298009 - In bookmarks, add symbolic links to other bookmarks and bookmark folders

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Toolkit :: Places, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Moritz Naumann]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de-DE; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050517 Firefox/1.0.4 (Debian package 1.0.4-2)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de-DE; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050517 Firefox/1.0.4 (Debian package 1.0.4-2)

Summary: I recommend porting the concept of symbolic links to Firefox bookmarks.

While the bookmark manager of Firefox 1.0 is already a very handy tool, its
plain hierarchical concept (a tree system) lacks the ability to map
cross-topical links.  It is considered neccessary to be able to create folders
which contain not only links to web sites and live bookmarks, but also links to
other bookmarks located in different folders and links to other folders.



Example: 

Neo, a schizophrenic long term Internet user, loves managing his favourite
bookmarks using the Firefox bookmark manager. He has created a folder 'Software'
containing multiple subfolders: 'Suites', 'Web Browsers', 'E-Mail Clients',
'HTML Editors'. In 'Suites' he has added 'Mozilla Application Suite' and 'Oh
Pera!'. In 'web bowsers' he added 'Mozilla Firefox' and 'Galeon'. 

Thus he has created the following bookmark hierarchy: 

SOFTWARE -> SUITES         -> Mozilla Application Suite, Oh Pera!
SOFTWARE -> WEB BROWSERS   -> Mozilla Firefox, Galeon
SOFTWARE -> E-MAIL CLIENTS -> ...
SOFTWARE -> HTML-EDITORS   -> ...

Of course, being a savvy open source user, he realized that the Mozilla
Application suite also contains a web browser, e-mail client and HTML editor
component. Thus he would like to add a link to the Mozilla Application Suite web
site to all of the other folders in 'Software', too. Of course, he could just do
that... but he realizes that this would be quite silly as he already created a
link to this web site in the 'Suites' folder and the new links in the 'web
browsers', 'email clients' and 'html editors' folders could just point at this
other bookmark. This would look like this:

SOFTWARE -> SUITES         -> Mozilla [www.mozilla.org], Oh Pera!
SOFTWARE -> WEB BROWSERS   -> Mozilla Firefox [getfirefox.com], Galeon
[galeon.sf.net], Mozilla Appl. Suite [Software->Suites->Mozilla]
SOFTWARE -> E-MAIL CLIENTS -> Mozilla Appl. Suite [Software->Suites->Mozilla]
SOFTWARE -> HTML-EDITORS   -> Mozilla Appl. Suite [Software->Suites->Mozilla]

This way, if the URL of the Mozilla Application suite web site ever changes, he
would only need to update a single bookmark. "Hmm, that'd be *real* simplicity
and ease of use as I like it", he thinks, swallowing the red pill his doctor
gave to him to fight his schizophrenia.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
N/A

Actual Results:  
N/A


Related bugs: 272735, 238539

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
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Comment 2

[Moritz Naumann]

See also:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Bookmarks_Use_Cases#Links_to_other_bookmarks_and_folders

Comment 4

[Lewis Rosenthal]

See also SeaMonkey bug 34059.

Comment 6

[David E. Ross]

Note that the capability requested here -- and in bug #34059, which was 12 years old when closed as a duplicate of this 7-year-old bug -- existed in Netscape 4.  

I have Wikipedia bookmarked twice: once in a folder named Internet and once in a folder named Reference Works.  If I change the Name or Description of one entry, that change does not appear for the other entry.  This is because places.sqlite has two entries for this bookmark.  There should be only one entry in one folder plus a pointer to that entry in the other folder.

Comment 7

[David E. Ross]

Note that the capability requested here -- and in bug #34059, which was 12 years old when closed as a duplicate of this 7-year-old bug -- existed in Netscape 4.  

I have Wikipedia bookmarked twice: once in a folder named Internet and once in a folder named Reference Works.  If I change the Name or Description of one entry, that change does not appear for the other entry.  This is because places.sqlite has two entries for this bookmark.  There should be only one entry in one folder plus a pointer to that entry in the other folder.

Comment 8

[Lewis Rosenthal]

Now, David, how did I know you'd follow onto my comment, here? :-) (I reviewed posts in the newsgroup first, as I couldn't believe that I was the first person to think of this, and to recall that we used to have this ability with Communicator.)

Without some implementation of this functionality, it is necessary to either do as you have described in comment 6 (and 7) or constantly open the Bookmarks Manager to search for a bookmark stored in a single location.

Comment 9

[Phil Stubblefield]

I'll chime in a few months later because I, too, used this feature back in early versions of Netscape.  I believe I may be related to the character referenced by the original poster:

> Neo, a schizophrenic long term Internet user, loves managing his favourite
> bookmarks using the Firefox bookmark manager.

I have an extensive set of bookmarks assembled over the past many years, and the ability to define "links" to existing bookmarks would be highly beneficial.

Comment 10

[islisis]

I agree. Browsing bookmarks have become as important as browsing local files these days (...did Microsoft really get it right in XP? *shudder*). A greater level of parity would be much welcome.

Comment 11

[tnyr]

AFAIK this feature should be very easy to implement:

Firefox supports the symbolic links already. But a user must create them manually and to read the content of a SQLite database:

<quote>
To create a shortcut to an existing bookmark or bookmark folder:
1. Install SQLite Manager extension.
2. Open places.sqlite from the Directory tab.
3. Browse the moz_bookmarks table to find the ID of the folder or item you want to make a shortcut to.
4. In Firefox main window, open Bookmarks or the Library and navigate to the folder you want to put your shortcut
5. Right click and choose "New Bookmark".
6. In the Location field type "place:folder=[the ID you got from SQLite Manager]".
</quote>
(http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=745375)

Comment 12

[BMO Automation]

Per policy at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bug_Triage/Projects/Bug_Handling/Bug_Husbandry#Inactive_Bugs. If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.