104184 - UI for bookmark file location preference

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: Bookmarks & History, enhancement)

Description

[David Gasaway]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:0.9.4+) Gecko/20010930
BuildID:    2001093008

There is no UI for the browser.bookmarks.file preference (added as the fix to
bug 31623).  This issue became quite painful when I had to search Bugzilla to
find the name of the pref!

There were issues raised in but 31623 regarding sharing the bookmarks file with
NS4 - in other words, if the user had the option to set the location of the
bookmark file, she would probably try to point to her NS4 bookmarks, and mangle
her Mozilla bookmark file.  And so, the option was "hidden".

Really, though, couldn't a user acheive this same thing by setting the pref in
NS4 (to point to the Mozilla bookmarks file in the profile directory)?  So, this
is a problem that cannot be avoided anyway.  I think it would be sufficient to
give the user an appropriate warning - and you can't have a warning without a
UI.  ;)

Changing the location of the bookmark file is important for the average user, I
think.  For example, at home I wanted to move my bookmarks file into my Windows
"My Documents" folder, which I backup occasionally.  Also, at work, I save all
important documents to a personal area on a file server which backed up
regularly.  This concludes my rationalization for a UI for this preference. :)

Comment 1

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

->bookmarks.

Comment 2

[David Gasaway]

A clarification: I filed this bug under Preferences because I'd prefer the
preference appeared somewhere on the Preferences dialog.  I never liked the way
that NS4 used Open/Save As from the bookmarks window - it was unintuitive and
confusing.  That said, I'm sure you all know the proper place to stick these
things. :)

Comment 3

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

setting RFE status to New.

Comment 4

[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 5

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

*** Bug 107130 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[Peter Trudelle]

mass reassign of pchen bookmark bugs to ben

Comment 7

[timeless]

*** Bug 17197 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[John Peterson]

This would be a good option for Phoenix too.  I have added the user_pref to my
prefs.js for Phoenix so it would share bookmarks with Mozilla.

JOhn

Comment 9

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

*** Bug 177615 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[dror]

I dont understand in programming too much.
I know that mozilla opens the bookmark in HTML format from
one file called bookmarks.html in the mozilla's prfes directory.

If u overwitre this file with other mozilla even nscp 4.x file the specific
profile will have "new" bookmark.

In nscp u can just choose in the bookmark menu the LOCATION for the bookmark
file and even its name.
If mozilla knows to read the file from its pref directory
cant u just add a menu option that changes the LOCATION for the bookmark file
(and giving the file which name u want) like u handled similar problem with the
cache.

Thus u can have several bookmark files and each time u can open whatever fits ur
needs in that time.

U can share the file because u can tell each profile use the same file

Comment 11

[Jeremy Rempel]

Kmeleon (the windows native app that uses gecko) has this feature. Its great I
can run kmeleon and share my bookmarks w/ mozilla trunk builds. I save my
bookmarks in a directory that is automatically backed up.

Comment 12

[Daniel Wang]

we already have a menu item for this: Manage Bookmarks | Tools | Open Bookmark
File . This item needs to be moved to File menu (bug 223148). The item updates
bookmark file location to the bookmark opened.

-> worksforme?

Comment 13

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

worksforme with windows Mozilla 2004020308

Comment 14

[Wong, Paul]

I do not have it on firebird.
Should we simply change this bug to firebird instead of "browser"?

Comment 15

[Jeremy Rempel]

I think it should be changed to firebird.

Comment 16

[Felix Miata]

This is not worksforme. Location of a this file is a preference. As such, its
location should be defined in preferences, in the same manner as cache folder
and mail start page location. No way the current method is intuitive.