Places is a new feature in Firefox 3

Places -- bookmark tags

Location: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/places.htm
Home page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/firefox.htm
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Keep in mind that this page is trying to hit a moving target (Firefox 3).  If you like something in Firefox 3 it will probably be dropped, and if you hate something in Firefox 3 it will probably stay that way for a long time.  Hopefully early warning will have keywords and folder shown once more in all property context menus.

Places is currently part of Firefox 3 Beta testing, also see my Firefox 3 comments, and modification for Quicklaunch (Windows).

Description (#description)

Places is similar to existing social bookmarking, where you assign a mess of tags to a site and use them in searching for bookmarks similar to how you use Google.  Bookmarks and tags are in an SQLITE database created from the bookmarks.html file and if you're smart you recreate the bookmarks.html file each time you close Firefox.

  1. History
  2. Downloads
  3. Keywords (index)
  4. Tags (index)
  5. All Bookmarks
    • Bookmarks toolbar
    • Bookmarks Menu
    • Unfiled Bookmarks
  Some Google searches
  • places location-bar ui search

Still more documentation needed:

  • Laptop/desktop online/offline usage.
  Terminology (need real terms,
    definitions and examples)
  • keywords
  • tags
  • places
  • Awesome Bar
  • smart bookmarks
  • saved search
  • smart folders
  • smart keywords
  • smart tags
  • filled star and unfilled star
 
Internally bookmarks and history are the same.
Pages in history that are remembered until you delete them == bookmark
Pages in history that expire automatically (default 90 days) == history

Initial Impression (#impression)

My first impression, is the lack of documentation.  Though the concept seems clear enough.

In any case the suppression of keyword implementation on Ctrl+D had been made usable with the "OpenBook" extension in Firefox 2 without having to bring up properties afterwards.  Now 'Keyword' has been discombobulated once more with the fluffy 'Places' at the expense of the really valuable 'Keyword' property, which is really hard to update, and the recent list of where to place bookmark has been removed from create bookmark (Ctrl+D).

Things that need to be shown in properties and when creating a bookmark.

The properties of a Bookmark, whether for
existing bookmarks or for new bookmarks (Ctrl+D)
should always show:

  1. Name:
  2. Location:
  3. Keyword:
  4. Tags:
  5. Description
  6. Create in: (for bookmark folder,
    or Located in: for existing bookmarks)
  7. [?] Show or Not Show in Sidebar

Optional detail display of generated data
in a smaller font:
Visit Date, Visit Count, Added, Last Modified
Visited: 2008-01-12 14:52 (14),
Added: 2008-01-12 09:14, Modified: 2008-01-11 10:45

    The properties of a
History item
should show:
  1. Name
  2. Location
  3. Visit Date,
  4. Visit Count,
Choosing columns to display through the View menu of Places/bookmarks Organizer should remain sticky so that they are there the next time/session as well. ♦

Firefox with all of it's improvements appears to be going downhill due to a bad direction in documentation (documentation for the non-technical).  Instead of clear / complete / concise directions written by anyone in MozillaZine with careful scrutiny seems to going from better to worse starting with a dysfunctional addons.mozilla.org in March, 2007.  A support.mozilla.org in progress from summer and ongoing whose mission is actually to make documentation more readable but it looks like green puke over a comic book style, and now places in FF 3 which may be good but they are suppressing keyword so you really can't do much with either. ♦

And so it really isn't such a surprise that this page may greet some people testing Firefox 3.0b2 (Beta 2), and I'm glad I started testing without seeing that stupid destructive robot page initially. Welcome to Firefox 3 Beta 2.  What in the world were they thinking, the more I see of Places it certainly look more and more like self-destruction. 

