a "dynamic" visual reminder. The sidebar and the menu for bookmarks are perfect interfaces for a small number of frequently visited websites and as toolbox for bookmarklets. So, don't drop it with the new Places Interface. --[[User:Tdot|Tdot]] 20:35, 23 March 2006 (PST)

= Use Cases =

Someone really needs to fill in the use case section. It seems like it would be important when designing a UI. Somebody in the groups suggested this case: "One example is the deletion of a place. ... That used to delete just one instance in one folder for decades, and now you change it, including dataloss." Things that delete data should be done with a dialogue. Something that asks if you want to entirely remove the bookmark(s), or just remove it(them) from that category, and maybe an "Always perform this action" checkbox at the bottom.

I looked through the UI and didn't see any UI on deleting bookmarks at all, but I apologize if this is a repeat of something. --[[User:Wjjohnst|wjjohnst]] April 13, 2006 3:20(CST)

= Browse Bookmarks, then Save! =

A feature of Konqueror I always loved was that you could drop down any menu from your Bookmarks and click "Add Bookmark Here".

I use my Bookmarks Toolbar and rarely the Bookmarks menu. It would be great to just click that category I want from the menu, navigate to one of my sub-menus and then click "Add Bookmark Here". I find this method much more speedy than using the "Bookmark This Page" function.

If I want to organise my bookmarks the Bookmarks Manager will still be there, but when I want to quickly mark a page, I want to quickly mark it.

Also, there are often situations when I might want to add several pages from a site or sites all in reasonably quick succession. Using the "Add Bookmark Here" function is the slow way of doing things.

[[User:Bugman|Bugman]] 23:52, 15 May 2006 (ACST)

== index ALL and pinpoint SOME ==

Hi all,

I am extremely surprised that even in Firefox 2 we still have no more than this completely obsolete and unpractical bookmark functionality to go back where we once were (apart from history of course).

The solution is so simple! Of course the hierarchical organization of
bookmarks is a nonsense and we'd be better off with a keyword/tag approach.
Yet the solution I would retain is even simpler to implement and use:
just put ALL the visited URLs back to a user chosen period of time in a local or remote htdig/glimpse style database, storing the last visits date as well. Also allow the user to add an extra pinpoint to URLs of particular interest to him/her and you're done!

Indexing everything is important so that the user does not have to worry about not forgetting to bookmark, especially when there are several pages of interest within the same website.

Well now OK the index might get big if an extensive surfer wants several years of storage. But this should not normally grow beyond the capacity of present hard disks. And remote storage is of course an option.

Why looking further for awkward and complicated schemes most users will
neglect to learn ?

A functionally equivalent approach would be to ask Google to add your name, the date and your eventual pinpoint in their database when you visit a site ;-)

--[[User:Alexandre Oberlin|Alexandre Oberlin]] 12:42, 31 December 2006 (PST)

Talk:Places:Bookmarks:Rethinking

2007-11-10T03:41:47Z

Tdot: /* Scrambled Notes about Bookmarks:Rethinking */

=tags+notes=
Personally, I just want Tags and Notes available. I'll use just about any UI I have to, without complaint. The screen shots on the wiki page look fine to me. Did I mention I REELY, REELY want to use Notes and Tags with Places?

=Some ideas...=
OK, I thought a little about that really nice approach... here are my topics:
==notes==
When a piece of a website is copied to "notes", I would love to have this piece of the note clickable and bringing me to more or less the same place on the webpage again. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==The bookmark "inbox"==
This section was not 100% clear to me %-/ What I got as unsolved problem was that users of the current bookmark system expect new bookmarks (star button) at the end of the list whereas you'd like to put them on top of the list for more dominant presentation to newbies. What about filing new bookmarks as nowadys at the end but giving all "star"-bookmarks an appropriate tag, eg new_quick_bookmark_by_star_button, thus the "new bookmarks" section works just as a filter over tags (kind of "saved query" like in TB) => both groups are satisfied. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==hint and wizzard for upgrading users==
We have no need for folders at all any more, as tags can do ''everything'' folders can do (if sub-tags are implemented!) but offer multiple hierarchies for one bookmark (eg golem.de in "news" and "software" and "hardware" and "price comparision"). We can get rid of all the dupes the folders were forcing us to produce! :-)

For people like me, having over 2MByte of bookmarks, it would be GREAT to have a kind of upgrade wizzard which does the following

# take all folder names and copy (undo possible) or move (some users may fear semantic losses) them into the new invented tag field (including subfolders, using a ''really'' secure seperator (/ and : may be used in current folder names) ). Use a prefix like "folder:" so I know "hey, this was a folder until FB3" so I will find my way quickly (yes, this breaks find as you type, it's just a first rough idea *g*)
# find all bookmarks with similar URL and consolidate all of them into a single bookmark
## each folder path as one tag
## use most recent "last call" and it's favicon
## in case one field (keyword / description...) is filled only in one of the old bookmarks, use this and go to next dupe. Elsewise ask user what to do (use one of them only, concatenate or (default) concatenate and manually edit AND a checkbox "same action for all 243 similar cases")
# delete obsolete folder structure
--[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==check bookmarks==
As the main intention of the new places system is to promote the use of bookmarks, much more users will have to fight against permanent redirects which will become broken links. Moreover, not all sites are offering RSS and thus it would be great to get the fine old mozilla 1.7 (?) feature back: check bookmarks for changes. But in an user friedly and useful way:
* Setting those checks (update/broken) per bookmark or per folder/tag
* collect some places and perform any check only once (so not making a permanent setting)
* optional: Warn me if any bookmark (independet of setting) gets a new permanent redirect (usually some time later the old URL does not work at all any more)
* Optional: save the current content of a URL and mark it as changed only if more than xxx byte changed (important for generated content where date of creation will ''never'' work for update checks) and then highlight the differences

I did not find out the reason why this pretty cool feature was dropped when FF was created; a search of some 15mins revealed no good sources. In case the reason was that newbies were overwhelmed: We are now creating a complete new UI so this feature is not somehow squashed into an old UI, but it can be done in a really nice and neat way so everyone understands. And now, we ''want'' newbies to heavyly use bookmarks. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==incremental search==
I'd love to be able to search incremental. So first, show only places containing ".se" in their URL, then further reduce to those containing "uni" in title/description and then further filter to only those containing the tag "todo". Then save this as saved search. Maybe too sophisticated (=> extension) but maybe just another reason to use FF "places" instead of web2.0 pages (which are not able to do this to full extend, so searches including history) --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

= Scrambled Notes about Bookmarks:Rethinking =
First of all, it is a very nice proposal and contains many good solutions for new functions. Thank you.
* '''Chrome Hack:''' Hopefully, a link like this chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul will still show the bookmarks window in a tab and did not get lost in transition.
* '''Autolinks:''' I'm not so excited about it because all systems with automated population I know are never transparent. You never know when an item will appear and when it will suddenly disappears. I understand the intention but I'm not sure if it is reliable for the target group.
* '''Old Bookmarking System:''' worked actually well as flat list with manual tagging and annotating (see items at http://pubnotes.wordpress.com)! But having said that I'm glad to see that Firefox will provide support such as auto-complete for tags etc. so that random variations of tags can be avoided.
* '''STAR Button:''' single click bookmarking sounds great! But couldn't it be placed in the navigation toolbar just left from the URL? And could the down arrow be an option? If I mark text on a website and click the STAR button it should also copy the selected text to the notes or append it to existing notes.
* '''Inbox/to-do list:''' The to-do list would not be appropriate after I read a website and decide to bookmark it. I suppose I have to use a different way of bookmarking to avoid putting it in the Inbox. How you describe its function sounds more like the typical Recent rather than an Inbox. I hope all (new) bookmarks appear not only in Inbox, New Bookmarks, etc. but also (immediately) in the general bookmarks list so that I can use the simplest way and all new features are options.
* '''Archived Bookmarks:''' I have saved a large mount of bookmarks in an archive file because until v1.5 Firefox does not handle large amounts of bookmarks so well. Also I removed all icons because the overhead was much more than 50% of the total number of characters in each bookmark. I guess the handling of bookmarks has changed with 2.0 so it might not be necessary anymore. I wonder if this item should just be labeled "Bookmarks" and include all new bookmarks so that New Bookmarks is just a "selective view".
* '''Tags:''' Tag lists can grow really big and it takes a lot of time to scroll long vertical lists. Look at this example http://del.icio.us/Tdot/firefox and try to work with it. How much time does it take you to scroll? Anyway, I use tags primarily for search because it is actually a special kind of annotation!
* '''Old Description Field:''' I always missed the description field in the bookmarks manager because it could have been a good place for notes. But it is basically invisible. At least in the bookmarks manager. My solution for this problem was to change the title field manually and add tags and annotations using some separators : Title -- Tags ;; Annotations. This was so far very efficient for the existing bookmarking system. I guess it will become the new notes field.
* '''Notes:''' integration looks great! It should include the tags field! I change tags frequently when I do research and work on projects. Tags and notes are just different annotations. Can I choose between left or bottom as notes location? (May be floating?)
* '''Search:''' MUST include title, (URL: recommend), tags, and notes! When I use my bash script to search all fields of the bookmarks I get a small percentage of unintended results but I prefer this simplistic approach with one search field that is similar to Google's. Additional specifiers such as inurl, site, etc. are only used for advanced search.
* '''Viewing Tags:''' I'm not sure about its function. It seems to offer the tags list and show all bookmarks with the selected tag. It seems equivalent to an advanced search like "tags:firefox". If I bookmark a website that has Firefox in its title why should I enter it again as a tag? I'm using tags to improve findability not to build a perfect structure of tags. I mean I need to add as tag or in notes information that is not in the title field so that I can integrate this website into my personal map of associations and knowledge.
* '''Viewing Bookmarks:''' I'm wondering if a list style like del.icio.us bookmarks (e.g. http://del.icio.us/Tdot/firefox), Google's search results, or reddit's news items (http://reddit.com/) would be better than the table format. CSS would actually allow advanced users some hacking and personal adjustments.
* '''Viewing Notes:''' a del.icio.us like output seems here also a better solution and could integrate very well with bookmarks. To illustrate what I mean follow these two links: http://old.lirio.us/rubric/entries/tags/delirioussiteblog?long_form=1 http://old.lirio.us/rubric/entries/tags/delirioussiteblog The first link shows the complete item while the second link reduces it to the bookmark with a short summary. For Firefox I think three levels would be perfect: single line (bookmark + tags?), four lines (bookmark + tags + two lines of the notes), long form (incudes complete notes/annotations)
* '''Notes and Highlighting:''' It would be great if the text from notes would appear highlighted in the website when I revisit it. But this may interfere with manual notes. URLex could do the trick but I would like to have a copy of an interesting text snippet in my notes in case the link is broken some day.
* '''Editing of bookmarks, tags, notes:''' Having editable title, tags, and notes fields for the selected bookmark is excellent. But if the bookmarks would be listed as dynamic HTML page inline editing as it is used by del.icoi.us or by TiddlyWiki could be an option.
* '''Check Bookmarks (reply to above):''' Having a few thousand bookmarks dead links come up once in a while and are easily deleted when I notice the website is gone. But more importantly a server can be down temporarily and I do not want to loose important bookmarks by an automated bookmark cleaner.
* '''Incremental Search (reply to above):''' The problem with Firefox is only that it takes the search field as one string instead of a space separated list with a default AND operator. Also Mozilla/Firefox always destroyed the order of bookmarks so I wrote my own search as bash script that generates a dynamic HTML ant loads it in a Firefox tab (see http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/firefox-search/).
* '''Smart Keywords:''' Currently, I can enter a bookmark like this http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%s , add a keyword "ys", and use it to search yahoo from the URL bar, e.g "ys firefox". But if I just enter "ys" I get the search results for "%s". So, it would be great to delete "%s" before it is send to the server. Except, on the website is some text selected. Because in this case is should perform the search for the selected text.
* '''PermaLinks for bookmark searches:''' would be a wonderful tool for frequent tasks and combine it with all the possibilities for bookmarks (keyword, smart keyword, bookmarklet, bookmarks menu, bookmarks toolbar). It has the function of a "smart folder" (Mac) and could for example be used to show all bookmarks with the tag "project1". But unlike in directories ONE bookmark can appear in multiple "smart folders". The URL/link could look like this chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul?s=project1 chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul?s=%s
Tdot 2005-07-11, 00:41

== Question ==

how do you access png's

== Bookmarks rethink from my view ==

I'm writing my wishes and thoughts on the future bookmarks model, and hope it will influence someone. My spec comes from teh point of view that minimal interaction should be required. I think an add dialog should be abolished :)

It's here: [[User:Auk/Bookmarks]].

Talk:Places:Bookmarks:Rethinking

2007-11-10T03:36:14Z

Tdot: /* Scrambled Notes about Bookmarks:Rethinking */

=tags+notes=
Personally, I just want Tags and Notes available. I'll use just about any UI I have to, without complaint. The screen shots on the wiki page look fine to me. Did I mention I REELY, REELY want to use Notes and Tags with Places?

=Some ideas...=
OK, I thought a little about that really nice approach... here are my topics:
==notes==
When a piece of a website is copied to "notes", I would love to have this piece of the note clickable and bringing me to more or less the same place on the webpage again. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==The bookmark "inbox"==
This section was not 100% clear to me %-/ What I got as unsolved problem was that users of the current bookmark system expect new bookmarks (star button) at the end of the list whereas you'd like to put them on top of the list for more dominant presentation to newbies. What about filing new bookmarks as nowadys at the end but giving all "star"-bookmarks an appropriate tag, eg new_quick_bookmark_by_star_button, thus the "new bookmarks" section works just as a filter over tags (kind of "saved query" like in TB) => both groups are satisfied. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==hint and wizzard for upgrading users==
We have no need for folders at all any more, as tags can do ''everything'' folders can do (if sub-tags are implemented!) but offer multiple hierarchies for one bookmark (eg golem.de in "news" and "software" and "hardware" and "price comparision"). We can get rid of all the dupes the folders were forcing us to produce! :-)

For people like me, having over 2MByte of bookmarks, it would be GREAT to have a kind of upgrade wizzard which does the following

# take all folder names and copy (undo possible) or move (some users may fear semantic losses) them into the new invented tag field (including subfolders, using a ''really'' secure seperator (/ and : may be used in current folder names) ). Use a prefix like "folder:" so I know "hey, this was a folder until FB3" so I will find my way quickly (yes, this breaks find as you type, it's just a first rough idea *g*)
# find all bookmarks with similar URL and consolidate all of them into a single bookmark
## each folder path as one tag
## use most recent "last call" and it's favicon
## in case one field (keyword / description...) is filled only in one of the old bookmarks, use this and go to next dupe. Elsewise ask user what to do (use one of them only, concatenate or (default) concatenate and manually edit AND a checkbox "same action for all 243 similar cases")
# delete obsolete folder structure
--[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==check bookmarks==
As the main intention of the new places system is to promote the use of bookmarks, much more users will have to fight against permanent redirects which will become broken links. Moreover, not all sites are offering RSS and thus it would be great to get the fine old mozilla 1.7 (?) feature back: check bookmarks for changes. But in an user friedly and useful way:
* Setting those checks (update/broken) per bookmark or per folder/tag
* collect some places and perform any check only once (so not making a permanent setting)
* optional: Warn me if any bookmark (independet of setting) gets a new permanent redirect (usually some time later the old URL does not work at all any more)
* Optional: save the current content of a URL and mark it as changed only if more than xxx byte changed (important for generated content where date of creation will ''never'' work for update checks) and then highlight the differences

I did not find out the reason why this pretty cool feature was dropped when FF was created; a search of some 15mins revealed no good sources. In case the reason was that newbies were overwhelmed: We are now creating a complete new UI so this feature is not somehow squashed into an old UI, but it can be done in a really nice and neat way so everyone understands. And now, we ''want'' newbies to heavyly use bookmarks. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==incremental search==
I'd love to be able to search incremental. So first, show only places containing ".se" in their URL, then further reduce to those containing "uni" in title/description and then further filter to only those containing the tag "todo". Then save this as saved search. Maybe too sophisticated (=> extension) but maybe just another reason to use FF "places" instead of web2.0 pages (which are not able to do this to full extend, so searches including history) --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

= Scrambled Notes about Bookmarks:Rethinking =
First of all, it is a very nice proposal and contains many good solutions for new functions. Thank you.
* '''Chrome Hack:''' Hopefully, a link like this chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul will still show the bookmarks window in a tab and did not get lost in transition.
* '''Autolinks:''' I'm not so excited about it because all systems with automated population I know are never transparent. You never know when an item will appear and when it will suddenly disappears. I understand the intention but I'm not sure if it is reliable for the target group.
* '''Old Bookmarking System:''' worked actually well as flat list with manual tagging and annotating (see items at http://tdot.blog-city.com)! But having said that I'm glad to see that Firefox will provide support such as auto-complete for tags etc. so that random variations of tags can be avoided.
* '''STAR Button:''' single click bookmarking sounds great! But couldn't it be placed in the navigation toolbar just left from the URL? And could the down arrow be an option? If I mark text on a website and click the STAR button it should also copy the selected text to the notes or append it to existing notes.
* '''Inbox/to-do list:''' The to-do list would not be appropriate after I read a website and decide to bookmark it. I suppose I have to use a different way of bookmarking to avoid putting it in the Inbox. How you describe its function sounds more like the typical Recent rather than an Inbox. I hope all (new) bookmarks appear not only in Inbox, New Bookmarks, etc. but also (immediately) in the general bookmarks list so that I can use the simplest way and all new features are options.
* '''Archived Bookmarks:''' I have saved a large mount of bookmarks in an archive file because until v1.5 Firefox does not handle large amounts of bookmarks so well. Also I removed all icons because the overhead was much more than 50% of the total number of characters in each bookmark. I guess the handling of bookmarks has changed with 2.0 so it might not be necessary anymore. I wonder if this item should just be labeled "Bookmarks" and include all new bookmarks so that New Bookmarks is just a "selective view".
* '''Tags:''' Tag lists can grow really big and it takes a lot of time to scroll long vertical lists. Look at this example http://del.icio.us/Tdot/firefox and try to work with it. How much time does it take you to scroll? Anyway, I use tags primarily for search because it is actually a special kind of annotation!
* '''Old Description Field:''' I always missed the description field in the bookmarks manager because it could have been a good place for notes. But it is basically invisible. At least in the bookmarks manager. My solution for this problem was to change the title field manually and add tags and annotations using some separators : Title -- Tags ;; Annotations. This was so far very efficient for the existing bookmarking system. I guess it will become the new notes field.
* '''Notes:''' integration looks great! It should include the tags field! I change tags frequently when I do research and work on projects. Tags and notes are just different annotations. Can I choose between left or bottom as notes location? (May be floating?)
* '''Search:''' MUST include title, (URL: recommend), tags, and notes! When I use my bash script to search all fields of the bookmarks I get a small percentage of unintended results but I prefer this simplistic approach with one search field that is similar to Google's. Additional specifiers such as inurl, site, etc. are only used for advanced search.
* '''Viewing Tags:''' I'm not sure about its function. It seems to offer the tags list and show all bookmarks with the selected tag. It seems equivalent to an advanced search like "tags:firefox". If I bookmark a website that has Firefox in its title why should I enter it again as a tag? I'm using tags to improve findability not to build a perfect structure of tags. I mean I need to add as tag or in notes information that is not in the title field so that I can integrate this website into my personal map of associations and knowledge.
* '''Viewing Bookmarks:''' I'm wondering if a list style like del.icio.us bookmarks (e.g. http://del.icio.us/Tdot/firefox), Google's search results, or reddit's news items (http://reddit.com/) would be better than the table format. CSS would actually allow advanced users some hacking and personal adjustments.
* '''Viewing Notes:''' a del.icio.us like output seems here also a better solution and could integrate very well with bookmarks. To illustrate what I mean follow these two links: http://old.lirio.us/rubric/entries/tags/delirioussiteblog?long_form=1 http://old.lirio.us/rubric/entries/tags/delirioussiteblog The first link shows the complete item while the second link reduces it to the bookmark with a short summary. For Firefox I think three levels would be perfect: single line (bookmark + tags?), four lines (bookmark + tags + two lines of the notes), long form (incudes complete notes/annotations)
* '''Notes and Highlighting:''' It would be great if the text from notes would appear highlighted in the website when I revisit it. But this may interfere with manual notes. URLex could do the trick but I would like to have a copy of an interesting text snippet in my notes in case the link is broken some day.
* '''Editing of bookmarks, tags, notes:''' Having editable title, tags, and notes fields for the selected bookmark is excellent. But if the bookmarks would be listed as dynamic HTML page inline editing as it is used by del.icoi.us or by TiddlyWiki could be an option.
* '''Check Bookmarks (reply to above):''' Having a few thousand bookmarks dead links come up once in a while and are easily deleted when I notice the website is gone. But more importantly a server can be down temporarily and I do not want to loose important bookmarks by an automated bookmark cleaner.
* '''Incremental Search (reply to above):''' The problem with Firefox is only that it takes the search field as one string instead of a space separated list with a default AND operator. Also Mozilla/Firefox always destroyed the order of bookmarks so I wrote my own search as bash script that generates a dynamic HTML ant loads it in a Firefox tab (see http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/firefox-search/).
* '''Smart Keywords:''' Currently, I can enter a bookmark like this http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%s , add a keyword "ys", and use it to search yahoo from the URL bar, e.g "ys firefox". But if I just enter "ys" I get the search results for "%s". So, it would be great to delete "%s" before it is send to the server. Except, on the website is some text selected. Because in this case is should perform the search for the selected text.
* '''PermaLinks for bookmark searches:''' would be a wonderful tool for frequent tasks and combine it with all the possibilities for bookmarks (keyword, smart keyword, bookmarklet, bookmarks menu, bookmarks toolbar). It has the function of a "smart folder" (Mac) and could for example be used to show all bookmarks with the tag "project1". But unlike in directories ONE bookmark can appear in multiple "smart folders". The URL/link could look like this chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul?s=project1 chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul?s=%s
Tdot 2005-07-11, 00:41

== Question ==

how do you access png's

== Bookmarks rethink from my view ==

I'm writing my wishes and thoughts on the future bookmarks model, and hope it will influence someone. My spec comes from teh point of view that minimal interaction should be required. I think an add dialog should be abolished :)

It's here: [[User:Auk/Bookmarks]].

