a firefox webextension to bring back pre-62 bookmark annotations
License: Mozilla Public License 2.0
Bookmark Notes is a WebExtension that brings back (to some degree) the pre-v62 ability to add descriptions, sometimes called annotations, to bookmark entries. Notes are synced across Firefox browsers and can be imported from a bookmarks.html file from any current version of Firefox.
This extension was built in a day.
On my home computer where my account has admin privilege, everything worked fine. However, on my work computer where I don't have the admin privilege, the import process was a bit wonky. First off, nothing seemed to happen when I clicked the Import button. I opened Bookmark Notes on the sidebar and saw no changes. Then after trying Import a few more times, I clicked a bookmark item and saw my notes were there. But there was no indicator icon next to the bookmarks. I unchecked and checked the corresponding option, then the indicator icons showed up fine.
Just letting you know that it wasn't smooth sailing on my work computer. On my home computer, the Import worked fine in one try and I saw all the notes icons without having to uncheck & check back the option. (Actually that I saw the icons on my home computer first was why I was looking for the notes icons on my work computer as well and when I didn't see them, kept trying Import over and over again.)
The sidebar layout is hard to read on a mac version. The first bookmark within a bookmark directory bleeds into the directory listing view/line.
Each bookmark line is also crowded. A little more space between each bookmark entry would be more pleasing to the eye.
Also, the text is not truncated as it hits the right hand border and wraps, which looks to be intentional. Maybe an option to truncate somehow so that the list look cleaner?
Using something similar icon wise for directory indicators when collapsed and expanded might be better for the UX side (the right and down facing triangles, instead of + and minus signs)
Included image to show what it looks like on a mac version of firefox, just in case.
This is a popular request, but would require the tabs permission to work. Currently hoping to offer this as an option in v1.2.
Currently, notes are kept in storage.sync only, which is overwritten each time Firefox Sync does its thing. This can potentially result in partial data loss if, for instance, a note is added before Firefox syncs the latest data.
To solve this, my plan is as follows:
content: The content of the notemodified: A timestamp of the last time the note was changedstorage.localstorage.sync changes, compare timestamps of each note, create a new object with the most recent notes, then update both local and syncSince this will require migrating note objects to a new format that will break backward compatibility, it's better suited for a larger release, and most certainly after #26 has been resolved.
Among them should be:
Additionally, I'm also considering:
When I edit bookmark information in the regular way the navigator is freezing, if I disable the bookmark-notes extension, the freezing disappear.
Getting:
TypeError: bookmarkElement is null options.js:141:1
importInit/< moz-extension://.../pages/options.js:141:1
forEach self-hosted:268:13
importInit moz-extension://.../pages/options.js:138:7
For some reason my export files shows this when I probe it in the Web Console:
document.querySelectorAll('dt').length
6164
document.querySelectorAll('dt a').length
5464
I don't know what those 700 DTs are that aren't bookmarks. Maybe folders?? Anyway, I think options.js need to make sure bookmarkElement is not null before trying to get its href.
We already filter by title and URL, but some users may want to be able to see results that match the actual content of the note as well.
When you open the Bookmark Notes sidebar, the tree should be all collapsed. It takes a while to navigate to the desired folder.
Folders themselves also have a description field in Firefox that is exported into bookmarks.html file.
I have a lot of bookmark folders with some comments in them used for references to other related folders, and about subject of the bookmarks contained in them, etc..
Probably Folders should have also Notes attached to them, and be able to import them from bookmarks.html file.
The extension currently doesn't distinguish between bookmarks.onCreated as a standalone event, and bookmarks.onCreated as a result of the user importing bookmarks from a previous backup or export. Since the WebExtensions API allows for this distinction, we should take advantage of it and avoid handling the event until the import is over.
All the bookmark notes are missing.
Any way to get this back?
This Firefox Extension is absolutely invaluable and it appears to have only one issue.
Quite rightly, Mozilla release regular updates to Firefox. When such an update is installed, frequently it appears that all of the Notes currently saved with Bookmark Notes are erased. Importing a Firefox HTML backup does not restore them, so they have to be re-created manually.
Instead of Limit bookmarks titles to one line, it would be better to give the user the ability to specify the number (N≥1) of lines to be shown — and even better to show the bookmark's whole title + URL on hover, as in the Ctrl+B ordinary panel
Hi Jase,
please mak Bookmark Notes localizable. I'd like to translate it into German, Upper Sorbian and LOwer Sorbian.
Thank you and kind regards,
Michael
Hi, first of all thanks for your effort with this extension for filling the hole made by Mozilla.
Now to the question: Would it be possible to add descriptions to not only bookmarks but also folders?
Just seeing if work for this add-on is still active.
Hallo
to make a description/annotation/note to a existing bookmark, it is difficult to find it yet. There is no (fast-)search field in the Add-On. Should (adjustable) search through url, title and/or tags.
