232467 - default folder for add bookmark not remembered across sessions when it's the "Bookmarks" folder

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect, P2)

Description

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Firebird 0.8.0+ 200401015 Windows XP

When you first open the browser and go to bookmark a page, it chooses "Bookmarks
Toolbar Folder" and not "Bookmarks". "Bookmarks" should be the default location
for saving of bookmarks.

Comment 1

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

The dialog shows the last folder a bookmark was added to as the default.  On a 
truly clean profile, I'd agree that the first time should default to bookmarks

Comment 2

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Not only that, but it forgets which Bookmark folder you use when you close the
browser.

Comment 3

[Pierre Chanial]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Not only that, but it forgets which Bookmark folder you use when you close the
> browser.

Most likely, you moved or removed a bookmark in the bookmarks toolbar folder.
Then, this folder is considered to the most recently visited folder.
That's not really by design.

Comment 4

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

It should probably only remember for the duration of the session -- no
preference. When you restart the browser each time, it should go back to
Bookmarks. It doesn't seem likely to me that people will be forever putting the
bookmarks in the same folder. During one session, they might.

Comment 5

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 75452 ***

Comment 6

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

this is separate, bookmarks has long since been forked

Comment 7

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

*** Bug 233994 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

*** Bug 236330 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Ali Ebrahim]

Firefox will always use the last folder that a bookmark was saved in as the
default, unless Firefox has been restarted and the last folder was the main
Bookmarks folder, in which case, it will default to the folder last saved in
before that.

We should probably implement something like the following:

+ Within browing session
  - It defaults to the last folder that a bookmark was saved in.

+ Per restart of Firefox
  - Always default to main Bookmarks folder at start of session.

I think this is a pretty sensible behaviour.

Also updating summary.

Comment 10

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

I discussed this with Ben -- the reason the root folder isn't remembered is that
the folder to use is based on the LAST_MODIFIED date of the folder, and the
"root" folder doesn't have its LAST_MODIFIED written to bookmarks.html, since
there's no place to put it.

1.0beta per discussion with Ben.

Comment 11

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

It's worth noting that my resummarization of the bug doesn't accurately reflect
the second of the two issues here:
 1. that the default folder is the "Bookmarks" folder across sessions
 2. that, in a new profile, the default should be "Bookmarks"
Fixing the second requires fixing the first, unless the entire folder-memory
feature is dropped.

Comment 12

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

(1.) above lacks "is forgotten"

Comment 13

[Ben Fowler]

On comment 9, this does not seem to me to be sensible behaviour in practice,
although your description is fine.

I very, very rarely if ever want to use Cmd-D to save a bookmark to the
Bookmarks Toolbar folder. I would usually edit this folder by dragging onto
it or off it.

Yet Firefox seems to choose this folder more often than any other. IMHO this 
is wrong, and it is 'in your face' because Firefox is changing something 
that is really my prerogative.

I was happy with system whereby the root folder was marked as receiving
'Added' bookmarks, and an option (which I can't see myself using) to mark
some other folder as the receiving folder.

Having said that, it would be reasonable for Firefox to use a folder in
the root folder with today's date on it, so one would have, um, a backlog
of bookmarks to look through and dispose of in a series of folders by date.
(My biggest problem with bookmarks is having them all in a heap whether
in the root folder or any individual folder; using a folder by day, approaches
classifying by session and gets somewhat close to classfying by content, 
topic or subject, which is what I realy want ...)

If you really want the Bookmark Menu to have this 'Last Visited' behaviour
(which I do not), please use the line just below 'Quick Searches' in a
Mason-Dixon spirit, saying that folders North of that line will never be used
for receiving Added Bookmarks, if one of those (and 'Quick Searches' would
be a good example) ever is the most recently visited folder then the root 
folder should be used instead.

Personally, I would really only want Added Bookmarks to go to the tail of
Bookmarks menu, and I am surprised that nobody else has had the experience
of chasing down where that Firefox has put my bookmarks this time. It looks 
as though I am in a minority of one, though the OP did ask for 'Bookmarks'
to be the default location.