User talk:Dria/On Tagging

2007-10-14T19:23:24Z

Tdot: /* Tagging UI */

Great! It would play nice with my plan to improve [[Bayesian]] to handle multistate. --[[User:Gandalf|gandalf]] 12:01, 15 Oct 2005 (PDT)

Folders (or files) hierarchy aim to be deprecated, for sorting folders, images or bookmarks. I think that the futur is the use of Metadata/category with metadatabot & "browsers by metada" and especially with the help of XPTC core 1.0 technology (aka ~= XMP).
http://www.iptc.org/IPTC4XMP/
For me the benefit of this metadata framework, is the use of Dublin Core standard (used also by standards and catalogue coordinator, librarian...), XML RDF standard, UTF-8 standard, open & royalty's free adaptability and portability...
(XMP is used in MacOSX search, Adobe's products etc.. for images and files)
-- [[User:Ginkyo|ginkyo]] 07:56, 16 Oct 2005 (PDT)

== Existing bookmarks ==

How would you import existing bookmarks, and educate the user on switching pardagims entirely. Tagging works because it's to the point, but any auto-tagging done by importing the bookmarks would create a horrible mess and hugely unfriendly to the user who may (or may not) have had their bookamrks previously in an order they were happy with.

:: That's a really good point. Another person mentioned that web pages often also have really lousy titles, so users would have to be able to modify the title as well as the tags. This article really is just a brainstorm of ideas, and not a full-fledged design, by any means. -- [[User:Dria|Dria]] 12:25, 16 Oct 2005 (PDT)

::: Perhaps the tree-tagging can limit this effect, because the import would result in 'tagification' of the bookmarks tree. The user will discover later that he can give multiple position to a single bookmark. [[User:Carmine|Carmine]] 06:26, 8 Nov 2005 (PST)

== Epiphany ==
You should try Epiphany, the Gnome official web browser, which is based on gecko. It already have some of the features you propose : It tag bookmark and it's has type ahead search on you bookmark (in the location bar). It may help you to get a better idea of what you exactly want. --Staz 21:46, 16 Oct (EST)

:: Possibly a good suggestion, but I use OS X. -- [[User:Dria|Dria]] 19:36, 16 Oct 2005 (PDT)

== Tree-Tagging ==

One of the falws of tagging is caused by the homonymy of many words. For example, when I tag a link 'Quebec', is it about the town of Quebec or of the province ? Or for the word 'France' ? The first name or the Country ? Having a tag tree will help to solve thoses problems.

== Architecture / 2 ==

Tags are popular because they're easy.

Don't try semantic web here, putting rich information in it, like hierarchies or something. Tags have their charms because the user knows if France is a name or a country or both. And can live with it.

To me, having ''smart'' algorithms that assist when tagging (don't forget rel="tag", btw) is one half of the trick, the other half is getting back to the URL. I definitly need to browse with Flock a bit to see what they're doing, dria's proposing something really close. Though they still have Favorites, and not just tags, I like the "ah, just drop it completely" idea here.

I don't like the mangling between feeds and URLs. We should get a good feedview, and if you add tags there, fine. If you add tags to a page, it should just be the page. In my experience, feeds and the webpages linking to them are not really equivalent that often. --[[User:AxelHecht|AxelHecht]] 10:30, 27 Oct 2005 (PDT)

== Bookmarking and Tagging ==

Bookmarking has definitely changed with the evolution of the web
(http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/evolution-of-bookmarking/). It is now time to rethink about the UI to address the new requirements. The current interface for BOOKMARKS / FAVORITES is optimal for "quick access to a small number of items with a high frequency of revisiting". But the "large number of items with a low frequency of revisiting" needs a new concept (http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/rethinking-bookmarks-ui/). I consider it an INDEX / PERMANENT HISTORY of websites. Just saving these websites as bookmarks doesn't result in anything useful because organizing a directory or scanning the large list manually takes to long, and the saved titles usually don't contain the search terms I use. However, annotating the titles of bookmarks has been very useful before tagging became an issue (see above "Evolution of Bookmarking"). It turned out that commas between tags didn't add anything. Instead of tags with multiple associated words I use multiple single-word tags separated by spaces as in natural sentences (also suggested by del.ios.us). This is sufficient for the search and allows me to use the concept of "ordered tags" (http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/ordered-tags/).

== Tagging UI ==

The tagging interface I like the best is del.icio.us' web interface for posting (opened and pre-filled with a bookmarklet). It shows all used tags as a tag cloud and supports find-ahead suggestions while typing. This has limited the tendency of folksonomies to create multiple words for one topic. And its has reduced random spelling errors and the parallel use of plural and singular. Putting tags in an one-dimensional list would result in an extremely long list with endless scrolling. This was acctually the reason I never switched in the past to an alternative bookmark managers with keywords. I see tags as a form of annotation. This semantic annotation depends primarily on my current interest. For that reason I would like to have an interface that allows me to see and change tags parallel to reading the website. May be in a Sidebar, "Bottombar", or in a dynamic tool like the find tool that is activated by a single key. But this tool should not be limited to tagging. It should also integrate a large field for free annotations. My search tools are currently not specific for tags but include everything: URL, title, tags, and annotations (http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/firefox-search/).
It fails only in a few cases when the search term is a very common word or pattern so that I get to many results. A suggest button, a filter that scans the content of the website for all my tags, an automatic language tag, and pre-filling by a manually defined URL -> tags list would be great. I guess the three-panel and two-panel concept would only work for "main tags" but not for common sizes of tag lists because of the access by scrolling issue. See for example http://johnvey.com/features/deliciousdirector/. Very useful would be a simple button that bookmarks the website and adds a predefined tag(s), e.g. 2read, without any other user interaction. And for power users, it would be a great advantage if the tool would support GET-like function as Flock does for some tools, e.g. chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul?url=http://www.foobar.org&tags=cool, so that bookmarklets can be used to develop quick solutions for specific problems.

== Tagging + Ranking + Sharing gives very interesting possibility! ==

Tonight I've invented a great thing, but I felt that someone should have invented it before me :)

First I've found [[Places]] and that was 1/3 of my idea.

From there I surfed to this page and found next 1/3 of my idea.

Here is a remaining 1/3 part:

1) On History Integration: add a small "Rate" field permanently on the toolpane (listbox or slider). User can rate the current page by one mouse click and this info is stored in the history and shown on the next visit of this page - now user may change the rating. That's much easier than adding bookmark or tag, but allows to mark the page as interesting or important.

When user decides to tag the current page, then the rating should be set by default at least to 4 stars (of 5).

Tags/History search should sort results by rating.

2) If two people rate the same web pages similarly, then most probably they have similar interests, tastes, etc. So I ask to find in the central tag database "people like me", with similar "rating profile". We can calculate a coefficient of similarity of two people. Now for every page ever tagged we can calculate '''individual page rank''' as a sum over all ratings of the page multiplied by the coefficient of similarity of the user who rated the page and me. If the web page is interesting for "people like me", then most probably it is interesting for me. So the search results can be sorted by my individual ranks.

--[[User:YaP|YaP]] 17:46, 21 May 2006 (PDT)

User talk:Dria/On Tagging

2007-10-14T19:21:36Z

Tdot: /* Bookmarking and Tagging */

Great! It would play nice with my plan to improve [[Bayesian]] to handle multistate. --[[User:Gandalf|gandalf]] 12:01, 15 Oct 2005 (PDT)

Folders (or files) hierarchy aim to be deprecated, for sorting folders, images or bookmarks. I think that the futur is the use of Metadata/category with metadatabot & "browsers by metada" and especially with the help of XPTC core 1.0 technology (aka ~= XMP).
http://www.iptc.org/IPTC4XMP/
For me the benefit of this metadata framework, is the use of Dublin Core standard (used also by standards and catalogue coordinator, librarian...), XML RDF standard, UTF-8 standard, open & royalty's free adaptability and portability...
(XMP is used in MacOSX search, Adobe's products etc.. for images and files)
-- [[User:Ginkyo|ginkyo]] 07:56, 16 Oct 2005 (PDT)

== Existing bookmarks ==

How would you import existing bookmarks, and educate the user on switching pardagims entirely. Tagging works because it's to the point, but any auto-tagging done by importing the bookmarks would create a horrible mess and hugely unfriendly to the user who may (or may not) have had their bookamrks previously in an order they were happy with.

:: That's a really good point. Another person mentioned that web pages often also have really lousy titles, so users would have to be able to modify the title as well as the tags. This article really is just a brainstorm of ideas, and not a full-fledged design, by any means. -- [[User:Dria|Dria]] 12:25, 16 Oct 2005 (PDT)

::: Perhaps the tree-tagging can limit this effect, because the import would result in 'tagification' of the bookmarks tree. The user will discover later that he can give multiple position to a single bookmark. [[User:Carmine|Carmine]] 06:26, 8 Nov 2005 (PST)

== Epiphany ==
You should try Epiphany, the Gnome official web browser, which is based on gecko. It already have some of the features you propose : It tag bookmark and it's has type ahead search on you bookmark (in the location bar). It may help you to get a better idea of what you exactly want. --Staz 21:46, 16 Oct (EST)

:: Possibly a good suggestion, but I use OS X. -- [[User:Dria|Dria]] 19:36, 16 Oct 2005 (PDT)

== Tree-Tagging ==

One of the falws of tagging is caused by the homonymy of many words. For example, when I tag a link 'Quebec', is it about the town of Quebec or of the province ? Or for the word 'France' ? The first name or the Country ? Having a tag tree will help to solve thoses problems.

== Architecture / 2 ==

Tags are popular because they're easy.

Don't try semantic web here, putting rich information in it, like hierarchies or something. Tags have their charms because the user knows if France is a name or a country or both. And can live with it.

To me, having ''smart'' algorithms that assist when tagging (don't forget rel="tag", btw) is one half of the trick, the other half is getting back to the URL. I definitly need to browse with Flock a bit to see what they're doing, dria's proposing something really close. Though they still have Favorites, and not just tags, I like the "ah, just drop it completely" idea here.

I don't like the mangling between feeds and URLs. We should get a good feedview, and if you add tags there, fine. If you add tags to a page, it should just be the page. In my experience, feeds and the webpages linking to them are not really equivalent that often. --[[User:AxelHecht|AxelHecht]] 10:30, 27 Oct 2005 (PDT)

== Bookmarking and Tagging ==

Bookmarking has definitely changed with the evolution of the web
(http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/evolution-of-bookmarking/). It is now time to rethink about the UI to address the new requirements. The current interface for BOOKMARKS / FAVORITES is optimal for "quick access to a small number of items with a high frequency of revisiting". But the "large number of items with a low frequency of revisiting" needs a new concept (http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/rethinking-bookmarks-ui/). I consider it an INDEX / PERMANENT HISTORY of websites. Just saving these websites as bookmarks doesn't result in anything useful because organizing a directory or scanning the large list manually takes to long, and the saved titles usually don't contain the search terms I use. However, annotating the titles of bookmarks has been very useful before tagging became an issue (see above "Evolution of Bookmarking"). It turned out that commas between tags didn't add anything. Instead of tags with multiple associated words I use multiple single-word tags separated by spaces as in natural sentences (also suggested by del.ios.us). This is sufficient for the search and allows me to use the concept of "ordered tags" (http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/ordered-tags/).

== Tagging UI ==

The tagging interface I like the best is del.icio.us' web interface for posting (opened and pre-filled with a bookmarklet). It shows all used tags as a tag cloud and supports find-ahead suggestions while typing. This has limited the tendency of folksonomies to create multiple words for one topic. And its has reduced random spelling errors and the parallel use of plural and singular. Putting tags in an one-dimensional list would result in an extremely long list with endless scrolling. This was acctually the reason I never switched in the past to an alternative bookmark managers with keywords. I see tags as a form of annotation. This semantic annotation depends primarily on my current interest. For that reason I would like to have an interface that allows me to see and change tags parallel to reading the website. May be in a Sidebar, "Bottombar", or in a dynamic tool like the find tool that is activated by a single key. But this tool should not be limited to tagging. It should also integrate a large field for free annotations. My search tools are currently not specific for tags but include everything: URL, title, tags, and annotations (http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/firefox-hacks-search-simultaneously-in-firefox-delicious-and-archived-bookmarks/).
It fails only in a few cases when the search term is a very common word or pattern so that I get to many results. A suggest button, a filter that scans the content of the website for all my tags, an automatic language tag, and pre-filling by a manually defined URL -> tags list would be great. I guess the three-panel and two-panel concept would only work for "main tags" but not for common sizes of tag lists because of the access by scrolling issue. See for example http://johnvey.com/features/deliciousdirector/. Very useful would be a simple button that bookmarks the website and adds a predefined tag(s), e.g. 2read, without any other user interaction. And for power users, it would be a great advantage if the tool would support GET-like function as Flock does for some tools, e.g. chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul?url=http://www.foobar.org&tags=cool, so that bookmarklets can be used to develop quick solutions for specific problems.

== Tagging + Ranking + Sharing gives very interesting possibility! ==

Tonight I've invented a great thing, but I felt that someone should have invented it before me :)

First I've found [[Places]] and that was 1/3 of my idea.

From there I surfed to this page and found next 1/3 of my idea.

Here is a remaining 1/3 part:

1) On History Integration: add a small "Rate" field permanently on the toolpane (listbox or slider). User can rate the current page by one mouse click and this info is stored in the history and shown on the next visit of this page - now user may change the rating. That's much easier than adding bookmark or tag, but allows to mark the page as interesting or important.

When user decides to tag the current page, then the rating should be set by default at least to 4 stars (of 5).

Tags/History search should sort results by rating.

2) If two people rate the same web pages similarly, then most probably they have similar interests, tastes, etc. So I ask to find in the central tag database "people like me", with similar "rating profile". We can calculate a coefficient of similarity of two people. Now for every page ever tagged we can calculate '''individual page rank''' as a sum over all ratings of the page multiplied by the coefficient of similarity of the user who rated the page and me. If the web page is interesting for "people like me", then most probably it is interesting for me. So the search results can be sorted by my individual ranks.

--[[User:YaP|YaP]] 17:46, 21 May 2006 (PDT)

User talk:Dria/On Tagging

2007-10-14T19:09:42Z

Tdot: /* Bookmarking and Tagging */

Great! It would play nice with my plan to improve [[Bayesian]] to handle multistate. --[[User:Gandalf|gandalf]] 12:01, 15 Oct 2005 (PDT)

Folders (or files) hierarchy aim to be deprecated, for sorting folders, images or bookmarks. I think that the futur is the use of Metadata/category with metadatabot & "browsers by metada" and especially with the help of XPTC core 1.0 technology (aka ~= XMP).
http://www.iptc.org/IPTC4XMP/
For me the benefit of this metadata framework, is the use of Dublin Core standard (used also by standards and catalogue coordinator, librarian...), XML RDF standard, UTF-8 standard, open & royalty's free adaptability and portability...
(XMP is used in MacOSX search, Adobe's products etc.. for images and files)
-- [[User:Ginkyo|ginkyo]] 07:56, 16 Oct 2005 (PDT)

== Existing bookmarks ==

How would you import existing bookmarks, and educate the user on switching pardagims entirely. Tagging works because it's to the point, but any auto-tagging done by importing the bookmarks would create a horrible mess and hugely unfriendly to the user who may (or may not) have had their bookamrks previously in an order they were happy with.

:: That's a really good point. Another person mentioned that web pages often also have really lousy titles, so users would have to be able to modify the title as well as the tags. This article really is just a brainstorm of ideas, and not a full-fledged design, by any means. -- [[User:Dria|Dria]] 12:25, 16 Oct 2005 (PDT)

::: Perhaps the tree-tagging can limit this effect, because the import would result in 'tagification' of the bookmarks tree. The user will discover later that he can give multiple position to a single bookmark. [[User:Carmine|Carmine]] 06:26, 8 Nov 2005 (PST)

== Epiphany ==
You should try Epiphany, the Gnome official web browser, which is based on gecko. It already have some of the features you propose : It tag bookmark and it's has type ahead search on you bookmark (in the location bar). It may help you to get a better idea of what you exactly want. --Staz 21:46, 16 Oct (EST)

:: Possibly a good suggestion, but I use OS X. -- [[User:Dria|Dria]] 19:36, 16 Oct 2005 (PDT)

== Tree-Tagging ==

One of the falws of tagging is caused by the homonymy of many words. For example, when I tag a link 'Quebec', is it about the town of Quebec or of the province ? Or for the word 'France' ? The first name or the Country ? Having a tag tree will help to solve thoses problems.

== Architecture / 2 ==

Tags are popular because they're easy.

Don't try semantic web here, putting rich information in it, like hierarchies or something. Tags have their charms because the user knows if France is a name or a country or both. And can live with it.

To me, having ''smart'' algorithms that assist when tagging (don't forget rel="tag", btw) is one half of the trick, the other half is getting back to the URL. I definitly need to browse with Flock a bit to see what they're doing, dria's proposing something really close. Though they still have Favorites, and not just tags, I like the "ah, just drop it completely" idea here.

