Bookmarks.txt is a concept of keeping URLs in plain text files

I have been keeping lists of urls in https://gist.github.com as markdown files. Someone even made a shortcut http://gist.new/

It has been very useful. URLs are super easy to modify, super easy to share, super easy to open, add notes etc. Having a gist adds the ability to share a set or URLs and people can comment on them.

I think this is going in the wrong direction. While cool URIs don't change [0], many URLs that you'd like to bookmark are not cool. So for bookmarks to be useful long-term you need to store much more data than just the URL. At the very least you need a timestamp to be able to find the resource you wanted to bookmark on the Internet Archive in the future. But better would be to save a snapshot of the site alongside the bookmark instead. It's a shame that no browser cares to integrate that or other relatively simple usability enhancements instead of blindly copying Chrome's UI (which usually means removing features).

[0] https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

Bookmarks are something I have grown tired of. From the days of del.icio.us, I started collecting bookmarks and it kind of trickled along almost until Pinboard went on life support (or something else if you'd prefer to call that).

The thing is - I just saved bookmarks, I never really utilised them ever, to find something, to go back to. I can remember once or twice and either I couldn't find anything among my bookmarks or the sites were long gone. I really don't think I personally had to consult my thousands of bookmarks (which I have now dutifully migrated to Raindrop of course, because why the hell not) in any useful sense ever. I paid for a couple of archiving services as well before realising "nah, I don't really need that, nor this recurring outgoing payment in my life".

So like a lot of things on the Internet, I guess I did "bookmarking things" just for the sake of doing "bookmarking things".

That reminds me of note-taking. There was a time when I used to do "note-taking exploration and research" and never really took any notes or, hell, even needed them. When I started note-taking, while I still keep an eye out for a decent app, I just pick a decent or half-decent note-taking app and I just take notes. Oh, backup and sync tools and services. Those too - there was "explore and research" and now there's "just use something damnit". "TODOing" to, yes! I am sure this tool (or philosophy? style? bookmarking architecture?) is very nice and novel.

This is not at all reflecting on why or why not one should do such "things", I absolutely believe this is good and sometimes in fact results in tools/services massively good, I am just talking about this out loud wondering whether it's just me or this kind of fatigue really sets in for other people as well.

Given that the aim is to still visit the URL, this appears to be browser bookmarks with extra steps. I am not seeing an advantage to the external storage mechanism and the overhead it brings.

Browsers have been doing an excellent job of managing bookmarks, you can tag and search for them from the address bar itself which is very convenient.

I do this, albeit, kinda a Start Page. I like it because it is plain-text, and I can access it from any browser (not just the ones I bookmarked with).

Mine is online (rendered client-side) so I can access it from anywhere. https://start.oinam.com

Just in case, anyone wants to look the source is at https://github.com/oinam/start

(Probably skip if you don't want to read a ~rant..) Questions: - New "format"? It is a CSV with spaces as separators and no header? Why? - Global file located in the home directory? Why would you want another file to pollute the $HOME? Why not just $BOOKMARKS_FILE or something? - Local bookmarks file - why don't just reuse README.md? Add 'Resources' section and chuck markdown links in it, parsing that is not (much) harder, and you get nothing more with a separate 'bookmarks.txt' file. As some other comments pointed out, there are no tags, no (semantic) grouping, no content archiving, etc... This is just a list of URL with optional title attached to them, this is not a distinct 'concept'...

I never really used browser bookmarks until I discovered Firefox's bookmark keyword feature [1]. It basically eliminates the search step. For example, I set "pr" to the GitHub pull request page. Just press Alt + D to focus the address bar, type the keyword, and hit Enter.

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/bookmarks-firefox#w_how...

I have my own Chrome/Firefox extension that shows bookmarks in the new tab page ordered by recency with a search field on top, it's pretty good for me. Every time I open a new tab, I see the latest bookmarks I've added. Granted, I don't usually bother to browse older ones, but at least I see ~15 new ones on (desktop monitor) every day.

Also, I sometimes add a snippet of text from the content to the title of the bookmark, making it easier to search afterwards.

Mozilla-based browsers used to (before Firefox 3, I believe) store bookmarks as HTML (bookmarks.html) instead of using an SQLite database. It still uses a single HTML file when exporting or importing bookmarks.

    <!DOCTYPE NETSCAPE-Bookmark-file-1>

I think that is a good idea to keep URLs as text. I use the Tab Session Manager extension which allows me to export saved sessions (title, URL, with a little bit of extra stuff) as text (json actually, a little bit too verbose) and I also use Eagle Filer to save entire web pages, just in case it disappears from the web, which happens quite regularly. What I want is the title of the web page associated with its URL and maybe extra keywords. I don't use classic browser bookmarks much anymore.

I've been maintaining my bookmarks as plain text (YAML) for years, which I then turn into a single interactive HTML file [1].

