For my work I have to read a lot and stay up-to-date. I have to read books to improve my (technical and non-technical) writing. And I have to read many online resources to improve my technical writing and my skills when I translate a book or article or a whole website. And then there is a lot of stuff I simply enjoy reading. Therefore one application I always keep open on my Mac is the browser. The two browsers of choice on all my systems are Safari and Camino, although I have also installed others, like Firefox, Opera, OmniWeb, Shiira, Sunrise, not to mention Lynx. I like to try many browsers because I think that limiting the surfing experience to just one, no matter how good it may be, is simply not enough. And when it comes to bookmarks and bookmark management, it definitely isn’t.
Generally speaking, bookmark management on the major browsers for the Mac is — with the possible exception of OmniWeb — remarkably insufficient. Considering the huge amount of bookmarked websites I have amassed so far, I wish my browser(s) could be a little more helpful with the organisation and, well, the browsing of said multitude of bookmarks. All browsers have a separate window for managing bookmarks, usually divided in two areas. On the left there’s a sidebar with bookmark folders hierarchy and other useful groupings (like History, Bookmarks Menu, Bookmarks Bar, RSS Feeds etc.). In the main window there’s the actual bookmark listing, with columns for title, address, and so on. In this regard, I’m surprised by the lack of options provided by Safari. The only things you can do in Safari’s bookmarks window is adding a folder and searching the bookmarks repository with the search field in the upper right corner.
What I’d love to find in a browser, especially in Safari:
Why not have a similar portion in Safari’s bookmark window, with folders such as “My top rated”, “Recently Added”, “Recently visited” and “Top 25 most visited”? That could be useful when searching and accessing bookmarks, especially sites I recently added but perhaps misfiled. Camino sports at least a Top Ten List in its bookmark management window.
These are the first suggestions coming to mind. I know there are some third-party applications for bookmark organisation and synchronisation, but it would be nice if these features were built in the browser. I don’t understand why bookmark management is so overlooked and underdeveloped. Not only should a browser help in finding and reading information, but also in managing and fine-tuning all the information one decides to retain. Some of these suggestions have been sent to Apple via its Mac OS X feedback page. I’m not holding my breath, of course, but I thought it was worth a try.
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