I don't like the mangling between feeds and URLs. We should get a good feedview, and if you add tags there, fine. If you add tags to a page, it should just be the page. In my experience, feeds and the webpages linking to them are not really equivalent that often. --[[User:AxelHecht|AxelHecht]] 10:30, 27 Oct 2005 (PDT)

== Bookmarking and Tagging ==

Bookmarking has definitely changed with the evolution of the web
(http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/the-evolution-of-bookmarking-bookmarks-firefox-and-delicious/). It is now time to rethink about the UI to address the new requirements. The current interface for BOOKMARKS / FAVORITES is optimal for "quick access to a small number of items with a high frequency of revisiting". But the "large number of items with a low frequency of revisiting" needs a new concept (http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/rethinking-the-user-interface-for-bookmarks-two-different-purposes-may-require-two-different-interfaces/). I consider it an INDEX / PERMANENT HISTORY of websites. Just saving these websites as bookmarks doesn't result in anything useful because organizing a directory or scanning the large list manually takes to long, and the saved titles usually don't contain the search terms I use. However, annotating the titles of bookmarks has been very useful before tagging became an issue (see above "Evolution of Bookmarking"). It turned out that commas between tags didn't add anything. Instead of tags with multiple associated words I use multiple single-word tags separated by spaces as in natural sentences (also suggested by del.ios.us). This is sufficient for the search and allows me to use the concept of "ordered tags" (http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/advanced-tagging-hierarchical-and-ordered-tags/).

== Tagging UI ==

The tagging interface I like the best is del.icio.us' web interface for posting (opened and pre-filled with a bookmarklet). It shows all used tags as a tag cloud and supports find-ahead suggestions while typing. This has limited the tendency of folksonomies to create multiple words for one topic. And its has reduced random spelling errors and the parallel use of plural and singular. Putting tags in an one-dimensional list would result in an extremely long list with endless scrolling. This was acctually the reason I never switched in the past to an alternative bookmark managers with keywords. I see tags as a form of annotation. This semantic annotation depends primarily on my current interest. For that reason I would like to have an interface that allows me to see and change tags parallel to reading the website. May be in a Sidebar, "Bottombar", or in a dynamic tool like the find tool that is activated by a single key. But this tool should not be limited to tagging. It should also integrate a large field for free annotations. My search tools are currently not specific for tags but include everything: URL, title, tags, and annotations (http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/firefox-hacks-search-simultaneously-in-firefox-delicious-and-archived-bookmarks/).
It fails only in a few cases when the search term is a very common word or pattern so that I get to many results. A suggest button, a filter that scans the content of the website for all my tags, an automatic language tag, and pre-filling by a manually defined URL -> tags list would be great. I guess the three-panel and two-panel concept would only work for "main tags" but not for common sizes of tag lists because of the access by scrolling issue. See for example http://johnvey.com/features/deliciousdirector/. Very useful would be a simple button that bookmarks the website and adds a predefined tag(s), e.g. 2read, without any other user interaction. And for power users, it would be a great advantage if the tool would support GET-like function as Flock does for some tools, e.g. chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul?url=http://www.foobar.org&tags=cool, so that bookmarklets can be used to develop quick solutions for specific problems.

== Tagging + Ranking + Sharing gives very interesting possibility! ==

Tonight I've invented a great thing, but I felt that someone should have invented it before me :)

First I've found [[Places]] and that was 1/3 of my idea.

From there I surfed to this page and found next 1/3 of my idea.

Here is a remaining 1/3 part:

1) On History Integration: add a small "Rate" field permanently on the toolpane (listbox or slider). User can rate the current page by one mouse click and this info is stored in the history and shown on the next visit of this page - now user may change the rating. That's much easier than adding bookmark or tag, but allows to mark the page as interesting or important.

When user decides to tag the current page, then the rating should be set by default at least to 4 stars (of 5).

Tags/History search should sort results by rating.

2) If two people rate the same web pages similarly, then most probably they have similar interests, tastes, etc. So I ask to find in the central tag database "people like me", with similar "rating profile". We can calculate a coefficient of similarity of two people. Now for every page ever tagged we can calculate '''individual page rank''' as a sum over all ratings of the page multiplied by the coefficient of similarity of the user who rated the page and me. If the web page is interesting for "people like me", then most probably it is interesting for me. So the search results can be sorted by my individual ranks.

--[[User:YaP|YaP]] 17:46, 21 May 2006 (PDT)

User talk:Dria/On Tagging

2007-10-14T19:07:28Z

Tdot: /* Tagging UI */

Great! It would play nice with my plan to improve [[Bayesian]] to handle multistate. --[[User:Gandalf|gandalf]] 12:01, 15 Oct 2005 (PDT)

Folders (or files) hierarchy aim to be deprecated, for sorting folders, images or bookmarks. I think that the futur is the use of Metadata/category with metadatabot & "browsers by metada" and especially with the help of XPTC core 1.0 technology (aka ~= XMP).
http://www.iptc.org/IPTC4XMP/
For me the benefit of this metadata framework, is the use of Dublin Core standard (used also by standards and catalogue coordinator, librarian...), XML RDF standard, UTF-8 standard, open & royalty's free adaptability and portability...
(XMP is used in MacOSX search, Adobe's products etc.. for images and files)
-- [[User:Ginkyo|ginkyo]] 07:56, 16 Oct 2005 (PDT)

== Existing bookmarks ==

How would you import existing bookmarks, and educate the user on switching pardagims entirely. Tagging works because it's to the point, but any auto-tagging done by importing the bookmarks would create a horrible mess and hugely unfriendly to the user who may (or may not) have had their bookamrks previously in an order they were happy with.

:: That's a really good point. Another person mentioned that web pages often also have really lousy titles, so users would have to be able to modify the title as well as the tags. This article really is just a brainstorm of ideas, and not a full-fledged design, by any means. -- [[User:Dria|Dria]] 12:25, 16 Oct 2005 (PDT)

::: Perhaps the tree-tagging can limit this effect, because the import would result in 'tagification' of the bookmarks tree. The user will discover later that he can give multiple position to a single bookmark. [[User:Carmine|Carmine]] 06:26, 8 Nov 2005 (PST)

== Epiphany ==
You should try Epiphany, the Gnome official web browser, which is based on gecko. It already have some of the features you propose : It tag bookmark and it's has type ahead search on you bookmark (in the location bar). It may help you to get a better idea of what you exactly want. --Staz 21:46, 16 Oct (EST)

:: Possibly a good suggestion, but I use OS X. -- [[User:Dria|Dria]] 19:36, 16 Oct 2005 (PDT)

== Tree-Tagging ==

One of the falws of tagging is caused by the homonymy of many words. For example, when I tag a link 'Quebec', is it about the town of Quebec or of the province ? Or for the word 'France' ? The first name or the Country ? Having a tag tree will help to solve thoses problems.

== Architecture / 2 ==

Tags are popular because they're easy.

Don't try semantic web here, putting rich information in it, like hierarchies or something. Tags have their charms because the user knows if France is a name or a country or both. And can live with it.

To me, having ''smart'' algorithms that assist when tagging (don't forget rel="tag", btw) is one half of the trick, the other half is getting back to the URL. I definitly need to browse with Flock a bit to see what they're doing, dria's proposing something really close. Though they still have Favorites, and not just tags, I like the "ah, just drop it completely" idea here.

I don't like the mangling between feeds and URLs. We should get a good feedview, and if you add tags there, fine. If you add tags to a page, it should just be the page. In my experience, feeds and the webpages linking to them are not really equivalent that often. --[[User:AxelHecht|AxelHecht]] 10:30, 27 Oct 2005 (PDT)

== Bookmarking and Tagging ==

Bookmarking has definitely changed with the evolution of the web
(http://tdot.blog-city.com/evolution_bookmarking.htm). It is now time to rethink about the UI to address the new requirements. The current interface for BOOKMARKS / FAVORITES is optimal for "quick access to a small number of items with a high frequency of revisiting". But the "large number of items with a low frequency of revisiting" needs a new concept (http://tdot.blog-city.com/rethinking_bookmarks_ui.htm). I consider it an INDEX / PERMANENT HISTORY of websites. Just saving these websites as bookmarks doesn't result in anything useful because organizing a directory or scanning the large list manually takes to long, and the saved titles usually don't contain the search terms I use. However, annotating the titles of bookmarks has been very useful before tagging became an issue (see above "Evolution of Bookmarking"). It turned out that commas between tags didn't add anything. Instead of tags with multiple associated words I use multiple single-word tags separated by spaces as in natural sentences (also suggested by del.ios.us). This is sufficient for the search and allows me to use the concept of "ordered tags" (http://tdot.blog-city.com/advanced_tagging_with_ordered_tags.htm).

== Tagging UI ==

The tagging interface I like the best is del.icio.us' web interface for posting (opened and pre-filled with a bookmarklet). It shows all used tags as a tag cloud and supports find-ahead suggestions while typing. This has limited the tendency of folksonomies to create multiple words for one topic. And its has reduced random spelling errors and the parallel use of plural and singular. Putting tags in an one-dimensional list would result in an extremely long list with endless scrolling. This was acctually the reason I never switched in the past to an alternative bookmark managers with keywords. I see tags as a form of annotation. This semantic annotation depends primarily on my current interest. For that reason I would like to have an interface that allows me to see and change tags parallel to reading the website. May be in a Sidebar, "Bottombar", or in a dynamic tool like the find tool that is activated by a single key. But this tool should not be limited to tagging. It should also integrate a large field for free annotations. My search tools are currently not specific for tags but include everything: URL, title, tags, and annotations (http://pubnotes.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/firefox-hacks-search-simultaneously-in-firefox-delicious-and-archived-bookmarks/).
It fails only in a few cases when the search term is a very common word or pattern so that I get to many results. A suggest button, a filter that scans the content of the website for all my tags, an automatic language tag, and pre-filling by a manually defined URL -> tags list would be great. I guess the three-panel and two-panel concept would only work for "main tags" but not for common sizes of tag lists because of the access by scrolling issue. See for example http://johnvey.com/features/deliciousdirector/. Very useful would be a simple button that bookmarks the website and adds a predefined tag(s), e.g. 2read, without any other user interaction. And for power users, it would be a great advantage if the tool would support GET-like function as Flock does for some tools, e.g. chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul?url=http://www.foobar.org&tags=cool, so that bookmarklets can be used to develop quick solutions for specific problems.

== Tagging + Ranking + Sharing gives very interesting possibility! ==

Tonight I've invented a great thing, but I felt that someone should have invented it before me :)

First I've found [[Places]] and that was 1/3 of my idea.

From there I surfed to this page and found next 1/3 of my idea.

Here is a remaining 1/3 part:

1) On History Integration: add a small "Rate" field permanently on the toolpane (listbox or slider). User can rate the current page by one mouse click and this info is stored in the history and shown on the next visit of this page - now user may change the rating. That's much easier than adding bookmark or tag, but allows to mark the page as interesting or important.

When user decides to tag the current page, then the rating should be set by default at least to 4 stars (of 5).

Tags/History search should sort results by rating.

2) If two people rate the same web pages similarly, then most probably they have similar interests, tastes, etc. So I ask to find in the central tag database "people like me", with similar "rating profile". We can calculate a coefficient of similarity of two people. Now for every page ever tagged we can calculate '''individual page rank''' as a sum over all ratings of the page multiplied by the coefficient of similarity of the user who rated the page and me. If the web page is interesting for "people like me", then most probably it is interesting for me. So the search results can be sorted by my individual ranks.

--[[User:YaP|YaP]] 17:46, 21 May 2006 (PDT)

Talk:Places:Bookmarks:Rethinking

2006-12-01T03:48:21Z

Tdot: /* Scrambled Notes about Bookmarks:Rethinking */

=tags+notes=
Personally, I just want Tags and Notes available. I'll use just about any UI I have to, without complaint. The screen shots on the wiki page look fine to me. Did I mention I REELY, REELY want to use Notes and Tags with Places?

=Some ideas...=
OK, I thought a little about that really nice approach... here are my topics:
==notes==
When a piece of a website is copied to "notes", I would love to have this piece of the note clickable and bringing me to more or less the same place on the webpage again. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==The bookmark "inbox"==
This section was not 100% clear to me %-/ What I got as unsolved problem was that users of the current bookmark system expect new bookmarks (star button) at the end of the list whereas you'd like to put them on top of the list for more dominant presentation to newbies. What about filing new bookmarks as nowadys at the end but giving all "star"-bookmarks an appropriate tag, eg new_quick_bookmark_by_star_button, thus the "new bookmarks" section works just as a filter over tags (kind of "saved query" like in TB) => both groups are satisfied. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==hint and wizzard for upgrading users==
We have no need for folders at all any more, as tags can do ''everything'' folders can do (if sub-tags are implemented!) but offer multiple hierarchies for one bookmark (eg golem.de in "news" and "software" and "hardware" and "price comparision"). We can get rid of all the dupes the folders were forcing us to produce! :-)

For people like me, having over 2MByte of bookmarks, it would be GREAT to have a kind of upgrade wizzard which does the following

# take all folder names and copy (undo possible) or move (some users may fear semantic losses) them into the new invented tag field (including subfolders, using a ''really'' secure seperator (/ and : may be used in current folder names) ). Use a prefix like "folder:" so I know "hey, this was a folder until FB3" so I will find my way quickly (yes, this breaks find as you type, it's just a first rough idea *g*)
# find all bookmarks with similar URL and consolidate all of them into a single bookmark
## each folder path as one tag
## use most recent "last call" and it's favicon
## in case one field (keyword / description...) is filled only in one of the old bookmarks, use this and go to next dupe. Elsewise ask user what to do (use one of them only, concatenate or (default) concatenate and manually edit AND a checkbox "same action for all 243 similar cases")
# delete obsolete folder structure
--[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==check bookmarks==
As the main intention of the new places system is to promote the use of bookmarks, much more users will have to fight against permanent redirects which will become broken links. Moreover, not all sites are offering RSS and thus it would be great to get the fine old mozilla 1.7 (?) feature back: check bookmarks for changes. But in an user friedly and useful way:
* Setting those checks (update/broken) per bookmark or per folder/tag
* collect some places and perform any check only once (so not making a permanent setting)
* optional: Warn me if any bookmark (independet of setting) gets a new permanent redirect (usually some time later the old URL does not work at all any more)
* Optional: save the current content of a URL and mark it as changed only if more than xxx byte changed (important for generated content where date of creation will ''never'' work for update checks) and then highlight the differences

I did not find out the reason why this pretty cool feature was dropped when FF was created; a search of some 15mins revealed no good sources. In case the reason was that newbies were overwhelmed: We are now creating a complete new UI so this feature is not somehow squashed into an old UI, but it can be done in a really nice and neat way so everyone understands. And now, we ''want'' newbies to heavyly use bookmarks. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==incremental search==
I'd love to be able to search incremental. So first, show only places containing ".se" in their URL, then further reduce to those containing "uni" in title/description and then further filter to only those containing the tag "todo". Then save this as saved search. Maybe too sophisticated (=> extension) but maybe just another reason to use FF "places" instead of web2.0 pages (which are not able to do this to full extend, so searches including history) --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

= Scrambled Notes about Bookmarks:Rethinking =
First of all, it is a very nice proposal and contains many good solutions for new functions. Thank you.
* '''Chrome Hack:''' Hopefully, a link like this chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul will still show the bookmarks window in a tab and did not get lost in transition.
* '''Autolinks:''' I'm not so excited about it because all systems with automated population I know are never transparent. You never know when an item will appear and when it will suddenly disappears. I understand the intention but I'm not sure if it is reliable for the target group.
* '''Old Bookmarking System:''' worked actually well as flat list with manual tagging and annotating (see items at http://tdot.blog-city.com)! But having said that I'm glad to see that Firefox will provide support such as auto-complete for tags etc. so that random variations of tags can be avoided.
* '''STAR Button:''' single click bookmarking sounds great! But couldn't it be placed in the navigation toolbar just left from the URL? And could the down arrow be an option? If I mark text on a website and click the STAR button it should also copy the selected text to the notes or append it to existing notes.
* '''Inbox/to-do list:''' The to-do list would not be appropriate after I read a website and decide to bookmark it. I suppose I have to use a different way of bookmarking to avoid putting it in the Inbox. How you describe its function sounds more like the typical Recent rather than an Inbox. I hope all (new) bookmarks appear not only in Inbox, New Bookmarks, etc. but also (immediately) in the general bookmarks list so that I can use the simplest way and all new features are options.
* '''Archived Bookmarks:''' I have saved a large mount of bookmarks in an archive file because until v1.5 Firefox does not handle large amounts of bookmarks so well. Also I removed all icons because the overhead was much more than 50% of the total number of characters in each bookmark. I guess the handling of bookmarks has changed with 2.0 so it might not be necessary anymore. I wonder if this item should just be labeled "Bookmarks" and include all new bookmarks so that New Bookmarks is just a "selective view".
* '''Tags:''' Tag lists can grow really big and it takes a lot of time to scroll long vertical lists. Look at this example http://del.icio.us/Tdot/firefox and try to work with it. How much time does it take you to scroll? Anyway, I use tags primarily for search because it is actually a special kind of annotation!
* '''Old Description Field:''' I always missed the description field in the bookmarks manager because it could have been a good place for notes. But it is basically invisible. At least in the bookmarks manager. My solution for this problem was to change the title field manually and add tags and annotations using some separators : Title -- Tags ;; Annotations. This was so far very efficient for the existing bookmarking system. I guess it will become the new notes field.
* '''Notes:''' integration looks great! It should include the tags field! I change tags frequently when I do research and work on projects. Tags and notes are just different annotations. Can I choose between left or bottom as notes location? (May be floating?)
* '''Search:''' MUST include title, (URL: recommend), tags, and notes! When I use my bash script to search all fields of the bookmarks I get a small percentage of unintended results but I prefer this simplistic approach with one search field that is similar to Google's. Additional specifiers such as inurl, site, etc. are only used for advanced search.
* '''Viewing Tags:''' I'm not sure about its function. It seems to offer the tags list and show all bookmarks with the selected tag. It seems equivalent to an advanced search like "tags:firefox". If I bookmark a website that has Firefox in its title why should I enter it again as a tag? I'm using tags to improve findability not to build a perfect structure of tags. I mean I need to add as tag or in notes information that is not in the title field so that I can integrate this website into my personal map of associations and knowledge.
* '''Viewing Bookmarks:''' I'm wondering if a list style like del.icio.us bookmarks (e.g. http://del.icio.us/Tdot/firefox), Google's search results, or reddit's news items (http://reddit.com/) would be better than the table format. CSS would actually allow advanced users some hacking and personal adjustments.
* '''Viewing Notes:''' a del.icio.us like output seems here also a better solution and could integrate very well with bookmarks. To illustrate what I mean follow these two links: http://old.lirio.us/rubric/entries/tags/delirioussiteblog?long_form=1 http://old.lirio.us/rubric/entries/tags/delirioussiteblog The first link shows the complete item while the second link reduces it to the bookmark with a short summary. For Firefox I think three levels would be perfect: single line (bookmark + tags?), four lines (bookmark + tags + two lines of the notes), long form (incudes complete notes/annotations)
* '''Notes and Highlighting:''' It would be great if the text from notes would appear highlighted in the website when I revisit it. But this may interfere with manual notes. URLex could do the trick but I would like to have a copy of an interesting text snippet in my notes in case the link is broken some day.
* '''Editing of bookmarks, tags, notes:''' Having editable title, tags, and notes fields for the selected bookmark is excellent. But if the bookmarks would be listed as dynamic HTML page inline editing as it is used by del.icoi.us or by TiddlyWiki could be an option.
* '''Check Bookmarks (reply to above):''' Having a few thousand bookmarks dead links come up once in a while and are easily deleted when I notice the website is gone. But more importantly a server can be down temporarily and I do not want to loose important bookmarks by an automated bookmark cleaner.
* '''Incremental Search (reply to above):''' The problem with Firefox is only that it takes the search field as one string instead of a space separated list with a default AND operator. Also Mozilla/Firefox always destroyed the order of bookmarks so I wrote my own search as bash script that generates a dynamic HTML ant loads it in a Firefox tab (see http://tdot.blog-city.com/firefox_hacks_bm_search.htm).
* '''Smart Keywords:''' Currently, I can enter a bookmark like this http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%s , add a keyword "ys", and use it to search yahoo from the URL bar, e.g "ys firefox". But if I just enter "ys" I get the search results for "%s". So, it would be great to delete "%s" before it is send to the server. Except, on the website is some text selected. Because in this case is should perform the search for the selected text.
* '''PermaLinks for bookmark searches:''' would be a wonderful tool for frequent tasks and combine it with all the possibilities for bookmarks (keyword, smart keyword, bookmarklet, bookmarks menu, bookmarks toolbar). It has the function of a "smart folder" (Mac) and could for example be used to show all bookmarks with the tag "project1". But unlike in directories ONE bookmark can appear in multiple "smart folders". The URL/link could look like this chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul?s=project1 chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul?s=%s
Tdot 2005-07-11, 00:41

== Question ==

how do you access png's

== Bookmarks rethink from my view ==

I'm writing my wishes and thoughts on the future bookmarks model, and hope it will influence someone. My spec comes from teh point of view that minimal interaction should be required. I think an add dialog should be abolished :)

It's here: [[User:Auk/Bookmarks]].