Things that need to be improved by Mozilla and need for documentation at MozillaZine.
  1. Ctrl+D must include keyword and description as will as the tags that was added, and must also include the folder that it is to be added to.
  2. Documentation of bookmark features, including about:config items involved.
  3. Columns chosen in Bookmarks/History ("Places Organizer"), need to be preserved for later sessions.
  4. Put the Home page button back to it's historic location, it certainly does not belong on my personal bookmarks which are folders.
  5. Minefield.  Can't customize toolbars, will try to once more recreate localstore.rdf but think it is not the problem but toolbars code was changed so will try it once more. (This problem just started with 3.0b4pre 2008020604, which was my second nightly build)

Things that seem actually good in Places

  1. JavaScript is now whitelisted instead of simply same setting for all sites.

What happened to ...   (#huh)

What happened to "Organize Bookmarks"   (#organize)

Should be obvious that wording "Organize Bookmarks..." is replaced by "Show All Bookmarks..." in the Bookmarks menu.

The shock will probably be that "Bookmarks Manager"  that comes up has been replaced by "Places Organizer" (this is a Beta and that could change to something like "Bookmarks Organizer" or back to "Bookmarks Manager"), but you should notice that it now contains History, Bookmarks, and All Bookmarks.

and that All Bookmarks is now broken down into
Bookmarks Toolbar, Bookmarks Menu (with bookmarks in folders), and Unfiled Bookmarks (from places)

You will encounter Places if you do a quick bookmark with the hollow star at the within the right side of the location bar which then becomes a gold star upon being bookmarked, or using bookmarks, Bookmark this Page (Ctrl+D).

You will notice that in their haste to promote Tags: that it is more difficult to create the much more useful Keyword:

Special note for Firefox 3 (#postplaces)

See Lost bookmarks and Bug: 381216 – prevent bookmarks dataloss when a user goes from Firefox 2, Firefox 3 beta, Firefox 2, and then back to Firefox 3 But with a new profile, on first exit, you should then see bookmarks-YYYY-MM-DD.html in bookmarkbackups (under your profile), and it should match bookmarks.html (if overwrite pref is true) or bookmarks.postplaces.html (if overwrite pref is false).

The Places Interface is Not Useful (#interface)

The Grinch that stole bookmarks folders and keyword functionality.
Almost back to normal now with the updating for Fx3 of the "OpenBook" extension.

Summary:  Places is not an improvement but a regression of commonly used features such as bookmark folders, and keywords. ; While Places could have been integrated into full properties entries, and disclosures while bookmarking and reviewing it was not and simply because it is missing that very simple to use interface places fails in it's primary mission of adding functionality to bookmarks.

My use of keywords does not conflict with tags in any manner because all of my keyword shortcuts include a colon (":"), and I never invoke a sort by default from the location bar (keyword.enabled user set boolean false).

