278574 - add bookmark description panel in the bookmark manager

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, enhancement)

Description

[Rory]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

The 'Bookmarks Manager' would be better if there was an extra panel at the
bottom which had editable field displaying the description of the bookmark.
This would be similar to Thunderbird - where you select the folder on the left
panel, the email on the right, and the email text is displayed at the bottom.
Instead you would select the bookmark folder on the left, the bookmark on the
right and the *editable* (for easy access) description would be displayed at the
bottom.
There could of course be an option for this in the 'View' menu to disable or
enable this extra bottom panel.

I am also adding three other feature requests relevant to this one:
* When adding a bookmark an editable description field is displayed under the
name field, so the user can enter description data when adding a bookmark
* A bookmarks description panel is shown at the bottom in the Bookmarks sidebar
* Bookmark descriptions are searchable (at the moment the description is not
referenced by bookmark searches)

Reproducible: Always




Descriptions are not implemented well into any web browsers' bookmark system -
including Firefox. They are more of an extra thing tacked on that can be acessed
through menus that arent immediately apparent. In Firefox you have to click a
bookmark then edit its properties to edit or even >>see<< the description.
As bookmark collections become larger descriptions become more important to
finding relevant bookmarks. This functionality is sorely lacking at present.
I think the commercial bookmark manager "Compass"
(http://www.softgauge.com/compass/) is a good prototype to strive for as an
integrated bookmark manager. The Bookmark Manager already built into Firefox
would only have to be modified slightly to gain all of the main features of
"Compass".
Firefox already has several advantages over IE. I think that with a more
advanced bookmark system it would extend its lead even further.

Comment 1

[Rory]

Attachment: Diagram of bookmark description panel

Comment 2

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

The request is valid, but the odds of it being implemented are small. This will
likely be WONTFIXED as a simple and streamlined UI is the goal here.

As for you other requests,

* When adding a bookmark an editable description field is displayed under the
name field, so the user can enter description data when adding a bookmark
Bug 176607

* A bookmarks description panel is shown at the bottom in the Bookmarks sidebar
This is asking for basically the same thing as the original report.

* Bookmark descriptions are searchable (at the moment the description is not
referenced by bookmark searches)
Bug 251345 (Also: bug 171575, and SM bug 83321)

Comment 3

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Seems like this would be a great feature to be added with an extension.

Comment 4

[Rory]

(In reply to comment #2)
> The request is valid, but the odds of it being implemented are small. This will
> likely be WONTFIXED as a simple and streamlined UI is the goal here.
That is rather illogical, as most people who would use the bookmark manager are
the more advanced types of users. Besides it was 'simple' enough to implement in
Thunderbird.

Comment 5

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

I'm actually pretty sure some or all of this report is duplicate to wontfixed bugs.

Bookmarks manager will be getting a wholesale rewrite as part of the Places
concept, but aside from that, description as a field is something that's
perceived as extra complexity by most users, and not something we're planning on
exposing further (i.e. in the dialog, in the bookmark manager for editing, etc.
 However, we may start utilizing meta information where available to add this
automatically.

Having description in an editable textbox, by itself, really isn't what we'd do
anyway.  Inline editing in the tree layout, or an "edit panel" with
name/URL/keyword/description is much more likely, but that's not what this bug
is really calling for, at all.

WONTFIX.

Comment 6

[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