Further the bookmarks in the Sidebar are not good separated visually, only when hovering there is a border.
Further the bookmarks in the Sidebar have the title as title. If the title is missing, it should take the url and not "(No title)".
Further there could be a shortcut to open/close the sidebar.
I guess this is the beginning of this Add-On with great potencial in future!
Thanks yet.
frank
I have the same problem as others might, I don't like my browser window made smaller, especially as I'm using a laptop and some websites are coded to "insist" on full screen or worse, require scrolling or even (shudder) can't be scrolled even if it would be needed. So, why not have this run in its own tabbed window? That would be perfect since I can open in a new tab, and even better, you can make it so that all links automatically open in a new tab. (Kaiser Health News RSS is one that I know does this reliably, if you need an example. See https://khn.org/rss-feeds/ for more info.)
Hello
Well done so far! Since for a lot of bookmarks I don't have notes I would like to have a possibility to directly open a bookmark link without the need to first open the Bookmark Notes detail window and click the URL from there.
Proposal: If I click the bookmark name I expect to directly open its URL. And I would like to open the window containing the notes only if I click the righthand blue-white notes icon.
And yes, I also would appreciate if you could make the ESC key close the Bookmark Notes window.
Thank you and best regards,
Guido
Right now, we reprint the entire bookmarks tree whenever an option is changed. It would be better, instead, to only reprint when necessary.
When I import a bookmarks file, which I exported from Firefox Bookmarks management, I get a default named file: bookmarks.html.
But when I import that now to bookmark-notes this searches as default filter only for htm-files, so the bookmarks.html is not shown.
This is not a big deal, I can set the filter to all files (.) but it is not so pretty.
So please change the file filter to .html;.htm so the default file is shown.
Thanks.
EDIT: by the way, bookmarks-notes does NOT import my bookmarks.html file, the 'Import' Button is not activated, even not after a while.
I'm not sure if it's actually syncing or not, but I'm seeing this in the log day after day.
1563688682963 Sync.Engine.Extension-Storage ERROR Syncing [email protected]: request failed: Error: HTTP 507 Insufficient Storage: Resource access is forbidden for this user (Maximum bytes per object exceeded " "(109415 > 16384 Bytes.)(resource://services-common/kinto-http-client.js:2645:5) JS Stack trace: [email protected]:2645:5
I'm quite worried about the following aspects:
description field altogether, included syncing, so exploiting Firefox Sync would be unreliable.Would you mind sharing your thoughts about it, and explaining how sync is currently performed by Bookmark Notes webextension?
It'll be a great feature if a bookmark had an icon (or any other graphic indicator, a dot etc.) if a note is present.
Hello
Since FF62 there is no more Description-Field in the FF-Bookmarks. This Add-On fixes this lack.
It would be great if there were some Import-Feature to get all the old descriptions from Pre-FF62 into the Add-On.
That is possible?
Thanks
frank
Pressing Escape should close the note window, without need to click on Cancel
Thanks for the addon!
I have some bookmarks without any title, just the icon is enough. But in the bookmark notes sidebar there is no icon, so I end up with a lot of "No title" entries.
Displaying the icon next to the title/"no title" would be awesome! something like this:
I am using Firefox 61.0.2 with windows 10. I exported my bookmarks to a bookmark.html file. I installed bookmark-notes v1.2.1 and accepted the premision requests. I then imported the bookmark.html file. The descriptions for each bookmark from the bookmarks.html file appeared as notes for their respective bookmark in the new bookmark-note list. This was good. The notes came up when I left clicked the bookmark.
Unportunately, I then closed Firefox and reopened it all the notes were gone. THe only way to get them back was to re-import them from the original bookmark.html file I had exported.
Any suggestion on how to keep the notes without having to re-import each time I open Firefox?
Further if I went to the view menu and selected:
view>sidebar>bookmarks
the old Firefox bookmark list showed up, that's great, but if I then selected:
view>sidebar>bookmark Notes
The bookmark list was empty, no links (and obviously no Notes), I could not even get the bookmark list to appear by re-importing.
Any suggestions?
Thanks
mchase
I seem to be having an issue where I can import notes from the html file, and add notes ,but once I close FF and then reopen it the notes are gone. I'm not a developer, only a user. Is it possible I don't have something set correctly in FF?
A keybinding for opening the addon would be really useful.
Howdy,
I did not even notice that the bookmark notes were taken out. I almost abandoned Firefox as I have a lot of information stored in the notes and losing that about gave me a heart attack. So was nice to find this add-on effort.
I exported my firefox bookmarks to an html file and my notes were verified. I installed the v1.1.1 add-on and imported the html file, but the notes were dropped for anything after a certain point. I cannot tell where I as have a lot of directories dividing up my 2000+ bookmarks. The notes were intact at the beginning in several directories, but totally missing about half way down the bookmark tree. I tried another import attempt with same results. I then removed roughly half of the html file and re-imported it and the notes appeared for those that had been missing in the first and second attempts. Not sure if any are missing but the important ones seem to be there on a casual check
So the html file import is not handling large bookmark imports.