  1. Bookmarks dropdown menu missing Smart Bookmarks, Places, etc - MozillaZine Forums
  2. Users can't bookmark a page in one go to the bookmark folder of choice.
  3. In fact Ctrl+D is ambiguous from a page.
  4. From a bookmarks bar folder, context menu failures
    1. "Copy" and "Paste" do not work -- Appear that they do work delayed and seems somehow different.
    2. "Sort by Name" does nothing -- You actually have to select a folder to use the "Sort by Name" context menu.
    3. "Add Bookmark" always fails, the [Add] button should activate as soon as the location is filled in, sometimes it does, sometimes not, even if it does and you create the bookmark, you find it really never got created. -- Actually if you select a folder the bookmark gets created at the same level as the folder.
  5. From bookmarks (Ctrl+B)
    1. Can't create a bookmark because "Add" button won't activate.
    2. One of the few places you can see "Keyword:' but it won't let you add the bookmark.
    3. This time it worked created a bookmark with a keyword, but
    4. "Sort Bookmarks" in context menu failed -- OKAY, got it, must select the folder not from a bookmark, and will not sort subdirectories.  I do have the "Bookmarks Sorting" addon and it is in compatibility mode. Appears to be ignored though because have sort folders first, and recursively, but neither of those are in effect.
  6. Starred Bookmarks
    1. Can't tell what folder location it will add/delete the bookmark.
    2. Can't really tell if you added/deleted a bookmark.
    3. If you can't tell where bookmarked/unbookmarked how can you undo, or restore what you had if you don't know what you had.
  7. Users can't add a keyword when bookmarking (Ctrl+D) -- Must be done from Bookmarks menu, or Places.
  8. Since it is so easy to put a bookmark into "Unfiled Bookmarks" a facility to change them to the folder of choice is needed -- the old bookmark this page (as improved with now incompatible "OpenBook" extension.
  9. The sort of Name in Places Organizer should have ascending name, ascending with folders first, and for the upside down people descending name, descending with folders above/below.
    In order to rearrange your personal bookmarks so that it is basically folders first.
    1. Bookmarks, Show All Bookmarks, All Bookmarks, Bookmarks Toolbar (right-click then Sort by Name)
    2. With Ctrl key select each non folder that is to be moved, then as a group drag them all to the end of the Bookmarks Toolbar directory list.
    3. Right click on the last folder name, the use "New Separator" which will add a separator after that folder and sort will then subsequent sorting will be sorting each group separately.
    The crappy "Places" and "Smart Bookmarks" folders with their long names can be placed into new folder on the bookmarks toolbar at the beginning named GC (Garbage Collector) then in properties change the name to "***".  Also included my link to Cheatsheet which must be marked as "Open in sidebar" in the bookmarks properties (if you remember keyword does not work for this in Fx3).
    To move a bookmark into a bookmark folder, you will probably ahve to use CUT (Ctrl+X) to cut the bookmark, and then select the folder and then PASTE (Ctrl+V) into the folder. (Can't get much more complicated than that -- can it).
  10. If you use search in "Places Organizer" in 3.0b2, formerly "Organize Bookmarks" in 2.0.0.*, you can't find the containing folder of the bookmark, not even in Fx2, but in Fx2 there was an extension "Locate in Bookmarks" which should have been in Firefox, and now with the changes of bookmarks really has to be in Firefox.
  11. This starred bookmark thing and tag thing has also destroyed Ctrl+D for which there were some very necessary improvements made with the "OpenBook" extension.  Version 3.0b2 not only fails to incorporate needed features it removed many features in particular making it difficult to assign a keyword shortcut. 
Folder option is definitely a big problem there seem to be so
many big problems with this starred bookmark thing.

Click on an unfilled star  (create a bookmark)
   you get a bookmark (you get a gold star, no information)
   you should get:  Name:, URL:, Keyword:, Tags, Description:, Folder (see below)
         with    OK / Cancel

Click on a filled star item (bookmark exists)
  you get  Name:, Folder:, Tags:
         with    Delete / Done
  you should get:  Name:, URL:, Keyword:, Tags, Description:, Folder
        with     OK / Cancel
        what exactly does delete mean anyway, what if I have 5 bookmarks
          all pointing to the same url.
          and what if I change the folder of the one I'm looking at and then delete
        missing  new folder option 
             and there is also the lack of changing to one of the recent folders
             both of these have been the available in version 2.
  1. 3.0b5, no problems solved, add more bad toolbars stuff, Back/Forward green arrows replaced by hard to see distinguish white on blue buttons that look like scrollers.
  2. 3.0b5, home button now even worse it has a blue roof, window, and door, hard to distinguish. (no I do not, will not, use large buttons, which would only aggrevate the problems.)

Summary of 3.0b5 as on March 23, 2008 (#summary)

Firefox 3 problems  (3.0b5pre)

These extensions wipe out use of  shortcut Ctrl+D (Bookmark page)
   McAfee SiteAdvisor, Search Cache, Split Browser.  

