1682129 - Replace history and bookmark window by modern `about:history` and `about:bookmarks`

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 697359

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, enhancement)

Description

[ariasuni]

The Bookmarks & History is not very user-friendly in a number of ways.

• Bookmarks and history are handled in the same view
  • But there are two distinct Bookmarks and History sidebars
  • It’s handled in two different pages (not windows) on Firefox for Android, Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Edge, Safari, and probably others
  • You can’t drag-and-drop bookmarks into history, even though history categories are displayed like bookmarks folders
  • Some columns work only for bookmarks or history (e.g. “Last Modified” is only relevant for bookmarks while the URL of an History item is read-only; “Added” is only relevant for bookmarks)
  • Menu bar displays items related to bookmarks even when viewing history, which in my opinion can make it confusing (the “Backup…” and “Restore” options only apply to bookmarks, but in the same dialog, “Import Data from Another Browser” does import history, bookmarks and other things); and there’s almost no way to manage history (as far as I know, it’s only possible to delete the “Today”, “Yesterday”, etc. until “Older than 6 months” categories)
• It’s opening a new window and is not in the Photon style, which isn’t consistent with almost every other part of Firefox.
• You can add Tags to history items but if history is wiped for some reason, the user can lose its “shortcut”, which can be unexpected. I’m not sure how often this is used and if this feature is relevant.
• Search results for bookmarks don’t tell which folder it is, making it hard to e.g. handle duplicates or to know if the bookmark is in the folder we want it in.

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Thanks for the comments, a bookmarks & history UI rewrite has been desired for a while, but has not been a priority. I'm marking this as a duplicate of bug 697359 which would be the main one tracking this. Some of the other points are duplicates of other bugs.