1164173 - Bookmarks should include a meta description if available

Status: NEW

(Firefox for iOS :: Home screen, defect)

Description

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

It looks like we only book a <title> and not a <meta name="description"> if available; there is certainly room available in the row for a description of a site.

E.g, bookmark http://neowin.net; see only <title> fill the row

Comment 1

[alx91]

I would also like a description, especially because the user has no influence in naming the bookmarks. I could add a PR, when I know what you would like to see. If I compare the cells to the ones in the history, and would aim for consistency, I would add the description in a line below (smaller grey font).

Comment 2

[Stephan Leroux [:sleroux]]

NI'ing :tecgirl on this. I assume if we wanted to add the description, it would look similar to the history items?

Comment 3

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

Does Desktop and Android support holding a description in Bookmarks DB? If not, I wouldn't be too eager to add data to iOS that can't easily be sync'd across platforms.

If we decide to do this, and we need to add support for it on Desktop and Android, we need to coordinate.

Comment 4

[alx91]

The user can't edit the description, it is derived from <meta name="description"> as mentioned by Aaron Train.

Comment 5

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

Yes. We -- and Sync -- support description, tags, keyword.

Comment 6

[alx91]

Can you explain where I have to save the bookmarks on my Mac Firefox browser to make it work? I tried multiple times now to synch them but nothing is showing up. And when they are synced, the can be found in a new tab, in bookmarks right? That's where I can only see cells with favicon and title

Comment 7

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

(In reply to alx91 from comment #6)
> Can you explain where I have to save the bookmarks on my Mac Firefox browser
> to make it work? I tried multiple times now to synch them but nothing is
> showing up. And when they are synced, the can be found in a new tab, in
> bookmarks right? That's where I can only see cells with favicon and title

You'll need to be using Firefox for iOS built from https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios; 1.0.1 as available in New Zealand and Canada doesn't have bookmark sync.

You'll need to sign in with the same Firefox Account as on your desktop. Then you'll see all of your desktop bookmarks in a folder called "Desktop Bookmarks" in the bookmarks UI (tap the star icon on the home screen).

Comment 8

[Robin Andersen [:tecgirl]]

The decision to leave descriptions from Bookmarks was intentional; if a user saves the page, they likely know what the title was (or what they were looking at), therefore they don't need a description. It also helps lessen any confusion between the Bookmarks and History panels. For comparison, Chrome and Safari follow this format.

Comment 9

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

FWIW, desktop doesn't show bookmark descriptions by default in either the list view or the focus view; you need to add a column, click an arrow, or open Properties.

Desktop also doesn't search the description from the Awesomebar.

Adding the data to the DB and syncing it is easy, but we don't really use it anywhere.

Comment 10

[alx91]

OK sync works with the current version on the repo. I understand Robin's point to just show the title so there is no confusion between Bookmarks and History. But shouldn't the User be able to edit the title at least? So instead of just having the option to delete a page by swiping left, we could add an edit button which just opens a popup to change the text. The title usually is descriptive and the user should know what he bookmarked, but there can be exceptions.

Comment 11

[alx91]

Here is an implementation that lets a user change the bookmark title. Safari also gives the option to edit a bookmarks title (and url, which I think is weird) after it was created (longpress on CollectionViewCell). What do you think? FYI, there are no test written yet and no localization.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28177144/FirefoxEditBookmarkTitle.gif

Comment 12

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

Could you please file a separate bug for that? Once filed and linked to a PR we can discuss both the what/when and how.

Comment 13

[tkitt]

Created: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1222848

Comment 14

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Clear a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user.

Inactive users most likely will not respond; if the missing information is essential and cannot be collected another way, the bug maybe should be closed as INCOMPLETE.

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