Firefox/Feature Brainstorming:Bookmarks

2006-10-26T03:26:19Z

Tdot: /* Extend %s Hack */

{{FeatureBrainstorming}}

== Live Bookmarks Menu To Allow Multiple Selections ==
* The Live bookmarks menu should allow the user to select multiple items to be opened in tabs - at present the user can only choose one at a time or "Open all in tabs".
This could be enabled by either:
** Clicking multiple items with the Control key held down.
** A "Pin Menu" Option when opening Live Bookmarks from the "Bookmarks Toolbar Folder". You click the Pin to stop the Menu Closing on first click. Click the Pin again to close the menu.

== Opening bookmarks ==
* Option to open bookmarks in same tab, new tab, or new window
* When opening folder of bookmark, do NOT close existing tabs.
* Option to open bookmark and at the same time search for a string on the site maybe with highliting

== Bookmark aliases ==
* Bookmark aliases, like in Netscape 4 and Galeon
** Ability to make an alias, or symlink, to a bookmark. Since there is really one bookmark, a change to the bookmark or an alias will affect all entries.
** This should aid portability of bookmarks with web browsers that do support aliases.

== Integration with Location bar ==
* Autocomplete typed URL's by performing a lookup of Bookmarks.
** After the bookmark keywords is typed, suggest autocomplete options based on the previous values of %s

== Bookmark manager ==
* Bookmark thumbnails. Ability to view thumbnails of bookmarked pages. Size of thumbnails should be customizable. Thumbnails can be "live" updated.
* Autodetect duplicates
** ... but '''do not''' auto-erase them
* Validate Bookmarks on demand (see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=171467)
* Bookmark manager assistance/validation/cleanup
* Frequently visited links automarking
* Favicon management
* Smart bookmark folders
* Saved searches as smart bookmark folders
* Bayesian training/pruning
* Sort by tag
* Sort by date added
* Sort by date last used
* Sort by frequency of visit
* toggle to indicate that site in bookmark no longer active (detect 404)
* Allow deleting Bookmarks Toolbar Folder.
* Add a property "Shortcut" for every bookmark; if the user types that string in the address bar, the browser will open that bookmark
* Add a option to hide Bookmarks that you haven't clicked on for more the 30, 60 or 120 days
* Add a command to archive unused bookmarks into an "archived_bookmarks.html"
* Ability to change the location of the bookmark file.
* Ability to export single bookmark-folders instead of the whole list.

== Searching/Browsing bookmarks ==
* Ability to search by any field in bookmarks
* Allow users to add custom fields to bookmarks
* Add "Bookmarks" as an option in the Search engine with active list displayed below Search engine window to allow selection.
* Relevance based filtering
* Allow user to search bookmarked pages via a search engine, eg Google, so that the search performed will be for the bookmark('s/s') domain(s).
* Display folder hierarchy when displaying results of bookmark search in sidebar and also include folder names in search.
* When searching for a bookmark in the Bookmarks sidebar it should be possible to also see the location (bookmark folder) of the bookmark, possibly the url, description, ... That would make it easier to remove duplicate bookmarks.
*save bookmarks online and other user browser settings, this would be very handy during a crash to be able to retrieve boobkmarks and settings via online.

== Bookmark tags and keywords ==
* Tagging and tag cloud display
* Category suggest for bookmarks via social web service
* Virtual bookmark autofile view based upon most likely suggestions from a social web service
* Make it easier to directly add a keyword when saving bookmarks (i.e. you should see a keyword field when you press ctrl+D to bookmark a page)
* Auto-linking/smart tagging
* Bayesian training
* Bookmark filters - i.e. pages from domain X go in folder/tag Y, pages with FOO in the title go in folder/tag BAR

== Bookmark display ==
* Integrated html presentation of the bookmarks using something like about:bookmarks for instance. Bookmarked pages thumbnails optionally displayed. Thumbnails created during "bookmark this page" action and saved locally for fast access.
* Visually emphasize favorite bookmarks within a folder on the bookmark toolbar
* Ease selection of favorite, most frequently visited bookmarks by displaying them in a larger font and/or with a larger icon than less regularly loaded bookmarks
* Have the ability to use custom favicons/icons on bookmark folders added to the 'Bookmarks Toolbar Folder' instead of the default yellow folder.
* Ability to define a DIV element by a page author, saved together with a bookmark, displayed as a bookmark sub-menu or as additional item on the about:bookmarks list, f.e. used to store the most important links of the bookmarked page or site.
* [[GraphicalMicrosummaries|Graphical Microsummaries]] could be extended to allow not just microsummary data, but arbitrary graphics from the page provider.

== Remote/Syncable bookmarks ==
* Unlimited-capacity remote bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere
* Remote bookmarks
* Syncing bookmarks
* Allow synchronisation of sub-trees between two machines (e.g I want to synchronise my HTML bookmarks, between home and work, but not my banking or "friends" bookmarks.

== Address book integration ==
* Integration with address book. When contact has URL specified, it should be put into special bookmark folder automatically.

== Bookmark menu improvements ==
* When clicking "Bookmarks" and all the bookmarks drop down (Bookmark This Page..., Bookmark All Tabs..., Manage Bookmarks...) should remain fixed and not scroll with the rest of the bookmarks.
* When deleting a bookmark from the bookmark menu (using the right click), bookmark menu should remain open, not close immediately.
* Add option to rename bookmarks directly from the menu itself, not necessarily by going through the bookmark manager.
* After using middle mouse button to open bookmark, bookmark list remains open to allow opening of other bookmarks.
* If you delete a bookmark (by right-clicking the bookmark and clicking "Delete") it should be nice if the folder stayed opened so you can delete more bookmarks without having to navigate to the same folder each time. The same would be handy for opening a bookmark by right-clicking it and selecting "Open in New Tab" (and maybe for some of the other actions from the context menu too).
* At the moment, if the name of the bookmark is too long to fit in the box, only a part of the name is shown (ending in "..."). It should be nice if more info about the bookmark would be displayed when hovering over the bookmark: its full name, maybe even the location (url of the page), its description, ... At the moment if two bookmarks have the same name or if the visible part of their names is the same there is no easy way to know the difference between them (apart from going to the bookmark manager or opening both links).
* Display Separator text in Bookmark menu, if set.
** Firefox allows setting a Name(via Property) for a Separator. Bookmarks in the menu does not display this text, but just Separator.
** Display Text with Separator in Bookmark Menu, if set, like in Bookmark manager. e.g. "-- News ------" instead of "------------"
** allow user to disable the text display, via a checkbox.
** allow user to right-click on Separator in Bookmark menu, to set/update property value.

== Dynamic Firefox Bookmark Menu ==
* Allow "organizing bookmarks" functionality from firefox without opening Bookmarks Manager
* Allow drag-and-drop to move bookmarks, folders, separators around in bookmarks menu
* Allow right click to cut/copy/paste or delete bookmarks in bookmark menu
* Allow right click to make new folder or separator
; References
* [[User:Auk/Bookmarks#Menu]]

== Web service integration ==
* Provide API for social bookmarking sites.
** e.g. provide bookmark-tagging API for Firefox extensions
* Online bookmarks. Users can save bookmarks to bookmark services like google bookmark. There are firefox add-ons that do similar job, but they are not reliable and secure enough since user account information could be disclosed.

== Bookmarking Pages ==
* Ctrl+D should bookmark a page directly. The "Add Bookmark" dialogue/option box should be restricted to clicking on the Bookmarks menu and then choosing "Bookmark This Page" (this would imply that Ctrl+D and "Bookmark This Page" be separated).
* When creating a bookmark by drag and drop, firefox should pop a dialog so you can shorten most pages incredibly verbose titles to something you want to see in your bookmark list.
* Timed bookmarks. The ability to set an experation on a bookmark that automatically deletes it. Many times I want to bookmark an article to read later but if I forget to read it, I don't want it cluttering up my bookmarks.
* When dragging a page (link) to a bookmark folder (to bookmark the page using drag-and-drop), if there are too many bookmarks in the folder to show them all at once, the list should scroll up/down when you hover over the little up/down arrows respectively. At the moment you have to first scroll up/down to the location in the list where you want to add the bookmark and then drag it to the folder.

== Bookmarking Tabs ==
* When using "Bookmark All Tabs..." it should let you choose an existing folder if you want instead of always creating a new one
* In the "Add Bookmark" child window, make the "Show all the bookmarks folders" toggle button default to "1"

== Live Bookmarks ==
* Allow live bookmarks to be turned off and on.
* Use tooltips to show the content of the <description> attribute from rss/atom elements.
* Remember visited elements from live bookmarks across sessions and updates (see infoRSS or Sage extension).
* Let live bookmarks expand in a tool tip like way to view whole title
* Let live bookmarks expand in a tool tip like way to view the associated text (usually the article's first paragraph) in the RSS feed.
* Give an option to reload all feeds and show in bold feeds that have fresh content. (Similar to Sage extension)

== Page change notifications ==
* A simple bookmark subscription function like was available on IE 4 where the browser scans for changes to bookmarked sites and presents a separate list marking ones have changed.

== Allowing bookmarks in other parts of browser chrome ==
* On my system, 70% of the space on Firefox's menu bar is unused. I want to be able to make use of that wasted space by unnesting some of my deep hierarchy of bookmarks into it. Ideally this would be done by allowing the user to customize multiple top-level bookmark menus perhaps at the right side of the bar. For management purposes, bookmarks should still be presented as a single hierarchy.
* Let individual bookmarks live on the status and menu bars, and provide UI for putting them there (f.e. support for dragging and dropping bookmarks from the bookmarks sidebar and the bookmarks toolbar to the status and menu bars)
* Let bookmarks be accessible from the right click menu without the need to navigate to the bookmark item in the toolbar. Ie Right click anywhere on a page and submenu for bookmarks opens.

== Bookmark toolbars ==
* The bookmark toolbar should be made flexible to be able to show as multiple rows. With the current widescreen and increasing monitor sizes, we have plenty of space on right and left side of the webpages showing blank. I would like to use them to see the live bookmarks readily.
* Multiple (nameable) bookmark toolbars that can be flipped between easily
* Bookmark dock
** A "bookmark dock" is conceptualized as a bookmark toolbar that allows a user to specify icons instead of text, and that could optionally be placed at the top, left, right, or bottom of the browser window.
* Bookmark bar which allows to span multiple rows (to provide more one-click-to-go shortcuts)
* Allow for the size of text displayed on toolbar to be user-editable, so more bookmarks can fit onto the bookmarks toolbar
* Allow bookmark toolbar items' text to be replaced by icons
* Allow assigning an icon as in the first Firefox versions (especially useful for websites that do not show an icon).

== In-page bookmarking ==
* Easily-accessible, actual book-style bookmarks for long documents, where you can:
** Preserve your position in the page
** Move, rather than create new/delete old, the bookmark. This is useful when reading through e.g. the archives of an on-line comic, an e-book, or catching up after vacation on a blog like slashdot,
* Allow to put a tag on whatever place of a web page, like a gg map interface. The tag is remembered on the right side bar of the window, can be bookmarked. when the bokkmark is clicked, the window is open and focus down to the bookmark

== Auto-archive bookmarked pages ==
* Allow the user to store the full text and images of bookmarked pages, just in case they go away (see discussion about archiving in "History" section)

== Bookmark state ==
* Allow to bookmark form content (may be a security problem ?)
**Make it easy to use multiple accounts on a site (typically a webmailer, like Yahoo Mail or Gmail), with multiple bookmarks
**Unfortunately, easy to use for massive spam, in forums for example

== Bookmarks backend ==
* Flexible bookmarks API
* Smarter handling of bookmarking redirects
* Ability to bookmark a POST response

== Microsummaries ==
* Rich-text (i.e. HTML) microsummary bookmarks
* [[GraphicalMicrosummaries|Graphical Microsummaries]]
* Live titles extracted from feeds
* Allow customized update intervals, global enabling/disabling
* Allow alerts for changes, open automatically in new window/tab, export to xml for RSS reader
* Half-periodic: Start every day/weekday/week/month (now number of this) and check until microsummary changes all xx minutes
* Improve installation and management of microsummary generators
* Allow firefox to create its own microsummaries ({{bug|356440}})
; References
* [[Archaeopteryx/Customizable_Microsummaries|Customizable Microsummaries]]

== Bookmark Import/Export ==
* Allow easy export/ import of a set of bookmarks, or a subfolder (or sub-tree) of bookmarks.
* Import favorites from IE, Opera, AOL, Netscape, Avant, Konqueror...
** Partially implemented already, see File→Import...

== Bookmark data mining ==
* Investigate the concept of bookmark data mining

== Various ==
* Preserving DOM state
* Allow multiple keyword placeholders (%s1, %s2, ... instead of just %s) in bookmark URL's.
** Not '''instead'''; there should still be an option to use the whole line as %s
* Allow to define charset in bookmark details window in order to allow keyword placeholders (like %s) to work with special characters and umlauts.
* Startup page : Add an option to randomly select startup page within bookmarks
* Startup page : In conjunction with Bookmarks Timestamps, add an option letting Firefox autoselect oldest-viewed bookmark
* Allow most frequently used bookmarks to "float" to the top.
* Measure sub-pages view time of a bookmarked page. Display top n, most viewed sub-pages as a bookmark sub-menu.
* Contextual bookmark bar : Change the bookmark bar links according with the current website. Allowing the user to create a bookmark bar "by page".
* Add button for "Bookmark This Page..." to bookmarks sidebar.
* Add ability to "lock" the Bookmarks Toolbar Folder to the top of the bookmarks sidebar, allowing for a much greater number of always-visible bookmarks than on the Bookmarks Toolbar.
* autohide Bookmarks bar category in Bookmarks menu when the bar is empty/hidden (when you don't display the bar having it pollute the menu is ANNOYING)

== Extend %s Hack ==

The %s hack, also known as [http://johnbokma.com/firefox/keymarks-explained.html smart keyword], provides a tremendous degree of freedom for customization and is extremly powerful. To make it even more flexible it should be extended to three cases: keyword only = replace %s with an empty string, keyword plus option = replace %s with option string, and keyword only but marked text in the website = replace %s with marked text (the option string should have a higher priority than marked text). This would extent all the wonderful search options to the text within the website so that copy and paste can be avoided.

== References ==
* [[User:Dria/On_Tagging|On Tagging]]
* [[User:Eschabor|Online Bookmarks]]
* [[User:Wolgamiz/Tagmarks|On "On Tagging"]]
* [[User:Auk/Bookmarks]]
* [[User_talk:Topa#In-Page_Bookmarking | Provide in-page content-highlighting and saving page-state while bookmarking]]
* [[Places:Bookmarks:Rethinking]]
* [[Talk:Places:Bookmarks:Rethinking]]

* [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=195031 bug 195031]
* [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261744 bug 261744]
* [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=220049 bug 220049]
* [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=326896 bug 326896]
* [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=253912 bug 253912]

Firefox/Feature Brainstorming:Notes and Annotations

2006-10-26T03:12:45Z

Tdot: /* Annotations */

{{FeatureBrainstorming}}

== Annotations ==
* Ability to add annotations to history and bookmarks
* Need to be able to tag annotations
; References
* [[Places:Bookmarks:Rethinking]]
* [[Talk:Places:Bookmarks:Rethinking]]

== Sticky notes ==
* Ability to right-click "Add sticky note" on a webpage and have that note saved and displayed every time I visit that page. Naturally, I should be able to make stickies whatever colour I want, and format them as Rich-text with fonts and so forth.
* Sticky manager that lets me search/browse through all my stickies by date/time, location, tag(s), keywords, full content, etc.
* If the Sticky system could auto-link stickies together using a simple wiki-like markup system, that would also be cool. Sort of a personal wiki overlay on the web.
* Need to be able to tag sticky notes

== Clippings ==
* Ability to click-drag an area of a webpage and "clip" it to be saved in a scrapbook/notetaking feature. Sort of like tearing a piece out of a newspaper or magazine. Doesn't have to be any more complicated than simply taking a screenshot of that area in the browser or somesuch, and allowing the user to drag/save it in a notebook.
* Need to be able to tag clippings

== Notebook/Scrapbook ==
* Some system where users can make notes, drag clippings, organize or reference sticky notes, etc.
* Need to be able to tag notebook/scrapbook pages

== Research Assistant ==
* Allow annotations of any link on any web page displayed in the browser.
* Disable display or function of any link to a page that is dead or garbage.
* Have the annotations specific to what you are looking for during this session.
* Invert a page of links (like those from a search engine), and have the page links displayed according to the annotations you've made.

== References ==
* [https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/427/ Scrapbook] (Firefox extension)
* [https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2011/ Internote] (Firefox extension)
* [http://www.google.com/notebook/ Google Notebook] (Web service)
* [http://www.iscrybe.com/ Scrybe] (Web service)
* [[ResearchAssistant]]

Firefox/Feature Brainstorming:Bookmarks

2006-10-25T04:34:16Z

Tdot: /* Various */

{{FeatureBrainstorming}}

== Live Bookmarks Menu To Allow Multiple Selections ==
* The Live bookmarks menu should allow the user to select multiple items to be opened in tabs - at present the user can only choose one at a time or "Open all in tabs".
This could be enabled by either:
** Clicking multiple items with the Control key held down.
** A "Pin Menu" Option when opening Live Bookmarks from the "Bookmarks Toolbar Folder". You click the Pin to stop the Menu Closing on first click. Click the Pin again to close the menu.

== Opening bookmarks ==
* Option to open bookmarks in same tab, new tab, or new window
* When opening folder of bookmark, do NOT close existing tabs.
* Option to open bookmark and at the same time search for a string on the site maybe with highliting

== Bookmark aliases ==
* Bookmark aliases, like in Netscape 4 and Galeon
** Ability to make an alias, or symlink, to a bookmark. Since there is really one bookmark, a change to the bookmark or an alias will affect all entries.
** This should aid portability of bookmarks with web browsers that do support aliases.

== Integration with Location bar ==
* Autocomplete typed URL's by performing a lookup of Bookmarks.
** After the bookmark keywords is typed, suggest autocomplete options based on the previous values of %s

== Bookmark manager ==
* Bookmark thumbnails. Ability to view thumbnails of bookmarked pages. Size of thumbnails should be customizable. Thumbnails can be "live" updated.
* Autodetect duplicates
** ... but '''do not''' auto-erase them
* Validate Bookmarks on demand (see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=171467)
* Bookmark manager assistance/validation/cleanup
* Frequently visited links automarking
* Favicon management
* Smart bookmark folders
* Saved searches as smart bookmark folders
* Bayesian training/pruning
* Sort by tag
* Sort by date added
* Sort by date last used
* Sort by frequency of visit
* toggle to indicate that site in bookmark no longer active (detect 404)
* Allow deleting Bookmarks Toolbar Folder.
* Add a property "Shortcut" for every bookmark; if the user types that string in the address bar, the browser will open that bookmark
* Add a option to hide Bookmarks that you haven't clicked on for more the 30, 60 or 120 days
* Add a command to archive unused bookmarks into an "archived_bookmarks.html"
* Ability to change the location of the bookmark file.
* Ability to export single bookmark-folders instead of the whole list.

