1. Aug 15th, 2009

    What’s in your bookmarks bar?

    My bookmarks bar

    I hardly use bookmarks anymore. At least not in the traditional sense of maintaining a standalone library of links.

    For everyday sites, I depend on muscle memory and auto-completion. I type g.m. and Safari completes to GMail, or r.e. to fire up Google Reader. Most sites are only two/three letters away.

    My todo list has items with links. Links to forms I have to fill, pages I need to read, stuff I want to buy. I keep notes in EverNotes that have links. Links to reviews of wines I want to taste, to ideas and projects I hope to do someday. Documents I write have links to reference and citations, so do my blog posts. I think of these as “links in contexts”, not bookmarks in their own right.

    Everything else is a search away. Search engines are getting better (and so is my Google-fu), that I no longer bother to revisit old bookmarks. When I switched computers earlier this year, one thing I happily left behind were my bookmarks.

    Instead of bookmarks – places you visit – I have a steadily growing collection of bookmarklets – things you do. Right now you’ll find these in my bookmarks bar:

    ➜ Later — When I know I want to read it, simply don’t have the time, I click this link and hand it to my InstaPaper account. It’s easier than keeping 50 tabs open, especially when “later” ends up being a few weeks away. I also use the iPhone app to catch up on my reading at bed, or when waiting in line at the DMV.

    ➜ Readability — When I have time to read it now, and it’s longer than a couple of paragraphs, I run it by Readability. This handy bookmarklet removes all the unnecessary cruft form the page — the ads, the sidebar, the fancy navigation menu — leaving just the article you’re reading (with images). Instead of fancy style you get a plain vanilla look & feel that’s only good for one purpose: reading text without getting eye hernia. Go ahead, try using it to read this post.

    ➜ English — English is not the only language in the world, just the one I happen to use every day. This bookmarklet is just Google Translate wrapped up so a single click will turn any language into somewhat broken, sometimes funny, English translation.

    ➜ Twitter — This is the mystery bookmarklet. Can you guess what it does?

    ➜ Tumblr — Tumblr is an awesome service for lightweight blogging, and one of its best feature is the Tumblr bookmarklet. It makes posting quick, easy and fun.

    ➜ WP — Since the main blog runs on WordPress, I use the Press This bookmarklet to post here. Mostly I use it to quick jot down ideas for posts and save them as draft, and unfortunately, most do not develop into full grown posts.

    ➜ GReader — Quickest way to subscribe to the blog I’m reading with Google Reader. Yes, I still do read feeds.

    The chubby arrow is the Unicode character U+279C, also known as ‘HEAVY ROUND-TIPPED RIGHTWARDS ARROW’. I started using it to distinguish between bookmarks (places, no arrow) and bookmarklets (“send to Tumblr”, “send to InstaPaper”) back when I had both vying for attention in my bookmarks bar. If you’re on a Mac, you can add the arrow by opening Special Characters palette (Cmd-Opt-T) and look under Arrows.

    So this is my bookmarks bar. What’s in yours?

    Printable PDF | Posted by Assaf Filed in general 8 Comments »

    1. Aug 15th, 2009

      Daniel Spiewak

      Nothing at all. The Awesome Bar (worst. name. ever.) has completely supplanted what little bookmarking I once did. Well, actually I take that back. I do “bookmark” things fairly frequently by throwing stuff into Firefox’s unsorted bookmarks and tagging appropriately. This merely adjusts the weight of that particular page in my awesome auto-complete, making it easier to find stuff that I *know* I want to come back to. I don’t ever dig through and actually *click* on anything though.

      As for my bookmarks bar, see for yourself: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1679797/browser-header.png I save 20 or so pixels just by eliminating that one interface element. I save another 12 pixels by killing the status bar, and my minimized browser experience is complete.

      In case you were wondering, my todo list is handled by a combination of Starred items in Gmail, my Inbox, text files on my desktop and a self-hosted wiki.

    2. Aug 16th, 2009

      Assaf

      Horrible name, but Awesome Bar is indeed awesome. And I like that a single click doesn’t actually bookmark the page, as much as give it higher ranking in the search result.

      I generally run Safari with bookmarks bar hidden (use Cmd+num shortcuts), that’s a narrower band than Firefox. If every pixel counts, you might want to consider that (or find lookalike theme).

    3. Aug 16th, 2009

      Alex Payne

      1. The TBUZZ bookmarklet, which posts to Twitter (via OAuth, no less) and shows you the conversation on Twitter about the page you’re on.

      2. “Read later” quick save to Pinboard. No prompt for tagging or notes.

      3. http://localhost:3000, not a bookmarklet. Mnemonic, because it binds to command-3 in Safari.

      4. Readability.

      5. Save to Pinboard. Prompts for tags and notes, then sends you back to the original URL when you’re done.

      6. Quietube. Readability for video sites.

      7. Save to Soup.io (for http://minima.al3x.net/).

      8. Save to Yep. Turns the current page into a PDF.

      9. Simplenote (not a bookmarklet).

      10. Twitter (not a bookmarklet).

    4. Aug 16th, 2009

      Assaf

      Thanks. Going to try TBuzz now. I still head to Tweetie instead of tweeting directly from the browser, maybe that will get me to switch. And I didn’t know Yep has a bookmarklet.

    5. Aug 17th, 2009

      Mat schaffer

      One more to add to the mix: Bookmarklets that make use of the “prompt” command to assemble a URL. In firefox you can do this with bookmark keywords, but not safari/iphone. The main one I use is to search my company’s clearspace wiki.

      Love the Unicode arrow btw. I’ve been using a bang! but I think the arrow is probably better.

    6. Aug 17th, 2009

      Assaf

      Mat, checkout Keywurl:

      Keywurl adds simple way of performing searches in Safari by letting you type short keywords as queries. Type a keyword and a query in the address bar, and it will be expanded into a predefined search.

    7. Aug 18th, 2009

      Aaron Farr

      I don’t have my bookmark bar visible. But I do use it for rapidly jumping to common sites. In Safari, the sites in your bookmark bar have automatic shortcuts. So Cmd-1 is Gmail for me and Cmd-2 is Google Reader and so on. I use the shortcuts all the time. Then coupled with some bookmarklets and I effectively have new shortcuts to add a site to delicious or subscribe to a site via google reader.

      Otherwise, I tend not to use bookmarks much any more. If I want to save a site for later reference, I tend to just use delicious.

    8. Aug 19th, 2009

      David T

      I don’t have my bookmark bar visible but in Opera you can put bookmarks on basically any part of the UI, so I have some in the bottom right side of the status bar and a few in the top right corner of the tab bar (like IE does things).

      My common ones are pretty similar to you, Read Later, Readability, Post to Delicious and Bug Me Not. All bookmarklets really not traditional bookmarks. For traditional bookmarks I just use Opera’s great address bar which Firefox’s Awesome Bar is mostly based on.

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