72398 - Merge (or Synchronize) bookmarks

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Bookmarks & History, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Peter Lairo]

Desperately need ability to "Merge" Home & Office Bookmarks.

How many of us have more than one PC to work on. Usually, at a minimum, we have
a PC at home and one at work.

There simply must be a better way to merge the bookmarks (and address books)
between two PC's.

Currently, one can "import" a bookmarks file, BUT the file is merely appended to
the end of the existing BM file. That's just silly, because if the files are
both similar, you get two copies of most entries, and have to find the
differences by hand - argh.

A merge feature would compare the two files and import only thos entries that
are different.

Comment 1

[Matthew Wilson]

*** Bug 72399 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[Oliver Klee]

Confirming, replacing "Desperately need ability to" by [RFE] in summary, setting
Platform to All and severity to Enhancement.

Comment 3

[Devoti Paolo]

See also bug 45577

Comment 4

[Viswanath Ramachandran]

setting target milestone to future, this shd be nsCatFood-. 

Comment 5

[markush]

This is a subset of bug 17048. Probably should be marked dupe.

Comment 6

[Peter Lairo]

NO, "roaming access" is a *completely* different feature than *merging* files.
Roaming access requires a server that provides a centralized depository for the
files. A *merge* feature simply allows a normal user to syncronize his files
between two or more PC's with a diskette, CD-R or e-mail attachment.

SPAM: I can't believe this bug has so little resonance. To me this would be a
feature almost everybody would need.

Comment 7

[MegaZone]

Added self to cc - side note, Roaming Access (as in NS 4.7) is *far* more
critical, IMHO.

Comment 8

[Peter Lairo]

SPAM: Actually, roaming acces requires a special service provider or employer
that offers a roaming server. MOST people don't have either of those. On the
other hand, very many people have a PC at work and at home. Therefore, a feature
to "merge" the home and office bookmarks is more critical and would benefit more
users :)

Comment 9

[beck]

I simple way could be the following:

1 - the user defines one or more bookmark folders as "shared".  Then, one or 
more users can "subscribe" to the folders.  Of course they will be able to 
add/remove/edit bookmarks in the local folder: the changes would be replicated 
back automatically.
2 - the protocol : it's simple: E-MAIL.  Netscape could directly handle incoming 
e-mail messages tagged as related for bookmark replication by hiding them to the 
user, or putting them in a system mail folder.  No need for a server, no 
problems with firewalls.  Of course you can implement also other protocols.
Adding manual file imput, should also be possible.

Example:
========

I want to know which bookmark folders are published by [e-mail], 
- I click on my bookmark->subscribe button
- the publisher e-mail is requested
- I enter [e-mail]
- a message displays that I will be notified when the folders arrives.

We could also imagine that in our preferences, we maintain a publishers list, sa 
that we do not need to enter tham anymore.  We could event connect to a LDAP to 
browse the publisher list (an published items list).

Maybe on the next day (when the hidden system e-mail comes back), suddently a 
window opens displaying the published folders and I am requested to check the 
folders I am interested to.  I check and the bookmark folder are incorporated in 
my ones.

From now on, each time a change is performed in one side or the other, 
replication messages are sent transparently (or not) by e-mail.

Another interesting issue could be security:
- we could set password to acces published bookmark folders
- we could also set some publication as read-only (for public, but not for 
aother users)
- ...

All these features are a lot of work.  Please implement in a first release at 
least a minimal one (say just manually synchronize by providing the remote 
bookmark file).

Thanks a LOT.

Comment 10

[timeless]

*** Bug 102336 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

Paul Chen is now taking Bookmarks bugs. For your convenience, you can filter 
email notifications caused by this by searching for 'ilikegoats'.

Comment 12

[beck]

Just another additional little thought:
- If we build a protocol that automatically replicates bookmarks via e-mail, a
minimal security would be needed to prevent that unsolicited sites hacks to add
their own bookmarks.

Comment 13

[Paul Chen]

Mass move Ben's bugs dumped on me marked future with p5 to get off my untriaged
radar. You can filter out this email by looking for "ironstomachaussie"

Comment 14

[[not reading bugmail]]

Peter,

I wonder, now that outliner has landed whether this still is needed?  Can just
importing them now, merge correctly?

Comment 15

[Peter Lairo]

Maybe we could use the opportunity to make the Merge feature more flexible by
popping up a window when there are *two identical entries in the same BM folder*
and asking the user which one he wants to keep. If the user knows he will want
to keep the (identical) bookmarks from the "imported to" BM, then maybe there
could also be a button called [keep all duplicates], for the "imported from" BM
there could be a button called [overwrite all duplicates].

Of course, it would be ideal that when there are identical URLs encountered,
mozilla would display both bookmarks *in their entirety* side-by-side so that
the user could see if one was more complete (or more up-to-date) than the other.

+- Bookmark Merge - Identical Entries Encountered -----------------------+
|                                                                        |
| Local Bookmark File:              |  Imported Bookmark file:           |
| +------------------------------+  |  +------------------------------+  |
| | URL     : www.MyFavSite.com  |  |  | URL     : www.MyFavSite.com  |  |
| | Name    : Cool Site Dude     |  |  | Name    : Cool Site Dude     |  |
| | Schedule: never              |  |  | Schedule: mondays at 14:30   |  |
| | Notify  : none               |  |  | Notify  : display alert      |  |
| +------------------------------+  |  +------------------------------+  |
|                                                                        |
|     < keep local bookmark >              < keep imported bookmark >    |
|                                                                        |
|   < keep ALL local bookmarks >         < keep ALL imported bookmark >  |
|                                                                        |
|                                                   < Cancel Merging >   |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Even cooler would be if mozilla highlighted those entries that were different.

Now that's a spec for some great merging action :)

Comment 16

[beck]

When a user deletes a bookmark, instead of removing it from the bookmarks file,
it would better to mark it as deleted with a timestamp.
I this way, when we want to merge two bookmark files, when a bookmark appears
only on one file, we know that the bookmark was deleted from one file and not
added to the other.
To the user, the deleted bookmarks could appear in a "Recycle Bin".  When the
user empties the bin, a message will warn that some information for bookmarks
merge could be lost.

Comment 17

[Peter Trudelle]

mass reassign of pchen bookmark bugs to ben

Comment 18

[Chris Lyon]

*** Bug 122244 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 19

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** Bug 136085 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 20

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

Mass reassign of my non-Firefox bugs to [e-mail]

Comment 21

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

*** Bug 227386 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 22

[R.K.Aa.]

dup of bug 17917?

Comment 23

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Currently, if you import a bookmarks file which is a different version of your
current bookmarks, you get duplicates of all bookmarks which didn't change.

I think there should be a way to merge a bookmark file into your bookmarks.
Folders don't get duplicated, but just re-used when existing. Bookmarks that are
the same in both version are left as-is (and not added/duplicated) either). If
bookmarks changed in any of the versions, use the later version - this possible,
because bookmarks luckily have a "last modified" attribute.

Comment 24

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

FYI, I changed the summary to differentiate this bug from roaming (which
currently only does a copy, no merge).

Comment 25

[Andrej]

confirming, it would be nice to have a synchronization of bookmarks without internet. I have FireFox 2.0.0.4 and this bug is still there, although was reported 6 years ago...

Comment 26

[Philip Chee]

We now use the Firefox Sync service which syncs far more than Bookmarks (History, Tabs, Preferences, etc). Closing.