== Searching/Browsing bookmarks ==
* Ability to search by any field in bookmarks
* Allow users to add custom fields to bookmarks
* Add "Bookmarks" as an option in the Search engine with active list displayed below Search engine window to allow selection.
* Relevance based filtering
* Allow user to search bookmarked pages via a search engine, eg Google, so that the search performed will be for the bookmark('s/s') domain(s).
* Display folder hierarchy when displaying results of bookmark search in sidebar and also include folder names in search.
* When searching for a bookmark in the Bookmarks sidebar it should be possible to also see the location (bookmark folder) of the bookmark, possibly the url, description, ... That would make it easier to remove duplicate bookmarks.

== Bookmark tags and keywords ==
* Tagging and tag cloud display
* Category suggest for bookmarks via social web service
* Virtual bookmark autofile view based upon most likely suggestions from a social web service
* Make it easier to directly add a keyword when saving bookmarks (i.e. you should see a keyword field when you press ctrl+D to bookmark a page)
* Auto-linking/smart tagging
* Bayesian training
* Bookmark filters - i.e. pages from domain X go in folder/tag Y, pages with FOO in the title go in folder/tag BAR

== Bookmark display ==
* Integrated html presentation of the bookmarks using something like about:bookmarks for instance. Bookmarked pages thumbnails optionally displayed. Thumbnails created during "bookmark this page" action and saved locally for fast access.
* Visually emphasize favorite bookmarks within a folder on the bookmark toolbar
* Ease selection of favorite, most frequently visited bookmarks by displaying them in a larger font and/or with a larger icon than less regularly loaded bookmarks
* Have the ability to use custom favicons/icons on bookmark folders added to the 'Bookmarks Toolbar Folder' instead of the default yellow folder.
* Ability to define a DIV element by a page author, saved together with a bookmark, displayed as a bookmark sub-menu or as additional item on the about:bookmarks list, f.e. used to store the most important links of the bookmarked page or site.
* [[GraphicalMicrosummaries|Graphical Microsummaries]] could be extended to allow not just microsummary data, but arbitrary graphics from the page provider.

== Remote/Syncable bookmarks ==
* Unlimited-capacity remote bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere
* Remote bookmarks
* Syncing bookmarks
* Allow synchronisation of sub-trees between two machines (e.g I want to synchronise my HTML bookmarks, between home and work, but not my banking or "friends" bookmarks.

== Address book integration ==
* Integration with address book. When contact has URL specified, it should be put into special bookmark folder automatically.

== Bookmark menu improvements ==
* When clicking "Bookmarks" and all the bookmarks drop down (Bookmark This Page..., Bookmark All Tabs..., Manage Bookmarks...) should remain fixed and not scroll with the rest of the bookmarks.
* When deleting a bookmark from the bookmark menu (using the right click), bookmark menu should remain open, not close immediately.
* Add option to rename bookmarks directly from the menu itself, not necessarily by going through the bookmark manager.
* After using middle mouse button to open bookmark, bookmark list remains open to allow opening of other bookmarks.
* If you delete a bookmark (by right-clicking the bookmark and clicking "Delete") it should be nice if the folder stayed opened so you can delete more bookmarks without having to navigate to the same folder each time. The same would be handy for opening a bookmark by right-clicking it and selecting "Open in New Tab" (and maybe for some of the other actions from the context menu too).
* At the moment, if the name of the bookmark is too long to fit in the box, only a part of the name is shown (ending in "..."). It should be nice if more info about the bookmark would be displayed when hovering over the bookmark: its full name, maybe even the location (url of the page), its description, ... At the moment if two bookmarks have the same name or if the visible part of their names is the same there is no easy way to know the difference between them (apart from going to the bookmark manager or opening both links).
* Display Separator text in Bookmark menu, if set.
** Firefox allows setting a Name(via Property) for a Separator. Bookmarks in the menu does not display this text, but just Separator.
** Display Text with Separator in Bookmark Menu, if set, like in Bookmark manager. e.g. "-- News ------" instead of "------------"
** allow user to disable the text display, via a checkbox.
** allow user to right-click on Separator in Bookmark menu, to set/update property value.

== Dynamic Firefox Bookmark Menu ==
* Allow "organizing bookmarks" functionality from firefox without opening Bookmarks Manager
* Allow drag-and-drop to move bookmarks, folders, separators around in bookmarks menu
* Allow right click to cut/copy/paste or delete bookmarks in bookmark menu
* Allow right click to make new folder or separator
; References
* [[User:Auk/Bookmarks#Menu]]

== Web service integration ==
* Provide API for social bookmarking sites.
** e.g. provide bookmark-tagging API for Firefox extensions
* Online bookmarks. Users can save bookmarks to bookmark services like google bookmark. There are firefox add-ons that do similar job, but they are not reliable and secure enough since user account information could be disclosed.

== Bookmarking Pages ==
* Ctrl+D should bookmark a page directly. The "Add Bookmark" dialogue/option box should be restricted to clicking on the Bookmarks menu and then choosing "Bookmark This Page" (this would imply that Ctrl+D and "Bookmark This Page" be separated).
* When creating a bookmark by drag and drop, firefox should pop a dialog so you can shorten most pages incredibly verbose titles to something you want to see in your bookmark list.
* Timed bookmarks. The ability to set an experation on a bookmark that automatically deletes it. Many times I want to bookmark an article to read later but if I forget to read it, I don't want it cluttering up my bookmarks.
* When dragging a page (link) to a bookmark folder (to bookmark the page using drag-and-drop), if there are too many bookmarks in the folder to show them all at once, the list should scroll up/down when you hover over the little up/down arrows respectively. At the moment you have to first scroll up/down to the location in the list where you want to add the bookmark and then drag it to the folder.

== Bookmarking Tabs ==
* When using "Bookmark All Tabs..." it should let you choose an existing folder if you want instead of always creating a new one
* In the "Add Bookmark" child window, make the "Show all the bookmarks folders" toggle button default to "1"

== Live Bookmarks ==
* Allow live bookmarks to be turned off and on.
* Use tooltips to show the content of the <description> attribute from rss/atom elements.
* Remember visited elements from live bookmarks across sessions and updates (see infoRSS or Sage extension).
* Let live bookmarks expand in a tool tip like way to view whole title
* Let live bookmarks expand in a tool tip like way to view the associated text (usually the article's first paragraph) in the RSS feed.

== Page change notifications ==
* A simple bookmark subscription function like was available on IE 4 where the browser scans for changes to bookmarked sites and presents a separate list marking ones have changed.

== Allowing bookmarks in other parts of browser chrome ==
* On my system, 70% of the space on Firefox's menu bar is unused. I want to be able to make use of that wasted space by unnesting some of my deep hierarchy of bookmarks into it. Ideally this would be done by allowing the user to customize multiple top-level bookmark menus perhaps at the right side of the bar. For management purposes, bookmarks should still be presented as a single hierarchy.
* Let individual bookmarks live on the status and menu bars, and provide UI for putting them there (f.e. support for dragging and dropping bookmarks from the bookmarks sidebar and the bookmarks toolbar to the status and menu bars)
* Let bookmarks be accessible from the right click menu without the need to navigate to the bookmark item in the toolbar. Ie Right click anywhere on a page and submenu for bookmarks opens.

== Bookmark toolbars ==
* The bookmark toolbar should be made flexible to be able to show as multiple rows. With the current widescreen and increasing monitor sizes, we have plenty of space on right and left side of the webpages showing blank. I would like to use them to see the live bookmarks readily.
* Multiple (nameable) bookmark toolbars that can be flipped between easily
* Bookmark dock
** A "bookmark dock" is conceptualized as a bookmark toolbar that allows a user to specify icons instead of text, and that could optionally be placed at the top, left, right, or bottom of the browser window.
* Bookmark bar which allows to span multiple rows (to provide more one-click-to-go shortcuts)
* Allow for the size of text displayed on toolbar to be user-editable, so more bookmarks can fit onto the bookmarks toolbar
* Allow bookmark toolbar items' text to be replaced by icons
* Allow assigning an icon as in the first Firefox versions (especially useful for websites that do not show an icon).

== In-page bookmarking ==
* Easily-accessible, actual book-style bookmarks for long documents, where you can:
** Preserve your position in the page
** Move, rather than create new/delete old, the bookmark. This is useful when reading through e.g. the archives of an on-line comic, an e-book, or catching up after vacation on a blog like slashdot,
* Allow to put a tag on whatever place of a web page, like a gg map interface. The tag is remembered on the right side bar of the window, can be bookmarked. when the bokkmark is clicked, the window is open and focus down to the bookmark

== Auto-archive bookmarked pages ==
* Allow the user to store the full text and images of bookmarked pages, just in case they go away (see discussion about archiving in "History" section)

== Bookmark state ==
* Allow to bookmark form content (may be a security problem ?)
**Make it easy to use multiple accounts on a site (typically a webmailer, like Yahoo Mail or Gmail), with multiple bookmarks
**Unfortunately, easy to use for massive spam, in forums for example

== Bookmarks backend ==
* Flexible bookmarks API
* Smarter handling of bookmarking redirects
* Ability to bookmark a POST response

== Microsummaries ==
* Rich-text (i.e. HTML) microsummary bookmarks
* [[GraphicalMicrosummaries|Graphical Microsummaries]]
* Live titles extracted from feeds
* Allow customized update intervals, global enabling/disabling
* Allow alerts for changes, open automatically in new window/tab, export to xml for RSS reader
* Half-periodic: Start every day/weekday/week/month (now number of this) and check until microsummary changes all xx minutes
* Improve installation and management of microsummary generators
* Allow firefox to create its own microsummaries ({{bug|356440}})
; References
* [[Archaeopteryx/Customizable_Microsummaries|Customizable Microsummaries]]

== Bookmark Import/Export ==
* Allow easy export/ import of a set of bookmarks, or a subfolder (or sub-tree) of bookmarks.
* Import favorites from IE, Opera, AOL, Netscape, Avant, Konqueror...
** Partially implemented already, see File→Import...

== Bookmark data mining ==
* Investigate the concept of bookmark data mining

== Various ==
* Preserving DOM state
* Allow multiple keyword placeholders (%s1, %s2, ... instead of just %s) in bookmark URL's.
** Not '''instead'''; there should still be an option to use the whole line as %s
* Allow to define charset in bookmark details window in order to allow keyword placeholders (like %s) to work with special characters and umlauts.
* Startup page : Add an option to randomly select startup page within bookmarks
* Startup page : In conjunction with Bookmarks Timestamps, add an option letting Firefox autoselect oldest-viewed bookmark
* Allow most frequently used bookmarks to "float" to the top.
* Measure sub-pages view time of a bookmarked page. Display top n, most viewed sub-pages as a bookmark sub-menu.
* Contextual bookmark bar : Change the bookmark bar links according with the current website. Allowing the user to create a bookmark bar "by page".

== Extend %s Hack ==

The %s hack provides a tremendous degree of freedom for customization and is extremly powerful. To make it even more flexible it should be extended to three cases: keyword only = replace %s with an empty string, keyword plus option = replace %s with option string, and keyword only but marked text in the website = replace %s with marked text (the option string should have a higher priority than marked text). This would extent all the wonderful search options to the text within the website so that copy and paste can be avoided.

== References ==
* [[User:Dria/On_Tagging|On Tagging]]
* [[User:Eschabor|Online Bookmarks]]
* [[User:Wolgamiz/Tagmarks|On "On Tagging"]]
* [[User:Auk/Bookmarks]]
* [[User_talk:Topa#In-Page_Bookmarking | Provide in-page content-highlighting and saving page-state while bookmarking]]
* [[Places:Bookmarks:Rethinking]]
* [[Talk:Places:Bookmarks:Rethinking]]

* [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=195031 bug 195031]
* [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261744 bug 261744]
* [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=220049 bug 220049]
* [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=326896 bug 326896]
* [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=253912 bug 253912]

Firefox/Feature Brainstorming:Bookmarks

2006-10-25T04:21:50Z

Tdot: /* References */

{{FeatureBrainstorming}}

== Live Bookmarks Menu To Allow Multiple Selections ==
* The Live bookmarks menu should allow the user to select multiple items to be opened in tabs - at present the user can only choose one at a time or "Open all in tabs".
This could be enabled by either:
** Clicking multiple items with the Control key held down.
** A "Pin Menu" Option when opening Live Bookmarks from the "Bookmarks Toolbar Folder". You click the Pin to stop the Menu Closing on first click. Click the Pin again to close the menu.

== Opening bookmarks ==
* Option to open bookmarks in same tab, new tab, or new window
* When opening folder of bookmark, do NOT close existing tabs.
* Option to open bookmark and at the same time search for a string on the site maybe with highliting

== Bookmark aliases ==
* Bookmark aliases, like in Netscape 4 and Galeon
** Ability to make an alias, or symlink, to a bookmark. Since there is really one bookmark, a change to the bookmark or an alias will affect all entries.
** This should aid portability of bookmarks with web browsers that do support aliases.

== Integration with Location bar ==
* Autocomplete typed URL's by performing a lookup of Bookmarks.
** After the bookmark keywords is typed, suggest autocomplete options based on the previous values of %s

== Bookmark manager ==
* Bookmark thumbnails. Ability to view thumbnails of bookmarked pages. Size of thumbnails should be customizable. Thumbnails can be "live" updated.
* Autodetect duplicates
** ... but '''do not''' auto-erase them
* Validate Bookmarks on demand (see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=171467)
* Bookmark manager assistance/validation/cleanup
* Frequently visited links automarking
* Favicon management
* Smart bookmark folders
* Saved searches as smart bookmark folders
* Bayesian training/pruning
* Sort by tag
* Sort by date added
* Sort by date last used
* Sort by frequency of visit
* toggle to indicate that site in bookmark no longer active (detect 404)
* Allow deleting Bookmarks Toolbar Folder.
* Add a property "Shortcut" for every bookmark; if the user types that string in the address bar, the browser will open that bookmark
* Add a option to hide Bookmarks that you haven't clicked on for more the 30, 60 or 120 days
* Add a command to archive unused bookmarks into an "archived_bookmarks.html"
* Ability to change the location of the bookmark file.
* Ability to export single bookmark-folders instead of the whole list.

== Searching/Browsing bookmarks ==
* Ability to search by any field in bookmarks
* Allow users to add custom fields to bookmarks
* Add "Bookmarks" as an option in the Search engine with active list displayed below Search engine window to allow selection.
* Relevance based filtering
* Allow user to search bookmarked pages via a search engine, eg Google, so that the search performed will be for the bookmark('s/s') domain(s).
* Display folder hierarchy when displaying results of bookmark search in sidebar and also include folder names in search.
* When searching for a bookmark in the Bookmarks sidebar it should be possible to also see the location (bookmark folder) of the bookmark, possibly the url, description, ... That would make it easier to remove duplicate bookmarks.

== Bookmark tags and keywords ==
* Tagging and tag cloud display
* Category suggest for bookmarks via social web service
* Virtual bookmark autofile view based upon most likely suggestions from a social web service
* Make it easier to directly add a keyword when saving bookmarks (i.e. you should see a keyword field when you press ctrl+D to bookmark a page)
* Auto-linking/smart tagging
* Bayesian training
* Bookmark filters - i.e. pages from domain X go in folder/tag Y, pages with FOO in the title go in folder/tag BAR

== Bookmark display ==
* Integrated html presentation of the bookmarks using something like about:bookmarks for instance. Bookmarked pages thumbnails optionally displayed. Thumbnails created during "bookmark this page" action and saved locally for fast access.
* Visually emphasize favorite bookmarks within a folder on the bookmark toolbar
* Ease selection of favorite, most frequently visited bookmarks by displaying them in a larger font and/or with a larger icon than less regularly loaded bookmarks
* Have the ability to use custom favicons/icons on bookmark folders added to the 'Bookmarks Toolbar Folder' instead of the default yellow folder.
* Ability to define a DIV element by a page author, saved together with a bookmark, displayed as a bookmark sub-menu or as additional item on the about:bookmarks list, f.e. used to store the most important links of the bookmarked page or site.
* [[GraphicalMicrosummaries|Graphical Microsummaries]] could be extended to allow not just microsummary data, but arbitrary graphics from the page provider.

== Remote/Syncable bookmarks ==
* Unlimited-capacity remote bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere
* Remote bookmarks
* Syncing bookmarks
* Allow synchronisation of sub-trees between two machines (e.g I want to synchronise my HTML bookmarks, between home and work, but not my banking or "friends" bookmarks.

== Address book integration ==
* Integration with address book. When contact has URL specified, it should be put into special bookmark folder automatically.

== Bookmark menu improvements ==
* When clicking "Bookmarks" and all the bookmarks drop down (Bookmark This Page..., Bookmark All Tabs..., Manage Bookmarks...) should remain fixed and not scroll with the rest of the bookmarks.
* When deleting a bookmark from the bookmark menu (using the right click), bookmark menu should remain open, not close immediately.
* Add option to rename bookmarks directly from the menu itself, not necessarily by going through the bookmark manager.
* After using middle mouse button to open bookmark, bookmark list remains open to allow opening of other bookmarks.
* If you delete a bookmark (by right-clicking the bookmark and clicking "Delete") it should be nice if the folder stayed opened so you can delete more bookmarks without having to navigate to the same folder each time. The same would be handy for opening a bookmark by right-clicking it and selecting "Open in New Tab" (and maybe for some of the other actions from the context menu too).
* At the moment, if the name of the bookmark is too long to fit in the box, only a part of the name is shown (ending in "..."). It should be nice if more info about the bookmark would be displayed when hovering over the bookmark: its full name, maybe even the location (url of the page), its description, ... At the moment if two bookmarks have the same name or if the visible part of their names is the same there is no easy way to know the difference between them (apart from going to the bookmark manager or opening both links).
* Display Separator text in Bookmark menu, if set.
** Firefox allows setting a Name(via Property) for a Separator. Bookmarks in the menu does not display this text, but just Separator.
** Display Text with Separator in Bookmark Menu, if set, like in Bookmark manager. e.g. "-- News ------" instead of "------------"
** allow user to disable the text display, via a checkbox.
** allow user to right-click on Separator in Bookmark menu, to set/update property value.

== Dynamic Firefox Bookmark Menu ==
* Allow "organizing bookmarks" functionality from firefox without opening Bookmarks Manager
* Allow drag-and-drop to move bookmarks, folders, separators around in bookmarks menu
* Allow right click to cut/copy/paste or delete bookmarks in bookmark menu
* Allow right click to make new folder or separator
; References
* [[User:Auk/Bookmarks#Menu]]

== Web service integration ==
* Provide API for social bookmarking sites.
** e.g. provide bookmark-tagging API for Firefox extensions
* Online bookmarks. Users can save bookmarks to bookmark services like google bookmark. There are firefox add-ons that do similar job, but they are not reliable and secure enough since user account information could be disclosed.

== Bookmarking Pages ==
* Ctrl+D should bookmark a page directly. The "Add Bookmark" dialogue/option box should be restricted to clicking on the Bookmarks menu and then choosing "Bookmark This Page" (this would imply that Ctrl+D and "Bookmark This Page" be separated).
* When creating a bookmark by drag and drop, firefox should pop a dialog so you can shorten most pages incredibly verbose titles to something you want to see in your bookmark list.
* Timed bookmarks. The ability to set an experation on a bookmark that automatically deletes it. Many times I want to bookmark an article to read later but if I forget to read it, I don't want it cluttering up my bookmarks.
* When dragging a page (link) to a bookmark folder (to bookmark the page using drag-and-drop), if there are too many bookmarks in the folder to show them all at once, the list should scroll up/down when you hover over the little up/down arrows respectively. At the moment you have to first scroll up/down to the location in the list where you want to add the bookmark and then drag it to the folder.