Side note: very few of the favicons are imported, even with file trimming and multiple attempts. The default shows up on roughly 90% of the bookmarks
Feature Request
After all the cool changes (better UI, search bar, imports that work), I thought I'd throw another thing on the pile.
Need a way backup the notes in the future. Any changes in notes mode are not reflected on a bookmark export (only the original notes are exported). Would this need to be a separate backup and import? Would make them more portable and less likely to be lost if backed up.
On opening the cursor should be automatically placed in the searchbox, in order to be able to start typing right away.
This would be a great combo with #34.
If we can move this operation to the background script and merely have the sidebar copy it when necessary, this would be easier performance-wise, especially in cases where the user has more than one window or is frequently opening and closing the sidebar.
Right now (especially for users with low-end PCs or many bookmarks), initial loading of the extension isn't very graceful. Some (addressed in 17b1c99)makeTree optimization would go a long way.
In addition, updating bookmarks' values—as well as adding, moving, and removing—just run panelInit again instead of just updating the affected entries.
The option "Limit bookmark titles to one line" could apply also to folder titles (for compact view mode), or maybe there could be another separate option to limit folder titles to one line.
The notes are not getting synced between:
FF 61.0b9 (64 bit) on Windows 10FF 61.0.2 (64 bit) on GNU/Linux Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic)I've been losing all the bookmarks now (icon indicators and data). Cannot say why. I thought it was due to upgrades of the add-on and/or Firefox, but it seems to happen within 1-2 days of re-importing the full bookmark data. Have not observed any reason for the total loss of data yet (at least not showing in the bookmark notes pane)
Continuing from #16.
Notes are associated by ID, so using bookmarks.search() is the simplest way to get the ID of a note from a file that doesn't include IDs. However, this throws an exception whenever the url search parameter is deemed "invalid," and this may prevent some users from recovering certain notes on entries that link to these "invalid" schemes.
A possible workaround might search within the already-printed bookmarks tree the extension generates on startup, since I can do this my own way without being limited by the bookmarks API.
To the user, it may be confusing to see no feedback when attempting to import notes or favicons, especially so if something goes wrong. We should keep the user updated on the following events:
Additionally, we should warn the user in the following situations:
Hi!
I've just installed your notes add-on inside my Firefox latest version. What I like is the possibiltity to save additional information to each bookmark. An improvement is the usage of smaller letters. Thanks for that! But I don't know how to delete bookmarks or to edit the text of an bookmark. Would you please help me?
Best regards
Joachim Müller-Klink
I use this extension with Firefox 71.0 on Windows 8.1 (64-Bit) but I rarely use it, because I was never able to import my bookmarks.
Anyway, I just checked if there is any development since last year and found a strange view in the sidebar: many, many repeating enties, see Screenshot:
I have several other devices synced with Firefox sync so I guess the Add-On is not able to sync correctly deletions.
Like this it is useless, where should I edit any note?
In my bookmarks window all is normal though:
frank
Using Abc hij pqr as keyword string to search a bookmark titled (or having in the notes) Abcdefg▶hijklmno▶pqrstu returns no result.
In addition to #27, some users may want to search only for items that match certain criteria in a certain property.
In a case where a user has many bookmarks leading to bugzilla.mozilla.org/*, a search for "mozilla" would return them all, as well as any bookmarks with "mozilla" in the title. However, if the user wants only the latter category, there's currently no easy way* to return only bookmarks with "mozilla" in the title. Current goals are:
title:* – Filter bookmarks by titleurl:* – Filter bookmarks by URLnote:* – Filter bookmarks by note contentThere should be an interface for accessing these as well—a drop-down should suffice. There should be a clear visual indicator when a keyword is being honored.
* Note that currently this can be worked around by taking advantage of regular expressions. For example, "(\s|^)mozilla" should *only* match titles, as it will match both "mozilla" and "world of mozilla," but not "www.mozilla.org."
This would be helpful and look cleaner than the current implementation.
Dude! First of all - thanks for the effort to bypass the removal of the description field. I really put my fingers crossed for this addon.
I have a major thing. Are you able to make the interface of the addon like the original firefox bookmark manager (not the sidebar) - with the description field just below the name, tags etc.?
Set up two virgin installations on two machines. Entered a few notes, they synced fine. Then imported a big bookmark file from my old Firefox. Import went well, I can see all the notes. But... sync stopped working. The notes don't show up on second instance. The "push" from the instance with the imported data is not pushing the data out to the cloud. (I know it's the push, because another non-virgin instance wasn't putting it's data in the cloud before I set up the two virgin instance; the two virgin instances were only syncing between each other.)
URL values starting with about: or javascript: cause the import to fail partway through. These should be caught and filtered beforehand.
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