Toolbar icons suck,  were much better looking like Firefox than the OS.
   Back/Forward  as white scrollers in has made small icons usage humongous,
      Give us back the smaller same sized green arrow pair that fit on toolbar 
      and is easier to see       without make crap look even crappier.
   The red (with white x) close button for closing tab (option to be at right of bar) is
      now practically invisible  black cross on curved metallic silver button.  Same
      for close on the  Find.
   The home icon with bluish sides and blue roof doesn't look much like a house.,
      not like the old oblique drawing.
   Tool bars look like shiny metal, makes reading wording difficult.
   Rounded corners and rounded shapes waste space on toolbars

The "Restart" within addons was okay while it lasted, now you have
   to   install, enable or disable an extension.  (Quick Restart extension is nicer)

Still have no way of working with the following in bookmarking a page
without lots of extra steps caused by  "quick bookmarks"  (star bookmarks).
   keyword shortcut,   description,  create a bookmark folder,  
   can't delete a bookmark from star, if accidentally created through star
   loss of any bookmark by changing folder is probably still likely with star

Bookmarking is a mess, and without the "OpenBook"  extension to fix the
   mess, if it can undo the whole star bookmarks that would be fine, as it is practically 
   impossible to work with bookmarks in Fx3 without
   a lot of extra steps, for something that purports to make bookmarking easier.

The structure of the bookmark folders has been tampered with
   Personal bookmarks separated, whole mess of new folders/bookmarks
   added to the personal bookmarks bar, and creating "unfiled bookmarks",  
   "smart bookmarks" are so many definitions because it never was defined.
   It's bearable but seems like it has been designed because Firefox did not
   adopt a decent sort bookmarks that would not sort personal bookmarks
   when sorting all other bookmarks so created new folders and placements.

Minor problem:
   Clicking on Favicon has changed, and can make dragging the icon to the
   tabs bar difficult as "This site does not supply identity information"
   can cover tabs bar on a narrow window.  Modifies behavior that was
   equivalent to Ctrl+A on the location bar, but  two single clicks will work.
   Could have been done with context menu on the favicon if tools menu
   properties or page info,  is not good enough.
 
This one just started   use of  Ctrl+C  does not work when Firefox 
   is first started until I've used it in Notepad then it works fine in Firefox.

Windows Vista Home Basic,     Minefield (non logoed Firefox 3.0b5pre)
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9b5pre) Gecko/2008032304 Minefield/3.0b5pre

(#switching)

Creating a Keyword shortcut in Firefox 3  (#keyword)

Creating a keyword shortcut on Firefox 3 is a lot more complicated than it was in Firefox 2 which had only keywords.  Firefox 3 has hidden use of keywords and folders when creating bookmarks, trying to force you into inefficient use of tagging with tags, which makes me not very happy regardless of whether this is temporary or permanent.

You can see properties list with keyword, if you right click on bookmark in bookmarks sidebar (Ctrl+B), or with rightclick on a bookmark entry on the right side of the "Show All Bookmarks" listings.

Bookmarks (menu) then either "Organize Bookmarks" or "Show All Bookmarks" or anything else that item might be changed to leading to final Firefox 3.  On the bookmarks side bar select the folder you want your bookmark to appear in, all of my keyword shortcuts are in one folder "K" in my "personal bookmarks". 
Then select a bookmark within the folder, right click, choose, create bookmark, then you will see the properties menu with keyword (the old stuff) in it, and very curiously missing new tags entry.. 

        Name:       eb:   Ebay.com
        Location:   http://www.ebay.com  (you can start somewhere else, if you like)
        keyword:    eb:                  (I am suggesting it include a  colon    eb:, eb1:, eb:1)
        Description:
To use enter eb: on the location bar and hit enter.

Tagging   (#tagging)

The tagging freature added nothing to Firefox 3, because it doesn't work, no built yet, and keyword remains broken as in OpenBook and configuration variable.