== Bookmarking Tabs ==
* When using "Bookmark All Tabs..." it should let you choose an existing folder if you want instead of always creating a new one
* In the "Add Bookmark" child window, make the "Show all the bookmarks folders" toggle button default to "1"

== Live Bookmarks ==
* Allow live bookmarks to be turned off and on.
* Use tooltips to show the content of the <description> attribute from rss/atom elements.
* Remember visited elements from live bookmarks across sessions and updates (see infoRSS or Sage extension).
* Let live bookmarks expand in a tool tip like way to view whole title
* Let live bookmarks expand in a tool tip like way to view the associated text (usually the article's first paragraph) in the RSS feed.

== Page change notifications ==
* A simple bookmark subscription function like was available on IE 4 where the browser scans for changes to bookmarked sites and presents a separate list marking ones have changed.

== Allowing bookmarks in other parts of browser chrome ==
* On my system, 70% of the space on Firefox's menu bar is unused. I want to be able to make use of that wasted space by unnesting some of my deep hierarchy of bookmarks into it. Ideally this would be done by allowing the user to customize multiple top-level bookmark menus perhaps at the right side of the bar. For management purposes, bookmarks should still be presented as a single hierarchy.
* Let individual bookmarks live on the status and menu bars, and provide UI for putting them there (f.e. support for dragging and dropping bookmarks from the bookmarks sidebar and the bookmarks toolbar to the status and menu bars)
* Let bookmarks be accessible from the right click menu without the need to navigate to the bookmark item in the toolbar. Ie Right click anywhere on a page and submenu for bookmarks opens.

== Bookmark toolbars ==
* The bookmark toolbar should be made flexible to be able to show as multiple rows. With the current widescreen and increasing monitor sizes, we have plenty of space on right and left side of the webpages showing blank. I would like to use them to see the live bookmarks readily.
* Multiple (nameable) bookmark toolbars that can be flipped between easily
* Bookmark dock
** A "bookmark dock" is conceptualized as a bookmark toolbar that allows a user to specify icons instead of text, and that could optionally be placed at the top, left, right, or bottom of the browser window.
* Bookmark bar which allows to span multiple rows (to provide more one-click-to-go shortcuts)
* Allow for the size of text displayed on toolbar to be user-editable, so more bookmarks can fit onto the bookmarks toolbar
* Allow bookmark toolbar items' text to be replaced by icons
* Allow assigning an icon as in the first Firefox versions (especially useful for websites that do not show an icon).

== In-page bookmarking ==
* Easily-accessible, actual book-style bookmarks for long documents, where you can:
** Preserve your position in the page
** Move, rather than create new/delete old, the bookmark. This is useful when reading through e.g. the archives of an on-line comic, an e-book, or catching up after vacation on a blog like slashdot,
* Allow to put a tag on whatever place of a web page, like a gg map interface. The tag is remembered on the right side bar of the window, can be bookmarked. when the bokkmark is clicked, the window is open and focus down to the bookmark

== Auto-archive bookmarked pages ==
* Allow the user to store the full text and images of bookmarked pages, just in case they go away (see discussion about archiving in "History" section)

== Bookmark state ==
* Allow to bookmark form content (may be a security problem ?)
**Make it easy to use multiple accounts on a site (typically a webmailer, like Yahoo Mail or Gmail), with multiple bookmarks
**Unfortunately, easy to use for massive spam, in forums for example

== Bookmarks backend ==
* Flexible bookmarks API
* Smarter handling of bookmarking redirects
* Ability to bookmark a POST response

== Microsummaries ==
* Rich-text (i.e. HTML) microsummary bookmarks
* [[GraphicalMicrosummaries|Graphical Microsummaries]]
* Live titles extracted from feeds
* Allow customized update intervals, global enabling/disabling
* Allow alerts for changes, open automatically in new window/tab, export to xml for RSS reader
* Half-periodic: Start every day/weekday/week/month (now number of this) and check until microsummary changes all xx minutes
* Improve installation and management of microsummary generators
* Allow firefox to create its own microsummaries ({{bug|356440}})
; References
* [[Archaeopteryx/Customizable_Microsummaries|Customizable Microsummaries]]

== Bookmark Import/Export ==
* Allow easy export/ import of a set of bookmarks, or a subfolder (or sub-tree) of bookmarks.
* Import favorites from IE, Opera, AOL, Netscape, Avant, Konqueror...
** Partially implemented already, see File→Import...

== Bookmark data mining ==
* Investigate the concept of bookmark data mining

== Various ==
* Preserving DOM state
* Allow multiple keyword placeholders (%s1, %s2, ... instead of just %s) in bookmark URL's.
** Not '''instead'''; there should still be an option to use the whole line as %s
* Allow to define charset in bookmark details window in order to allow keyword placeholders (like %s) to work with special characters and umlauts.
* Startup page : Add an option to randomly select startup page within bookmarks
* Startup page : In conjunction with Bookmarks Timestamps, add an option letting Firefox autoselect oldest-viewed bookmark
* Allow most frequently used bookmarks to "float" to the top.
* Measure sub-pages view time of a bookmarked page. Display top n, most viewed sub-pages as a bookmark sub-menu.
* Contextual bookmark bar : Change the bookmark bar links according with the current website. Allowing the user to create a bookmark bar "by page".

== References ==
* [[User:Dria/On_Tagging|On Tagging]]
* [[User:Eschabor|Online Bookmarks]]
* [[User:Wolgamiz/Tagmarks|On "On Tagging"]]
* [[User:Auk/Bookmarks]]
* [[User_talk:Topa#In-Page_Bookmarking | Provide in-page content-highlighting and saving page-state while bookmarking]]
* [[Places:Bookmarks:Rethinking]]
* [[Talk:Places:Bookmarks:Rethinking]]

* [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=195031 bug 195031]
* [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261744 bug 261744]
* [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=220049 bug 220049]
* [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=326896 bug 326896]
* [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=253912 bug 253912]

Talk:Places:Bookmarks:Rethinking

2006-07-18T15:27:49Z

Tdot: /* Scrambled Notes about Bookmarks:Rethinking */

=tags+notes=
Personally, I just want Tags and Notes available. I'll use just about any UI I have to, without complaint. The screen shots on the wiki page look fine to me. Did I mention I REELY, REELY want to use Notes and Tags with Places?

=Some ideas...=
OK, I thought a little about that really nice approach... here are my topics:
==notes==
When a piece of a website is copied to "notes", I would love to have this piece of the note clickable and bringing me to more or less the same place on the webpage again. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==The bookmark "inbox"==
This section was not 100% clear to me %-/ What I got as unsolved problem was that users of the current bookmark system expect new bookmarks (star button) at the end of the list whereas you'd like to put them on top of the list for more dominant presentation to newbies. What about filing new bookmarks as nowadys at the end but giving all "star"-bookmarks an appropriate tag, eg new_quick_bookmark_by_star_button, thus the "new bookmarks" section works just as a filter over tags (kind of "saved query" like in TB) => both groups are satisfied. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==hint and wizzard for upgrading users==
We have no need for folders at all any more, as tags can do ''everything'' folders can do (if sub-tags are implemented!) but offer multiple hierarchies for one bookmark (eg golem.de in "news" and "software" and "hardware" and "price comparision"). We can get rid of all the dupes the folders were forcing us to produce! :-)

For people like me, having over 2MByte of bookmarks, it would be GREAT to have a kind of upgrade wizzard which does the following

# take all folder names and copy (undo possible) or move (some users may fear semantic losses) them into the new invented tag field (including subfolders, using a ''really'' secure seperator (/ and : may be used in current folder names) ). Use a prefix like "folder:" so I know "hey, this was a folder until FB3" so I will find my way quickly (yes, this breaks find as you type, it's just a first rough idea *g*)
# find all bookmarks with similar URL and consolidate all of them into a single bookmark
## each folder path as one tag
## use most recent "last call" and it's favicon
## in case one field (keyword / description...) is filled only in one of the old bookmarks, use this and go to next dupe. Elsewise ask user what to do (use one of them only, concatenate or (default) concatenate and manually edit AND a checkbox "same action for all 243 similar cases")
# delete obsolete folder structure
--[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==check bookmarks==
As the main intention of the new places system is to promote the use of bookmarks, much more users will have to fight against permanent redirects which will become broken links. Moreover, not all sites are offering RSS and thus it would be great to get the fine old mozilla 1.7 (?) feature back: check bookmarks for changes. But in an user friedly and useful way:
* Setting those checks (update/broken) per bookmark or per folder/tag
* collect some places and perform any check only once (so not making a permanent setting)
* optional: Warn me if any bookmark (independet of setting) gets a new permanent redirect (usually some time later the old URL does not work at all any more)
* Optional: save the current content of a URL and mark it as changed only if more than xxx byte changed (important for generated content where date of creation will ''never'' work for update checks) and then highlight the differences

I did not find out the reason why this pretty cool feature was dropped when FF was created; a search of some 15mins revealed no good sources. In case the reason was that newbies were overwhelmed: We are now creating a complete new UI so this feature is not somehow squashed into an old UI, but it can be done in a really nice and neat way so everyone understands. And now, we ''want'' newbies to heavyly use bookmarks. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==incremental search==
I'd love to be able to search incremental. So first, show only places containing ".se" in their URL, then further reduce to those containing "uni" in title/description and then further filter to only those containing the tag "todo". Then save this as saved search. Maybe too sophisticated (=> extension) but maybe just another reason to use FF "places" instead of web2.0 pages (which are not able to do this to full extend, so searches including history) --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

= Scrambled Notes about Bookmarks:Rethinking =
First of all, it is a very nice proposal and contains many good solutions for new functions. Thank you.
* '''Chrome Hack:''' Hopefully, a link like this chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul will still show the bookmarks window in a tab and did not get lost in transition.
* '''Autolinks:''' I'm not so excited about it because all systems with automated population I know are never transparent. You never know when an item will appear and when it will suddenly disappears. I understand the intention but I'm not sure if it is reliable for the target group.
* '''Old Bookmarking System:''' worked actually well as flat list with manual tagging and annotating (see items at http://tdot.blog-city.com)! But having said that I'm glad to see that Firefox will provide support such as auto-complete for tags etc. so that random variations of tags can be avoided.
* '''STAR Button:''' single click bookmarking sounds great! But couldn't it be placed in the navigation toolbar just left from the URL? And could the down arrow be an option? If I mark text on a website and click the STAR button it should also copy the selected text to the notes or append it to existing notes.
* '''Inbox/to-do list:''' The to-do list would not be appropriate after I read a website and decide to bookmark it. I suppose I have to use a different way of bookmarking to avoid putting it in the Inbox. How you describe its function sounds more like the typical Recent rather than an Inbox. I hope all (new) bookmarks appear not only in Inbox, New Bookmarks, etc. but also (immediately) in the general bookmarks list so that I can use the simplest way and all new features are options.
* '''Archived Bookmarks:''' I have saved a large mount of bookmarks in an archive file because until v1.5 Firefox does not handle large amounts of bookmarks so well. Also I removed all icons because the overhead was much more than 50% of the total number of characters in each bookmark. I guess the handling of bookmarks has changed with 2.0 so it might not be necessary anymore. I wonder if this item should just be labeled "Bookmarks" and include all new bookmarks so that New Bookmarks is just a "selective view".
* '''Tags:''' Tag lists can grow really big and it takes a lot of time to scroll long vertical lists. Look at this example http://del.icio.us/Tdot/firefox and try to work with it. How much time does it take you to scroll? Anyway, I use tags primarily for search because it is actually a special kind of annotation!
* '''Old Description Field:''' I always missed the description field in the bookmarks manager because it could have been a good place for notes. But it is basically invisible. At least in the bookmarks manager. My solution for this problem was to change the title field manually and add tags and annotations using some separators : Title -- Tags ;; Annotations. This was so far very efficient for the existing bookmarking system. I guess it will become the new notes field.
* '''Notes:''' integration looks great! It should include the tags field! I change tags frequently when I do research and work on projects. Tags and notes are just different annotations. Can I choose between left or bottom as notes location? (May be floating?)
* '''Search:''' MUST include title, (URL: recommend), tags, and notes! When I use my bash script to search all fields of the bookmarks I get a small percentage of unintended results but I prefer this simplistic approach with one search field that is similar to Google's. Additional specifiers such as inurl, site, etc. are only used for advanced search.
* '''Viewing Tags:''' I'm not sure about its function. It seems to offer the tags list and show all bookmarks with the selected tag. It seems equivalent to an advanced search like "tags:firefox". If I bookmark a website that has Firefox in its title why should I enter it again as a tag? I'm using tags to improve findability not to build a perfect structure of tags. I mean I need to add as tag or in notes information that is not in the title field so that I can integrate this website into my personal map of associations and knowledge.
* '''Viewing Bookmarks:''' I'm wondering if a list style like del.icio.us bookmarks (e.g. http://del.icio.us/Tdot/firefox), Google's search results, or reddit's news items (http://reddit.com/) would be better than the table format. CSS would actually allow advanced users some hacking and personal adjustments.
* '''Viewing Notes:''' a del.icio.us like output seems here also a better solution and could integrate very well with bookmarks. To illustrate what I mean follow these two links: http://de.lirio.us/rubric/entries/tags/delirioussiteblog?long_form=1 http://de.lirio.us/rubric/entries/tags/delirioussiteblog The first link shows the complete item while the second link reduces it to the bookmark with a short summary. For Firefox I think three levels would be perfect: single line (bookmark + tags?), four lines (bookmark + tags + two lines of the notes), long form (incudes complete notes/annotations)
* '''Notes and Highlighting:''' It would be great if the text from notes would appear highlighted in the website when I revisit it. But this may interfere with manual notes. URLex could do the trick but I would like to have a copy of an interesting text snippet in my notes in case the link is broken some day.
* '''Editing of bookmarks, tags, notes:''' Having editable title, tags, and notes fields for the selected bookmark is excellent. But if the bookmarks would be listed as dynamic HTML page inline editing as it is used by del.icoi.us or by TiddlyWiki could be an option.
* '''Check Bookmarks (reply to above):''' Having a few thousand bookmarks dead links come up once in a while and are easily deleted when I notice the website is gone. But more importantly a server can be down temporarily and I do not want to loose important bookmarks by an automated bookmark cleaner.
* '''Incremental Search (reply to above):''' The problem with Firefox is only that it takes the search field as one string instead of a space separated list with a default AND operator. Also Mozilla/Firefox always destroyed the order of bookmarks so I wrote my own search as bash script that generates a dynamic HTML ant loads it in a Firefox tab (see http://tdot.blog-city.com/firefox_hacks_bm_search.htm).
* '''Smart Keywords:''' Currently, I can enter a bookmark like this http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%s , add a keyword "ys", and use it to search yahoo from the URL bar, e.g "ys firefox". But if I just enter "ys" I get the search results for "%s". So, it would be great to delete "%s" before it is send to the server. Except, on the website is some text selected. Because in this case is should perform the search for the selected text.
* '''PermaLinks for bookmark searches:''' would be a wonderful tool for frequent tasks and combine it with all the possibilities for bookmarks (keyword, smart keyword, bookmarklet, bookmarks menu, bookmarks toolbar). It has the function of a "smart folder" (Mac) and could for example be used to show all bookmarks with the tag "project1". But unlike in directories ONE bookmark can appear in multiple "smart folders". The URL/link could look like this chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul?s=project1 chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul?s=%s
Tdot 2005-07-11, 00:41

Talk:Places:Bookmarks:Rethinking

2006-07-12T23:41:21Z

Tdot: /* Scrambled Notes about Bookmarks:Rethinking */

=tags+notes=
Personally, I just want Tags and Notes available. I'll use just about any UI I have to, without complaint. The screen shots on the wiki page look fine to me. Did I mention I REELY, REELY want to use Notes and Tags with Places?

=Some ideas...=
OK, I thought a little about that really nice approach... here are my topics:
==notes==
When a piece of a website is copied to "notes", I would love to have this piece of the note clickable and bringing me to more or less the same place on the webpage again. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==The bookmark "inbox"==
This section was not 100% clear to me %-/ What I got as unsolved problem was that users of the current bookmark system expect new bookmarks (star button) at the end of the list whereas you'd like to put them on top of the list for more dominant presentation to newbies. What about filing new bookmarks as nowadys at the end but giving all "star"-bookmarks an appropriate tag, eg new_quick_bookmark_by_star_button, thus the "new bookmarks" section works just as a filter over tags (kind of "saved query" like in TB) => both groups are satisfied. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==hint and wizzard for upgrading users==
We have no need for folders at all any more, as tags can do ''everything'' folders can do (if sub-tags are implemented!) but offer multiple hierarchies for one bookmark (eg golem.de in "news" and "software" and "hardware" and "price comparision"). We can get rid of all the dupes the folders were forcing us to produce! :-)

For people like me, having over 2MByte of bookmarks, it would be GREAT to have a kind of upgrade wizzard which does the following

# take all folder names and copy (undo possible) or move (some users may fear semantic losses) them into the new invented tag field (including subfolders, using a ''really'' secure seperator (/ and : may be used in current folder names) ). Use a prefix like "folder:" so I know "hey, this was a folder until FB3" so I will find my way quickly (yes, this breaks find as you type, it's just a first rough idea *g*)
# find all bookmarks with similar URL and consolidate all of them into a single bookmark
## each folder path as one tag
## use most recent "last call" and it's favicon
## in case one field (keyword / description...) is filled only in one of the old bookmarks, use this and go to next dupe. Elsewise ask user what to do (use one of them only, concatenate or (default) concatenate and manually edit AND a checkbox "same action for all 243 similar cases")
# delete obsolete folder structure
--[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==check bookmarks==
As the main intention of the new places system is to promote the use of bookmarks, much more users will have to fight against permanent redirects which will become broken links. Moreover, not all sites are offering RSS and thus it would be great to get the fine old mozilla 1.7 (?) feature back: check bookmarks for changes. But in an user friedly and useful way:
* Setting those checks (update/broken) per bookmark or per folder/tag
* collect some places and perform any check only once (so not making a permanent setting)
* optional: Warn me if any bookmark (independet of setting) gets a new permanent redirect (usually some time later the old URL does not work at all any more)
* Optional: save the current content of a URL and mark it as changed only if more than xxx byte changed (important for generated content where date of creation will ''never'' work for update checks) and then highlight the differences

I did not find out the reason why this pretty cool feature was dropped when FF was created; a search of some 15mins revealed no good sources. In case the reason was that newbies were overwhelmed: We are now creating a complete new UI so this feature is not somehow squashed into an old UI, but it can be done in a really nice and neat way so everyone understands. And now, we ''want'' newbies to heavyly use bookmarks. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==incremental search==
I'd love to be able to search incremental. So first, show only places containing ".se" in their URL, then further reduce to those containing "uni" in title/description and then further filter to only those containing the tag "todo". Then save this as saved search. Maybe too sophisticated (=> extension) but maybe just another reason to use FF "places" instead of web2.0 pages (which are not able to do this to full extend, so searches including history) --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