Comment 14

[Mikel Ward]

I typically add new bookmarks to the "Bookmarks" folder.  After restarting
$BROWSERNAME, and adding a new bookmark via Bookmarks->Add to Bookmarks...
it always defaults to "Quick Searches", despite having not recently added a
bookmark to the "Quick Searches" folder.

This is quite annoying and is never what I want.

I think it's the same bug.

Comment 15

[roongpatoong]

I agree with most other people that like the default location to be the
Bookmarks folder. It is rare that I save two bookmarks in a row to the same
folder - thus the 'remember last folder' feature is rendered almost useless. I
liked the idea in comment 9 and comment 13 had some good UI ideas.

But what I want most is to at least have the option of *simply* (ie. without
lots clicking and scrolling) saving all of my bookmarks to the main Bookmarks
folder. Then I can deal with the mess that gathers there when I get spare time :)

Comment 16

[Ryan Hayle]

I'm unsure, but this may be a dupe of Bug 232089.

In my mind, the ideal solution to this (VERY annoying problem) is to revert to
the Mozilla behavior...  Have two menu options, "Add bookmark" will add the
current page to the end of the bookmark list without any dialog at all.  "File
bookmark" would bring up the dialog, with the tree view (optionally)
automatically shown (Bug 242626).

This keeps the simplicity and consistency with older browsers, and has the the
advantages of the dialog to file bookmarks in folders, bookmark groups of tabs, etc.

Comment 17

[Axel Taferner]

I very much agree with #16 here. Most of the time i want to add a bookmark i
want to add it to the root Bookmarks folder. Maybe the add bookmark function
could add the bookmark to whatever folder the user has selected to be the
"default" and the file bookmark folder would ask the user where to file it,
using the last modified folder as the default. To take it one step further i
think the "File Bookmark" dialog should have the ability to add a keyword to the
bookmark. Bookmark keywords are a great feature and i think they'd be used more
frequently by end users if the file bookmark dialog has the option to add one. I
find it unintuitive to have to edit a filed bookmark in order to add a keyword.

Comment 18

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

we're certainly not going to revert to Mozilla's behaviour here.  We moved away
from that a long time ago.  There might be a case for adding a key combo to
bookmark without prompting (i.e. Ctrl-Shift-D, which is an inversion of the
Mozilla behaviour)

What is most likely is that we'll have to find a fix for this :)  everything
else is unlikely to change, certainly not before 1.0.

Comment 19

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Attachment: possible workaround

This workaround works for me -- what it does is it sets the last modified date
for the bookmarks folder to be the time that the bookmarks file is read.  This
means that at the start of each session, the most recently modified folder will
be the "Bookmarks" folder, so it will thus show up first.  This will then
change if the user bookmarks into another folder.

I'm not sure how well this would work if the user uses a dynamic view of system
bookmarks (i.e., useDynamicSystemBookmarks is true).

Comment 20

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

Attachment: bookmarks-root-last-modified-0.patch

k, so H1 now has a LAST_MODIFIED.  Note that I don't feel bad -at all- for
doing this to BookmarkParser/writer.  (I also wish I'd known about this bug
sooner, because you have no idea how much this drove me crazy.)

Comment 21

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

vlad, I'm adding this to the list of reviews of patches I still owe you. 

Comment 22

[Sean Enright]

*** Bug 251514 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 23

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

Attachment: bookmarks-root-last-modified-1.patch

Same as -0, but with patch to new profile bookmarks.html, making sure that the
"Bookmarks" folder is the default target for new profiles.

Comment 24

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

*** Bug 251718 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 25

[Mike Shaver (:shaver -- probably not reading bugmail closely)]

Comment on attachment 153383 [details] [diff] [review]
bookmarks-root-last-modified-1.patch

I wouldn't miss this bookmarks format at _all_, I tell ya.

Comment 26

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

In on aviary (with small fix to not over-release kNC_BookmarksRoot, oops).

Comment 27

[Ryan Polk (Quark)]

setting fixed-aviary1.0 for bugfixes checked into branch, sorry for bugspam.

Comment 28

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

sorry for bugspam, long-overdue mass reassign of ancient QA contact bugs, filter on "beltznerLovesGoats" to get rid of this mass change