[1] https://darekkay.com/static-marks/

Feels strange to wonder how far things have abstracted that text files feel like a concept.

I have become somewhat disillusioned with maintaining a list of bookmarks, as I often discover that the URLs are no longer functional when revisiting pages that have been bookmarked for an extended period.

I’ve been doing something similar for years, more recently published at https://github.com/lostmygithubaccount/dkdc-links

reading through this thread I’m seeing people use bookmarks to save dozens of new URLs per day, which is very surprising to me

I've made my own private bookmark browser extension that syncs e2ee across my devices. Because it's an extension I can open bookmarks automatically in a private tab and much more.

After some years of using this extension every day I decided to make it available for others as well. You can find it here, free forever: markbook.io This was just a side project I did in about 6 months of my spare time, definitely not a polished product that's trying to become the next billion dollar enterprise.

I think that people who say they prefer keeping a simple file has never found a good app for bookmarking. There is still a space for killer app with bookmarks.

I think that simple URL bookmarking is just wrong. It simply will not work for big bookmarking data sets. The key is using tags, and rating system, and automatic update which checks if URLs are even valid any more.

I also thought that we miss a killer RSS app.

That is why I created my own self-hosted app.

- it can store bookmarks

- it gather news through RSS

- it provides tags (I can search bookmarks by tags)

- it provides user ratings (I can filter using it too)

- I can filter, or order by link, date of publish, date of creation, etc. etc.

- It checks if links are rotten (and marks them)

- I can mark link to read it for later

- I can see how many times I have visited a link

- I can check 'related links' to jump to things I have jump before from this link

On the other hand, I am quite certain that I use it, because it is 'tailored for me'. I am not that interested in the looks. I know how it works

- https://rumca-js.github.io/search - demo search

- https://rumca-js.github.io/music - demo music

- https://rumca-js.github.io/bookmarks - demo bookmarks

- https://github.com/rumca-js/RSS-Link-Database - database of bookmarks

- https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database - link meta information

- https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive - main crawling engine using for all databases

Just in case, If you want to index the content of these bookmarks for searching maybe my little wip tool face is useful to you. As it’s also a local server you can use a keyword search in browsers for it. https://github.com/svandragt/fafi

I use emacs org mode files ... much more functional.

I needed to keep the highlighted text as well. With ChatGPT I have created an extension [1] that lets me capture highlights from any webpage and send them directly to a Notion database along with the page URL, capture date, and a per-selected project tag.

[1]https://github.com/sea2ocean/keeper

Don't. Link rot is harsh. Something like wallabag saved so much content for me that is otherwise now lost.

This is needed, TIL but only till recently did Firefox remove their bookmarks limit, it was something like 6000 about 3 years ago.

(For those curious about why one needs so many bookmarks, similar to maybe some other people, I use the bookmark feature as a "like" to save articles/URLs I find interesting).

I bookmark pages in Chrome just so autocomplete will find them. I almost never look back at the actual bookmarks any more.

I actually do this. I put urls and files in a text file. Which I parse with rofi. The reason why I do this is so I can just open rofi with a shortcut and type out the name of the file or url and instantly open it.

what problem does this solve?

For frequent websites I can remember their TLD and navigate to the panel I wanted

For content saving a URL is not enough. Gotta save the full page or it might be gone very soon.

Reminds me of GemText somewhat. https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/gemtext.gmi

My way of managing bookmarks is to just print the page as a PDF, save PDF in a Google Drive folder. Then you can do full text search quickly.

Need to take a look.

For my CTO newsletter I use raindrop.io to store interesting articles I encounter, export them to CSV (like bookmarks.txt), sort, filter and remove 90%, convert them to my own format, write my content and convert them to Markdown and then to HTML with Hugo.

I like plain text; it looks clean and tidy. I think I'll give this a try.

Isn't that how del.icio.us started all this bookmarking in the first place?

I’m using a similar format to keep my links organized on an iPhone. A bookmarks.txt note kept in Apple Notes with markdown # headings to separate each category, allowing me to not keep open 500 tabs on Safari.

I've been doing exactly this for ten years, keeping the bookmarks file in Git. I added 70 bookmarks today, which is more than average. But rather than just a "title" I have whatever seems like I might want to search for later, including if the link rots. So it's more of a summmary. With hashtags. In Markdown (though without newlines).

Each new day gets a header.

Here's Sunday, with blank lines added to get reasonable formatting on HN:

links from 02025-08-24:

https://archive.org/details/TheDesignOfSwitchingCircuits/pag... My childhood book on digital logic (including a little #electronics) as an #ebook. #hardware

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_discharge_lamp sodium-arc and mercury-arc lamps are also HID lamps. #hardware

https://archive.org/details/ge-glow-lamp-manual-1966/page/n1... scan of GE’s glow-lamp manual for neon lamps from 01966. #ebook #hardware #electronics #history

https://youtu.be/Nn5v59l2Xec?t=64 VEMAG brand double-screw extruder screw pump #mechanisms pumping M&Ms and ground meat. #video footage of the parts being washed.