= Scrambled Notes about Bookmarks:Rethinking =
First of all, it is a very nice proposal and contains many good solutions for new functions. Thank you.
* '''Chrome Hack:''' Hopefully, a link like this chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul will still show the bookmarks window in a tab and did not get lost in transition.
* '''Autolinks:''' I'm not so excited about it because all systems with automated population I know are never transparent. You never know when an item will appear and when it will suddenly disappears. I understand the intention but I'm not sure if it is reliable for the target group.
* '''Old Bookmarking System:''' worked actually well as flat list with manual tagging and annotating (see items at http://tdot.blog-city.com)! But having said that I'm glad to see that Firefox will provide support such as auto-complete for tags etc. so that random variations of tags can be avoided.
* '''STAR Button:''' single click bookmarking sounds great! But couldn't it be placed in the navigation toolbar just left from the URL? And could the down arrow be an option? If I mark text on a website and click the STAR button it should also copy the selected text to the notes or append it to existing notes.
* '''Inbox/to-do list:''' The to-do list would not be appropriate after I read a website and decide to bookmark it. I suppose I have to use a different way of bookmarking to avoid putting it in the Inbox. How you describe its function sounds more like the typical Recent rather than an Inbox. I hope all (new) bookmarks appear not only in Inbox, New Bookmarks, etc. but also (immediately) in the general bookmarks list so that I can use the simplest way and all new features are options.
* '''Archived Bookmarks:''' I have saved a large mount of bookmarks in an archive file because until v1.5 Firefox does not handle large amounts of bookmarks so well. Also I removed all icons because the overhead was much more than 50% of the total number of characters in each bookmark. I guess the handling of bookmarks has changed with 2.0 so it might not be necessary anymore. I wonder if this item should just be labeled "Bookmarks" and include all new bookmarks so that New Bookmarks is just a "selective view".
* '''Tags:''' Tag lists can grow really big and it takes a lot of time to scroll long vertical lists. Look at this example http://del.icio.us/Tdot/firefox and try to work with it. How much time does it take you to scroll? Anyway, I use tags primarily for search because it is actually a special kind of annotation!
* '''Old Description Field:''' I always missed the description field in the bookmarks manager because it could have been a good place for notes. But it is basically invisible. At least in the bookmarks manager. My solution for this problem was to change the title field manually and add tags and annotations using some separators : Title -- Tags ;; Annotations. This was so far very efficient for the existing bookmarking system. I guess it will become the new notes field.
* '''Notes:''' integration looks great! It should include the tags field! I change tags frequently when I do research and work on projects. Tags and notes are just different annotations. Can I choose between left or bottom as notes location? (May be floating?)
* '''Search:''' MUST include title, (URL: recommend), tags, and notes! When I use my bash script to search all fields of the bookmarks I get a small percentage of unintended results but I prefer this simplistic approach with one search field that is similar to Google's. Additional specifiers such as inurl, site, etc. are only used for advanced search.
* '''Viewing Tags:''' I'm not sure about its function. It seems to offer the tags list and show all bookmarks with the selected tag. It seems equivalent to an advanced search like "tags:firefox". If I bookmark a website that has Firefox in its title way should I enter it again as a tag? I'm using tags to improve findability not to build a perfect structure of tags. I mean I need to add as tag or in notes information that is not in the title field so that I can integrate this website into my personal map of associations and knowledge.
* '''Viewing Bookmarks:''' I'm wondering if a list style like del.icio.us bookmarks (e.g. http://del.icio.us/Tdot/firefox), Google's search results, or reddit's news items (http://reddit.com/) would be better than the table format. CSS would actually allow advanced users some hacking and personal adjustments.
* '''Viewing Notes:''' a del.icio.us like output seems here also a better solution and could integrate very well with bookmarks. To illustrate what I mean follow these two links: http://de.lirio.us/rubric/entries/tags/delirioussiteblog?long_form=1 http://de.lirio.us/rubric/entries/tags/delirioussiteblog The first link shows the complete item while the second link reduces it to the bookmark with a short summary. For Firefox I think three levels would be perfect: single line (bookmark + tags?), four lines (bookmark + tags + two lines of the notes), long form (incudes complete notes/annotations)
* '''Notes and Highlighting:''' It would be great if the text from notes would appear highlighted in the website when I revisit it. But this may interfere with manual notes. URLex could do the trick but I would like to have a copy of an interesting text snippet in my notes in case the link is broken some day.
* '''Editing of bookmarks, tags, notes:''' Having editable title, tags, and notes fields for the selected bookmark is excellent. But if the bookmarks would be listed as dynamic HTML page inline editing as it is used by del.icoi.us or by TiddlyWiki could be an option.
* '''Check Bookmarks (reply to above):''' Having a few thousand bookmarks dead links come up once in a while and are easily deleted when I notice the website is gone. But more importantly a server can be down temporarily and I do not want to loose important bookmarks by an automated bookmark cleaner.
* '''Incremental Search (reply to above):''' The problem with Firefox is only that it takes the search field as one string instead of a space separated list with a default AND operator. Also Mozilla/Firefox always destroyed the order of bookmarks so I wrote my own search as bash script that generates a dynamic HTML ant loads it in a Firefox tab (see http://tdot.blog-city.com/firefox_hacks_bm_search.htm).
* '''Smart Keywords:''' Currently, I can enter a bookmark like this http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%s , add a keyword "ys", and use it to search yahoo from the URL bar, e.g "ys firefox". But if I just enter "ys" I get the search results for "%s". So, it would be great to delete "%s" before it is send to the server. Except, on the website is some text selected. Because in this case is should perform the search for the selected text.
* '''PermaLinks for bookmark searches:''' would be a wonderful tool for frequent tasks and combine it with all the possibilities for bookmarks (keyword, smart keyword, bookmarklet, bookmarks menu, bookmarks toolbar). It has the function of a "smart folder" (Mac) and could for example be used to show all bookmarks with the tag "project1". But unlike in directories ONE bookmark can appear in multiple "smart folders". The URL/link could look like this chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul?s=project1 chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul?s=%s
Tdot 2005-07-11, 00:41

Talk:Places:Bookmarks:Rethinking

2006-07-12T00:38:55Z

Tdot: /* Scrambled Notes about Bookmarks:Rethinking */

=tags+notes=
Personally, I just want Tags and Notes available. I'll use just about any UI I have to, without complaint. The screen shots on the wiki page look fine to me. Did I mention I REELY, REELY want to use Notes and Tags with Places?

=Some ideas...=
OK, I thought a little about that really nice approach... here are my topics:
==notes==
When a piece of a website is copied to "notes", I would love to have this piece of the note clickable and bringing me to more or less the same place on the webpage again. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==The bookmark "inbox"==
This section was not 100% clear to me %-/ What I got as unsolved problem was that users of the current bookmark system expect new bookmarks (star button) at the end of the list whereas you'd like to put them on top of the list for more dominant presentation to newbies. What about filing new bookmarks as nowadys at the end but giving all "star"-bookmarks an appropriate tag, eg new_quick_bookmark_by_star_button, thus the "new bookmarks" section works just as a filter over tags (kind of "saved query" like in TB) => both groups are satisfied. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==hint and wizzard for upgrading users==
We have no need for folders at all any more, as tags can do ''everything'' folders can do (if sub-tags are implemented!) but offer multiple hierarchies for one bookmark (eg golem.de in "news" and "software" and "hardware" and "price comparision"). We can get rid of all the dupes the folders were forcing us to produce! :-)

For people like me, having over 2MByte of bookmarks, it would be GREAT to have a kind of upgrade wizzard which does the following

# take all folder names and copy (undo possible) or move (some users may fear semantic losses) them into the new invented tag field (including subfolders, using a ''really'' secure seperator (/ and : may be used in current folder names) ). Use a prefix like "folder:" so I know "hey, this was a folder until FB3" so I will find my way quickly (yes, this breaks find as you type, it's just a first rough idea *g*)
# find all bookmarks with similar URL and consolidate all of them into a single bookmark
## each folder path as one tag
## use most recent "last call" and it's favicon
## in case one field (keyword / description...) is filled only in one of the old bookmarks, use this and go to next dupe. Elsewise ask user what to do (use one of them only, concatenate or (default) concatenate and manually edit AND a checkbox "same action for all 243 similar cases")
# delete obsolete folder structure
--[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==check bookmarks==
As the main intention of the new places system is to promote the use of bookmarks, much more users will have to fight against permanent redirects which will become broken links. Moreover, not all sites are offering RSS and thus it would be great to get the fine old mozilla 1.7 (?) feature back: check bookmarks for changes. But in an user friedly and useful way:
* Setting those checks (update/broken) per bookmark or per folder/tag
* collect some places and perform any check only once (so not making a permanent setting)
* optional: Warn me if any bookmark (independet of setting) gets a new permanent redirect (usually some time later the old URL does not work at all any more)
* Optional: save the current content of a URL and mark it as changed only if more than xxx byte changed (important for generated content where date of creation will ''never'' work for update checks) and then highlight the differences

I did not find out the reason why this pretty cool feature was dropped when FF was created; a search of some 15mins revealed no good sources. In case the reason was that newbies were overwhelmed: We are now creating a complete new UI so this feature is not somehow squashed into an old UI, but it can be done in a really nice and neat way so everyone understands. And now, we ''want'' newbies to heavyly use bookmarks. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==incremental search==
I'd love to be able to search incremental. So first, show only places containing ".se" in their URL, then further reduce to those containing "uni" in title/description and then further filter to only those containing the tag "todo". Then save this as saved search. Maybe too sophisticated (=> extension) but maybe just another reason to use FF "places" instead of web2.0 pages (which are not able to do this to full extend, so searches including history) --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

= Scrambled Notes about Bookmarks:Rethinking =
First of all, it is a very nice proposal and contains many good solutions for new functions. Thank you.
* '''Chrome hack:''' Hopefully, a link like this chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul will still show the bookmarks window in a tab and did not get lost in transition.
* '''Autolinks:''' I'm not so excited about it because all systems with automated population I know are never transparent. You never know when an item will appear and when it will suddenly disappears. I understand the intention but I'm not sure if it is reliable for the target group.
* '''Old Bookmarking System:''' worked actually well as flat list with manual tagging and annotating (see items at http://tdot.blog-city.com)! But having said that I'm glad to see that Firefox will provide support such as auto-complete for tags etc. so that random variations of tags can be avoided.
* '''STAR Button:''' single click bookmarking sounds great! But couldn't it be placed in the navigation toolbar just left from the URL? And could the down arrow be an option? If I mark text on a website and click the STAR button it should also copy the selected text to the notes or append it to existing notes.
* '''Inbox/to-do list:''' The to-do list would not be appropriate after I read a website and decide to bookmark it. I suppose I have to use a different way of bookmarking to avoid putting it in the Inbox. How you describe its function sounds more like the typical Recent rather than an Inbox. I hope all (new) bookmarks appear not only in Inbox, New Bookmarks, etc. but also (immediately) in the general bookmarks list so that I can use the simplest way and all new features are options.
* '''Archived Bookmarks:''' I have saved a large mount of bookmarks in an archive file because until v1.5 Firefox does not handle large amounts of bookmarks so well. Also I removed all icons because the overhead was much more than 50% of the total number of characters in each bookmark. I guess the handling of bookmarks has changed with 2.0 so it might not be necessary anymore. I wonder if this item should just be labeled "Bookmarks" and include all new bookmarks so that New Bookmarks is just a "selective view".
* '''Tags:''' Tag lists can grow really big and it takes a lot of time to scroll long vertical lists. Look at this example http://del.icio.us/Tdot/firefox and try to work with it. How much time does it take you to scroll? Anyway, I use tags primarily for search because it is actually a special kind of annotation!
* '''Old Description Field:''' I always missed the description field in the bookmarks manager because it could have been a good place for notes. But it is basically invisible. At least in the bookmarks manager. My solution for this problem was to change the title field manually and add tags and annotations using some separators : Title -- Tags ;; Annotations. This was so far very efficient for the existing bookmarking system. I guess it will become the new notes field.
* '''Notes:''' integration looks great! It should include the tags field! I change tags frequently when I do research and work on projects. Tags and notes are just different annotations. Can I choose between left or bottom as positions? (May be floating?)
* '''Search:''' MUST include title, (URL: recommend), tags, and notes! When I use my bash script to search all fields of the bookmarks I get a small percentage of unintended results but I prefer this simplistic approach with one search field that is similar to Google's. Additional specifiers such as inurl, site, etc. are only used for advanced search.
* '''Viewing Tags:''' I'm not sure about its function. It seems to offer the tags list and show all bookmarks with the selected tag. It seems equivalent to an advanced search like "tags:firefox". If I bookmark a website that has Firefox in its title way should I enter it again as a tag? I'm using tags to improve findability not to build a perfect structure of tags. I mean I need to add as tag or in notes information that is not in the title field so that I can integrate this website into my personal map of associations and knowledge.
* '''Viewing Bookmarks:''' I'm wondering if a list style like del.icio.us bookmarks (e.g. http://del.icio.us/Tdot/firefox), Google's search results, or reddit's news items (http://reddit.com/) would be better than the table format. CSS would actually allow advanced users some hacking and personal adjustments.
* '''Viewing Notes:''' a del.icio.us like output seems here also a better solution and could integrate very well with bookmarks. To illustrate what I mean follow these two links: http://de.lirio.us/rubric/entries/tags/delirioussiteblog?long_form=1 http://de.lirio.us/rubric/entries/tags/delirioussiteblog The first link shows the complete item while the second link reduces it to the bookmark with a short summary. For Firefox I think three levels would be perfect: single line (bookmark + tags?), four lines (bookmark + tags + two lines of the notes), long form (incudes complete notes/annotations)
* '''Notes and Highlighting:''' It would be great if the text from notes would appear highlighted in the website when I revisit it. But this may interfere with manual notes. URLex could do the trick but I would like to have a copy of an interesting text snippet in my notes in case the link is broken some day.
* '''Editing of bookmarks, tags, notes:''' Having editable title, tags, and notes fields for the selected bookmark is excellent. But if the bookmarks would be listed as dynamic HTML page inline editing as it is used by del.icoi.us or by TiddlyWiki could be an option.
* '''Check Bookmarks (reply to above):''' Having a few thousand bookmarks dead links come up once in a while and are easily deleted when I notice the website is gone. But more importantly a server can be down temporarily and I do not want to loose important bookmarks by an automated bookmark cleaner.
* '''Incremental Search (reply to above):''' The problem with Firefox is only that it takes the search field as one string instead of a space separated list with a default AND operator. Also Mozilla/Firefox always destroyed the order of bookmarks so I wrote my own search as bash script that generates a dynamic HTML ant loads it in a Firefox tab (see http://tdot.blog-city.com/firefox_hacks_bm_search.htm).
Tdot 2005-07-11, 00:41

Talk:Places:Bookmarks:Rethinking

2006-07-12T00:35:01Z

Tdot: /* Scrambled Notes about Bookmarks:Rethinking */

=tags+notes=
Personally, I just want Tags and Notes available. I'll use just about any UI I have to, without complaint. The screen shots on the wiki page look fine to me. Did I mention I REELY, REELY want to use Notes and Tags with Places?

=Some ideas...=
OK, I thought a little about that really nice approach... here are my topics:
==notes==
When a piece of a website is copied to "notes", I would love to have this piece of the note clickable and bringing me to more or less the same place on the webpage again. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==The bookmark "inbox"==
This section was not 100% clear to me %-/ What I got as unsolved problem was that users of the current bookmark system expect new bookmarks (star button) at the end of the list whereas you'd like to put them on top of the list for more dominant presentation to newbies. What about filing new bookmarks as nowadys at the end but giving all "star"-bookmarks an appropriate tag, eg new_quick_bookmark_by_star_button, thus the "new bookmarks" section works just as a filter over tags (kind of "saved query" like in TB) => both groups are satisfied. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==hint and wizzard for upgrading users==
We have no need for folders at all any more, as tags can do ''everything'' folders can do (if sub-tags are implemented!) but offer multiple hierarchies for one bookmark (eg golem.de in "news" and "software" and "hardware" and "price comparision"). We can get rid of all the dupes the folders were forcing us to produce! :-)

For people like me, having over 2MByte of bookmarks, it would be GREAT to have a kind of upgrade wizzard which does the following

# take all folder names and copy (undo possible) or move (some users may fear semantic losses) them into the new invented tag field (including subfolders, using a ''really'' secure seperator (/ and : may be used in current folder names) ). Use a prefix like "folder:" so I know "hey, this was a folder until FB3" so I will find my way quickly (yes, this breaks find as you type, it's just a first rough idea *g*)
# find all bookmarks with similar URL and consolidate all of them into a single bookmark
## each folder path as one tag
## use most recent "last call" and it's favicon
## in case one field (keyword / description...) is filled only in one of the old bookmarks, use this and go to next dupe. Elsewise ask user what to do (use one of them only, concatenate or (default) concatenate and manually edit AND a checkbox "same action for all 243 similar cases")
# delete obsolete folder structure
--[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==check bookmarks==
As the main intention of the new places system is to promote the use of bookmarks, much more users will have to fight against permanent redirects which will become broken links. Moreover, not all sites are offering RSS and thus it would be great to get the fine old mozilla 1.7 (?) feature back: check bookmarks for changes. But in an user friedly and useful way:
* Setting those checks (update/broken) per bookmark or per folder/tag
* collect some places and perform any check only once (so not making a permanent setting)
* optional: Warn me if any bookmark (independet of setting) gets a new permanent redirect (usually some time later the old URL does not work at all any more)
* Optional: save the current content of a URL and mark it as changed only if more than xxx byte changed (important for generated content where date of creation will ''never'' work for update checks) and then highlight the differences

I did not find out the reason why this pretty cool feature was dropped when FF was created; a search of some 15mins revealed no good sources. In case the reason was that newbies were overwhelmed: We are now creating a complete new UI so this feature is not somehow squashed into an old UI, but it can be done in a really nice and neat way so everyone understands. And now, we ''want'' newbies to heavyly use bookmarks. --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

==incremental search==
I'd love to be able to search incremental. So first, show only places containing ".se" in their URL, then further reduce to those containing "uni" in title/description and then further filter to only those containing the tag "todo". Then save this as saved search. Maybe too sophisticated (=> extension) but maybe just another reason to use FF "places" instead of web2.0 pages (which are not able to do this to full extend, so searches including history) --[[User:Schoschi|Schoschi]] 17:40, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