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/aleksandro_arz_51_arz51.html very pretty old radio

https://www.nature.com/articles/nmat2141 "Superlenses" to overcome the diffraction limit, #optics #paper from 02008

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_length#Electrical_l... electrically long and short #antennas and loading coils and whatnot. #electronics #communications #radio

https://www.ornl.gov/publication/evaluation-power-fluidic-pu... #fluidics for pumping in #molten-salt #nuclear-reactors (just an abstract)

https://www.hopefulmons.com/p/in-defense-of-tech-trees trying to use "tech trees" to understand the #history of technological development

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_diffraction near-field #diffraction is "Fresnel diffraction" #optics

https://psi329.cankaya.edu.tr/uploads/files/Lewis-PernFascis... Was #Perón a fascist? #fascism #history #PDF #paper #toread

https://lwn.net/Articles/1030818/ #Treacherous-Computing for “confidential VMs” #privacy despite #Linux #virtualization #toread

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44950482 discussion of alternative ways to run graphical apps inside #Docker, including maybe drawing in a web browser

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44991638 my post about how #Rust’s approach to handling #Unicode introduces unnecessary bugs into command-line programs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WApL1EL2GMk #Frondizi speaks about #Perón. #history #Argentina #video

https://github.com/3b1b/manim Manim math #animation software for morphing equations and plots and stuff into each other, using FFmpeg, OpenGL, LaTeX, and Pango

https://nvmexpress.org/wp-content/uploads/September-2020_NVM... in ZNS #zoned-storage a zone must be a power-of-2 number of LBAs, unlike in ZAC and ZBC #PDF #toread

https://docs.kernel.org/filesystems/f2fs.html "f2fs" is the #Flash friendly #filesystem for #zoned-storage. “F2FS is a file system exploiting NAND flash memory-based storage devices, which is based on Log-structured File System (#LFS). The design has been focused on addressing the fundamental issues in LFS, which are snowball effect of wandering tree and high cleaning overhead.”

———⁂———

Here's today, ten years ago, so you can see how my bookmarking style has developed:

links from 2015-08-28:

http://www.excamera.com/sphinx/article-j1a-swapforth.html A free-software #Forth operating system running on the J1a open-source CPU running on a Lattice #FPGA thanks to Project #IceStorm’s reverse engineering and the resulting free-software #synthesis and programming toolchain, running on the Lattice iCEstick evaluation board with 8K of RAM. #J1 #hardware

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRVaLUQUmA8&list=PLACB124F79... A 2009 #video lecture series on #mecheng manufacturing processes by “nptelhrd”, Prof. Inderdeep Singh at IIT Roorkee. Some problems with the audio, seems to be a bit clipped. However, the video is entirely a talking head and a bunch of PowerPoint slides, so the only way you would watch this video to learn about powder metallurgy instead of reading a book is if you are dyslexic or have a beard fetish. At least it doesn’t have shitty elevator music.

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/ The USGS gives #pricing information on a variety of mineral #materials, including some historical stuff. #minerals

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/titanium/mc... #Titanium #pricing in the US has gone from US$9.62/kg in 2010 to US$11.20/kg in 2014. Nearby pages use dollars per pound, but the prices per kg show a sharp reduction from its peak of US$17.28 in 2005, but it had a low of US$6.50 in 2003, US$9.70 in 1995, and US$8.26 in 1992–3. This means that the FFC Cambridge Process is not in production yet.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2012/5188/ A #PDF with a bunch of metal #materials #pricing for 1970–2010. Comprehensive, covers nearly all metals and some semimetals. Unfortunately at least some prices use folk units like pounds instead of SI.

http://rebeccasolnit.net/essay/a-rape-a-minute-a-thousand-co... Rebecca Solnit talks a bit about #rape and #intimate-partner-violence. #feminism

https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/08/06/2015-184... The FCC is proposing to outlaw #free-software for wireless firmware.

https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/4732/emulate-an... Programmers competing to do Intel 8086 (subset) #emulation in different languages, including a C program in 348 lines.

———⁂———

Perhaps surprisingly, of those 8 links from ten years ago, only one has really linkrotted; unsurprisingly it's Solnit's essay. But it survives in the Archive. The titanum PDF redirects to the general titanium Mineral Commodities Summary page.

Emacs full-text search is surprisingly often effective at finding relevant information. Grep (or M-x occur, its moral equivalent) works even more often. F6 opens the URL in my browser. Emacs C-s can search those 12000 bookmarks faster than I can type.

At some point in the past I wrote a Chrome extension that would show me all the links for a given hashtag with their descriptions (formatted as Markdown), with the hashtags being links to other similar hashtag pages, and also let me bookmark pages from within the browser interface, but I don't know where it is now. It wouldn't work with Manifest v3 anyway.

can we just use markdown and sync with obsidian?