== Scrambled Notes about Bookmarks:Rethinking ==
First of all, it is a very nice proposal and contains many good solutions for new functions. Thank you.
* '''Chrome hack:''' Hopefully, a link like this chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul will still show the bookmarks window in a tab and did not get lost in transition.
* '''Autolinks:''' I'm not so excited about it because all systems with automated population I know are never transparent. You never know when an item will appear and when it will suddenly disappears. I understand the intention but I'm not sure if it is reliable for the target group.
* '''Old Bookmarking System:''' worked actually well as flat list with manual tagging and annotating (see items at http://tdot.blog-city.com)! But having said that I'm glad to see that Firefox will provide support such as auto-complete for tags etc. so that random variations of tags can be avoided.
* '''STAR Button:''' single click bookmarking sounds great! But couldn't it be placed in the navigation toolbar just left from the URL? And could the down arrow be an option? If I mark text on a website and click the STAR button it should also copy the selected text to the notes or append it to existing notes.
* '''Inbox/to-do list:''' The to-do list would not be appropriate after I read a website and decide to bookmark it. I suppose I have to use a different way of bookmarking to avoid putting it in the Inbox. How you describe its function sounds more like the typical Recent rather than an Inbox. I hope all (new) bookmarks appear not only in Inbox, New Bookmarks, etc. but also (immediately) in the general bookmarks list so that I can use the simplest way and all new features are options.
* '''Archived Bookmarks:''' I have saved a large mount of bookmarks in an archive file because until v1.5 Firefox does not handle large amounts of bookmarks so well. Also I removed all icons because the overhead was much more than 50% of the total number of characters in each bookmark. I guess the handling of bookmarks has changed with 2.0 so it might not be necessary anymore. I wonder if this item should just be labeled "Bookmarks" and include all new bookmarks so that New Bookmarks is just a "selective view".
* '''Tags:''' Tag lists can grow really big and it takes a lot of time to scroll long vertical lists. Look at this example http://del.icio.us/Tdot/firefox and try to work with it. How much time does it take you to scroll? Anyway, I use tags primarily for search because it is actually a special kind of annotation!
* '''Old Description Field:''' I always missed the description field in the bookmarks manager because it could have been a good place for notes. But it is basically invisible. At least in the bookmarks manager. My solution for this problem was to change the title field manually and add tags and annotations using some separators : Title -- Tags ;; Annotations. This was so far very efficient for the existing bookmarking system. I guess it will become the new notes field.
* '''Notes:''' integration looks great! It should include the tags field! I change tags frequently when I do research and work on projects. Tags and notes are just different annotations. Can I choose between left or bottom as positions? (May be floating?)
* '''Search:''' MUST include title, (URL: recommend), tags, and notes! When I use my bash script to search all fields of the bookmarks I get a small percentage of unintended results but I prefer this simplistic approach with one search field that is similar to Google's. Additional specifiers such as inurl, site, etc. are only used for advanced search.
* '''Viewing Tags:''' I'm not sure about its function. It seems to offer the tags list and show all bookmarks with the selected tag. It seems equivalent to an advanced search like "tags:firefox". If I bookmark a website that has Firefox in its title way should I enter it again as a tag? I'm using tags to improve findability not to build a perfect structure of tags. I mean I need to add as tag or in notes information that is not in the title field so that I can integrate this website into my personal map of associations and knowledge.
* '''Viewing Bookmarks:''' I'm wondering if a list style like del.icio.us bookmarks (e.g. http://del.icio.us/Tdot/firefox), Google's search results, or reddit's news items (http://reddit.com/) would be better than the table format. CSS would actually allow advanced users some hacking and personal adjustments.
* '''Viewing Notes:''' a del.icio.us like output seems here also a better solution and could integrate very well with bookmarks. To illustrate what I mean follow these two links: http://de.lirio.us/rubric/entries/tags/delirioussiteblog?long_form=1 http://de.lirio.us/rubric/entries/tags/delirioussiteblog The first link shows the complete item while the second link reduces it to the bookmark with a short summary. For Firefox I think three levels would be perfect: single line (bookmark + tags?), four lines (bookmark + tags + two lines of the notes), long form (incudes complete notes/annotations)
* '''Notes and Highlighting:''' It would be great if the text from notes would appear highlighted in the website when I revisit it. But this may interfere with manual notes. URLex could do the trick but I would like to have a copy of an interesting text snippet in my notes in case the link is broken some day.
* '''Editing of bookmarks, tags, notes:''' Having editable title, tags, and notes fields for the selected bookmark is excellent. But if the bookmarks would be listed as dynamic HTML page inline editing as it is used by del.icoi.us or by TiddlyWiki could be an option.
* '''Check Bookmarks (reply to above):''' Having a few thousand bookmarks dead links come up once in a while and are easily deleted when I notice the website is gone. But more importantly a server can be down temporarily and I do not want to loose important bookmarks by an automated bookmark cleaner.
* '''Incremental Search (reply to above):''' The problem with Firefox is only that it takes the search field as one string instead of a space separated list with a default AND operator. Also Mozilla/Firefox always destroyed the order of bookmarks so I wrote my own search as bash script that generates a dynamic HTML ant loads it in a Firefox tab (see http://tdot.blog-city.com/firefox_hacks_bm_search.htm).
Tdot 2005-07-11, 00:41

Talk:Places:Bookmarks:Rethinking

2006-07-11T05:02:52Z

Tdot: /* incremental search */

User talk:Dria/On Tagging

2006-03-26T17:56:00Z

Tdot: /* Architecture / 2 */

Great! It would play nice with my plan to improve [[Bayesian]] to handle multistate. --[[User:Gandalf|gandalf]] 12:01, 15 Oct 2005 (PDT)

Folders (or files) hierarchy aim to be deprecated, for sorting folders, images or bookmarks. I think that the futur is the use of Metadata/category with metadatabot & "browsers by metada" and especially with the help of XPTC core 1.0 technology (aka ~= XMP).
http://www.iptc.org/IPTC4XMP/
For me the benefit of this metadata framework, is the use of Dublin Core standard (used also by standards and catalogue coordinator, librarian...), XML RDF standard, UTF-8 standard, open & royalty's free adaptability and portability...
(XMP is used in MacOSX search, Adobe's products etc.. for images and files)
-- [[User:Ginkyo|ginkyo]] 07:56, 16 Oct 2005 (PDT)

== Existing bookmarks ==

How would you import existing bookmarks, and educate the user on switching pardagims entirely. Tagging works because it's to the point, but any auto-tagging done by importing the bookmarks would create a horrible mess and hugely unfriendly to the user who may (or may not) have had their bookamrks previously in an order they were happy with.

:: That's a really good point. Another person mentioned that web pages often also have really lousy titles, so users would have to be able to modify the title as well as the tags. This article really is just a brainstorm of ideas, and not a full-fledged design, by any means. -- [[User:Dria|Dria]] 12:25, 16 Oct 2005 (PDT)

::: Perhaps the tree-tagging can limit this effect, because the import would result in 'tagification' of the bookmarks tree. The user will discover later that he can give multiple position to a single bookmark. [[User:Carmine|Carmine]] 06:26, 8 Nov 2005 (PST)

== Epiphany ==
You should try Epiphany, the Gnome official web browser, which is based on gecko. It already have some of the features you propose : It tag bookmark and it's has type ahead search on you bookmark (in the location bar). It may help you to get a better idea of what you exactly want. --Staz 21:46, 16 Oct (EST)

:: Possibly a good suggestion, but I use OS X. -- [[User:Dria|Dria]] 19:36, 16 Oct 2005 (PDT)

== Tree-Tagging ==

One of the falws of tagging is caused by the homonymy of many words. For example, when I tag a link 'Quebec', is it about the town of Quebec or of the province ? Or for the word 'France' ? The first name or the Country ? Having a tag tree will help to solve thoses problems.

== Architecture / 2 ==

Tags are popular because they're easy.

Don't try semantic web here, putting rich information in it, like hierarchies or something. Tags have their charms because the user knows if France is a name or a country or both. And can live with it.

To me, having ''smart'' algorithms that assist when tagging (don't forget rel="tag", btw) is one half of the trick, the other half is getting back to the URL. I definitly need to browse with Flock a bit to see what they're doing, dria's proposing something really close. Though they still have Favorites, and not just tags, I like the "ah, just drop it completely" idea here.

I don't like the mangling between feeds and URLs. We should get a good feedview, and if you add tags there, fine. If you add tags to a page, it should just be the page. In my experience, feeds and the webpages linking to them are not really equivalent that often. --[[User:AxelHecht|AxelHecht]] 10:30, 27 Oct 2005 (PDT)

== Bookmarking and Tagging ==

Bookmarking has definitely changed with the evolution of the web
(http://tdot.blog-city.com/evolution_bookmarking.htm). It is now time to rethink about the UI to address the new requirements. The current interface for BOOKMARKS / FAVORITES is optimal for "quick access to a small number of items with a high frequency of revisiting". But the "large number of items with a low frequency of revisiting" needs a new concept (http://tdot.blog-city.com/rethinking_bookmarks_ui.htm). I consider it an INDEX / PERMANENT HISTORY of websites. Just saving these websites as bookmarks doesn't result in anything useful because organizing a directory or scanning the large list manually takes to long, and the saved titles usually don't contain the search terms I use. However, annotating the titles of bookmarks has been very useful before tagging became an issue (see above "Evolution of Bookmarking"). It turned out that commas between tags didn't add anything. Instead of tags with multiple associated words I use multiple single-word tags separated by spaces as in natural sentences (also suggested by del.ios.us). This is sufficient for the search and allows me to use the concept of "ordered tags" (http://tdot.blog-city.com/advanced_tagging_with_ordered_tags.htm).

== Tagging UI ==

The tagging interface I like the best is del.icio.us' web interface for posting (opened and pre-filled with a bookmarklet). It shows all used tags as a tag cloud and supports find-ahead suggestions while typing. This has limited the tendency of folksonomies to create multiple words for one topic. And its has reduced random spelling errors and the parallel use of plural and singular. Putting tags in an one-dimensional list would result in an extremely long list with endless scrolling. This was acctually the reason I never switched in the past to an alternative bookmark managers with keywords. I see tags as a form of annotation. This semantic annotation depends primarily on my current interest. For that reason I would like to have an interface that allows me to see and change tags parallel to reading the website. May be in a Sidebar, "Bottombar", or in a dynamic tool like the find tool that is activated by a single key. But this tool should not be limited to tagging. It should also integrate a large field for free annotations. My search tools are currently not specific for tags but include everything: URL, title, tags, and annotations (http://tdot.blog-city.com/firefox_hacks_bm_search.htm).
It fails only in a few cases when the search term is a very common word or pattern so that I get to many results. A suggest button, a filter that scans the content of the website for all my tags, an automatic language tag, and pre-filling by a manually defined URL -> tags list would be great. I guess the three-panel and two-panel concept would only work for "main tags" but not for common sizes of tag lists because of the access by scrolling issue. See for example http://johnvey.com/features/deliciousdirector/. Very useful would be a simple button that bookmarks the website and adds a predefined tag(s), e.g. 2read, without any other user interaction. And for power users, it would be a great advantage if the tool would support GET-like function as Flock does for some tools, e.g. chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul?url=http://www.foobar.org&tags=cool, so that bookmarklets can be used to develop quick solutions for specific problems.

Talk:Places

2006-03-24T04:37:54Z

Tdot: /* Sidebar for Bookmarks */

Talk:Places

2006-03-24T04:35:43Z

Tdot: /* Puts Places in a Tab */

Talk:Places:Firefox 2 User Interface Ideas

2006-03-20T01:30:29Z

Tdot: /* Some Thoughts */

==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. --[[User:Stebs|Stebs]]

We imagined exposing some of this through the properties window. [[User:Ben|Ben]]

Great! No clutter for normal Users, but the functionality is still there... [[User:Stebs|Stebs]]

Any chance of multiple bookmark toolbar folders, like the way flock does it?--[[User:Noamsml|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
--[[User:MichelJullian|MichelJullian]] 16:55, 7 Jan 2006 (PST)

Will Linux users be able to use drag'n'drop to rearrange bookmarks from the menu? [[User:Kezo|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.) --[[User:Godfreja|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. [[User:Pennyrg|Pennyrg]]

There's a lot of [http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox/tree/browse_frm/thread/fb2bc6046096beda/8e15c2b244cc1758?rnum=1&_done=%2Fgroup%2Fmozilla.dev.apps.firefox%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthread%2Ffb2bc6046096beda%2F8e15c2b244cc1758%3Ftvc%3D1%26#doc_7ab57a53de7e9b8a discussion] going on about this UI in the newsgroup. Just wanted to make sure that was referenced from here. [[User:Beltzner|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". --[[User:Richwklein|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 [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=317847 317847] --[[User:SylvainPasche|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://tdot.blog-city.com/firefox_bookmarks_usability.htm)

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.

== Scrapbook ==

How about adding Scrapbook functionality

Talk:Places:Firefox 2 User Interface Ideas

2006-03-19T01:25:54Z

Tdot: /* Some Thoughts */

==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. --[[User:Stebs|Stebs]]

We imagined exposing some of this through the properties window. [[User:Ben|Ben]]

Great! No clutter for normal Users, but the functionality is still there... [[User:Stebs|Stebs]]

Any chance of multiple bookmark toolbar folders, like the way flock does it?--[[User:Noamsml|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
--[[User:MichelJullian|MichelJullian]] 16:55, 7 Jan 2006 (PST)

Will Linux users be able to use drag'n'drop to rearrange bookmarks from the menu? [[User:Kezo|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.) --[[User:Godfreja|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. [[User:Pennyrg|Pennyrg]]

There's a lot of [http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox/tree/browse_frm/thread/fb2bc6046096beda/8e15c2b244cc1758?rnum=1&_done=%2Fgroup%2Fmozilla.dev.apps.firefox%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthread%2Ffb2bc6046096beda%2F8e15c2b244cc1758%3Ftvc%3D1%26#doc_7ab57a53de7e9b8a discussion] going on about this UI in the newsgroup. Just wanted to make sure that was referenced from here. [[User:Beltzner|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". --[[User:Richwklein|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 [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=317847 317847] --[[User:SylvainPasche|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.).

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.

Talk:Places

2006-03-09T00:49:19Z

Tdot: /* Tagging: different than bookmarking */

Talk:Thunderbird:2.0 Product Planning

2006-01-18T15:04:02Z

2005-10-25T03:20:28Z

Tdot: /* Introduction */

== Introduction ==

Annotations are provided by a browser service that can associate arbitrary information with URLs. The goal is to use them for both history and bookmarks. GUI requires close integration with bookmarks to show annotations together with tags. Load the annotations into the sidebar when a URI opened. Flat editable mode in the sidebar would simply the use.

Possible uses:
* Fav icon
* Page thumbnail
* Notes / Citations
* Persistent storage for Javascript on the page
* Microformat meta-data, e.g. geo location, dates, events,

== Internal design ==

The design consists of two tables. The first maps URLs to internal IDs.

The second stores all annotations:
* URL ID
* Annotation name
* Value
* Expiration information
* Flags (perhaps combined with expiration information)

=== Binary data ===

mozStorage can handle binary data. It would be nice to be able to store thumbnails, favicons, and other images as binary data instead of base-64 encoded data URLs. We would have to also store the MIME time for these.

The problem is then how to get the data out of the annotation service and into some UI widget. The data URLs are nice because they can be used in place of "src=" for images. However, is is inefficient to copy around 16K URLs just to display an image. It would be nice if there was a new protocol handler "annot:URL:name" that automatically something from the annotation service. These URLs would have the same privileges as "chrome:" URLs, so would only be accessible to chrome.

=== Expiration ===

Because some annotations can be large, and the number of pages can also become very large, some sort of annotation expiration scheme is required. Annotations beyond the expiration date will be deleted. The time frame must be variable because some annotations may be large and should expire faster, while others may be small and have minimal overhead for keeping them around. The option of never expiring will also be provided.

This time frame may be measured from annotation creation, but it could potentially be more valuable to measure from from last page access time: "this annotation expires after one month of page disuse". Clearing the history should implicitly expire most annotations unless they never expire or are needed for something like a bookmark.

Annotation expiration grows more complicated because the new history and bookmark systems will store some data in the annotation service such as favicons. The favicon for a site, and other annotations, should probably never expire as long as you have a bookmark to it. This introduces dependencies that are difficult to manage. I am leaning toward some kind of callback service where you can register yourself as interested in expired annotations. When the annotation service deletes annotations, it will ask these services, which can veto the delete.

=== Flags ===

Flags could indicate whether an annotation is user-entered (e.g. notes), automatic/service-entered (e.g. favicons, last visit date, etc.), or web page entered (as with IE's userData storage, this would need more aggressive limits). It could also store whether that annotation should be synced remotely or not, and possibly other bits.

=== Security ===

If scripts on web pages are allowed to store data, they should only be able to see data that they themselves have written, and not user entered data or service entered data (favicons, etc.). Limiting access to pages on the same path allows some flexibility with different pages from the same service, and should provide minimal opportunity for data leakage.

=== Quota ===

Web pages should be restricted in the amount of data that they are allowed to store. We probably want to limit the amount of data per host and possibly also at a finer grained level like pages (as with IE) or paths.

Question: What if a web page wants more storage? Some web services could legitimately need more storage, and provide enough value to the user that they don't care. Should there be a way for the user to specify a web page can add more storage? Here's one possibility: if the page tries to store too much data the write fails and the security bar announces what happened and gives the user the option to increase storage for this page. This would require web pages check for the quota condition, potentially notify the user, and redo the operation if they think it's been fixed.

== External interface ==

Preliminary IDL:

/**
* Sets an annotation, overwriting any previous annotation with the same
* URL/name
*/
void setAnnotation(in nsIURI aURI, in wstring aName, in nsIVariant aValue,
in long aFlags, in long aExpiration);

/**
* Retrieves the value of an annotation
*/
nsIVariant getAnnotation(in nsIURI aURI, in wstring aName);

/*
* Retrieves info about the annotation. SetDate is the time that this
* annotation was last set.
*/
void getAnnotationInfo(in nsIURI aURI, in wstring aName,
out long long aSetDate, out long aFlags,
out long aExpiration);

/**
* Get the names of all annotations for this URI.
*/
nsIArray getAnnotations(in nsIURI aURI);

/**
* Test for annotation existance.
*/
boolean hasAnnotation(in nsIURI aURI, in wstring aName);

/*
* Removes a specific annotation
*/
void removeAnnotation(in nsIURI aURI, in wstring aName);

/**
* Removes all annotations for the given page.
* We may want some other similar functions to get annotations with given
* flags (once we have flags defined).
*/
void removePageAnnotations(in nsIURI aURI);

/**
* Get the values of several annotations with arbitrary URI/name pairs.
* There is some latency associated with each annotation query, so it is
* a good idea to use this function if it is possible for you to batch
* your requests together.
*
* This will return an array with the same number of values you requested.
* If the requested URI/name pair does not exist, the corresponding result
* element will be NULL.
*
* @param aURIList The list of URIs
*/
void getMultipleAnnotations([array, size_is(aCount)] in nsIURI aURIList,
[array, size_is(aCount)] in wstring aNameList, in unsigned long aCount,
out unsigned long aResultCount,
[retval, array, size_is(aResultCount)] out wstring aResultList);

Issues: do we want to namespace annotation names? Probably we should just say that people should always namespace their names, but do it manually with the names they pick for their annotations. For example "history:thumbnail" or "my_extension:annoying_data".

Do we want to support more advanced queries? Examples: Give me all pages with annotation X. Give me all pages where annotation X > Y, etc.

== IE's Implementation ==

IE has persistency for web pages called 'userData': http://216.239.63.104/search?q=cache:msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/behaviors/reference/behaviors/userdata.asp&hl=en&lr=&sa=G&strip=1
This information is persisted in the cache along with the web page it was written on. You can also pick other data stores, including favorites, history, and snapsnot (when saved to local machine).

=== Using IE's userData ===

In IE, you need to use DHTML behaviors (http://www.w3.org/TR/becss). Behaviors are not currently supported in Mozilla, but there exists an extension wrapping XBL that supports them: http://dean.edwards.name/moz-behaviors/

In CSS you add "behavior:url('#default#userData')" to the CSS for the elements that you want to persist. This overrides the get/setAttribute functions for that element. You can then call element.save(<store name>) to persist the element under the given tag <store name>.

=== Security ===

IE places limits on the visibility of tags to other web pages in the same directory and over the same protocol (to avoid https leakage). There are also limits placed on the size of the data, both for a given web page and for a given domain name.

IE allows an optional expiration date of stored elements. Since these attributes are stored in the cache/history/favorites, they probably disappear when the corresponding store is deleted. There doesn't seem to be any forced expiration, but given the relatively short lifespan of the cache, it probably doesn't matter.

=== Questions ===

* How is persistence shared across different pages in the same directory? Are the names just magically accessable to other pages?
* Are all tags for the saved object stored, or only the ones you setAttribute on?
* What happens if I set a given attribute from multiple pages with the same name but different values? Is the correct value distributed to all?

Bookmarks Design Discussion

2005-10-25T02:54:11Z

Tdot: /* Bookmark Labels */

Bookmarks Use Cases

2005-10-23T04:57:35Z

Tdot:

Places

2005-10-23T01:43:22Z

Tdot: /* Introduction */

=== Introduction ===

A new, combined Bookmarks and History UI based on back end rewrites under way.

UI specs exist in various places, integration here to follow.

''See also:''

[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]

Talk:Firefox:Places:Scratch Pad

2005-10-19T04:47:35Z

Tdot: Bookmarks and Information Management