Bug 405425 – Renaming tag not reflected until restart
Bug 407540 – Tags checked when they are created for a different bookmark
Bug 409892 – copying a tag into another tag folder or tagging a tag should have dynamic behaviour
Bug 411088 – when deleting a tagged bookmark from the places organizer, the tag remains

Can't create a Bookmark, such as for a PDF file   (#nocreate)

I do not use a plug-in for PDF files, and wanted to create a bookmark for a file http://mithras.itworld.com/download/book_chapters_and_wps/sitepoint/firefox_secrets.pdf -- so since Ctrl+D is bollixed by crippled dropdown in Places (starred bookmarks), went to bookmarks, Show All Bookmarks, selected the folder, and tried to create the bookmark, which appeared to work, but it is not available and does not show up in a search. I was actually going to give it some tags, but this is the only place that you can enter a keyword and it does not also include tags.  So it appears that I cannot create a bookmarks except through places and it appears to only allow you to bookmark a file that is open and on the location bar. GOTCHA. (will check later to see if this had anything to do with bug: Bug 78414 – Application shortcut keys (keyboard commands such as f11, ctrl+t, ctrl+r) fail to operate when plug-in (flash, acrobat, quicktime) has focus)
(also see may have to amend a reply or two in newsgroup).

Comparison of Bookmarks FF2 and Places FF3   (#comparison)

Firefox 2 usage for comparison: Bookmark Properties in Firefox 2 (for information), and a heavily annotated picture of add bookmarks dialog (with OpenBook extension) usage in Firefox 2.  Even Opera has direct entry of description and keyword (Nickname in Opera) [picture], but Opera does not have the substitutions (%s) that Firefox has, see Using keyword searches (KB), and Keyword shortcuts (onsite).

compare detail pane, properties window, popup overlay and see
(info) Bug 387749 - add an item detail pane to the organizer
(info) Bug 408413 - bookmark keyword not saved when using ctrl-D add bookmark menu
(new) bug to be placed by Mike Belzer 2008-02-22

compare with the dysfunctional Places dialog in Firefox 3.0b2 (below), and a picture of what I saw twice on the right which has everything.  It would seem to be related to http://kb.mozillazine.org/Live_Bookmarks_-_Firefox#How_to_add_a_Live_Bookmark


  Some pictures of modified Firefox toolbars, and degeneration of Home, Back/Forward buttons.

I have caught a glimpse of the dialog at the right in Firefox 3.0b2 which
includes everything I want to see when creating a bookmark, but don't
know how I got it to appear, but did capture it the second time I saw it.

 

with "OpenBook" extension, have access once more to the Keyword and Description in Fx3 places using Ctrl+D, still missing "Load this bookmark in the sidebar"

Mystery Ctrl+D giving full dialog (#mystery)

Hit ctrl+D once and got a full dialog as seen in + the tags addition with another dropdown. Could not get it to happen again. Stupidly switched to another page to see if it went away, and the answer is yes so it definitely will not be working like 2.0 -- it is imperative that the dialog stay up so you can obtain bits and pieces to add into it. At the time it came up, I had just been using chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksPanel.xul which brings up the bookmarks ("Show All Bookmarks"). produce the old bookmarks dialog

Without the OpenBook extension (#withoutopenbook)

Without the "OpenBook" extension:  In order to get to Properties in Firefox 3, you have to jump through hoops:  starting with trying to locate the bookmark itself, and be very careful in using the star within the location your are as likely to lose your bookmark as to create or display information. 

First find your bookmark is "Show all Bookmarks" (bookmarks menu), then use the bookmarks search, once found right click to bring up properties which does not show tags, or use the flat bookmarks editor at the bottom of the search, and move borders around so you can see the information.

With the "OpenBook" extension you have almost fully functional bookmark panel, which is missing "Load in Sidepanel" option, and of course you must have the extension and it must be active in order to make reasonable use of bookmarks. Without "OpenBook" extension: If you want to cut and paste into the places dropdown you can't because it will disappear and you won't know if you page was bookmarked, deleted bookmark, changed or unchanged. Very much unlike the Add Bookmark ]and properties in Firefox 2 which left a lot to be desired without the "OpenBook" extension.

Suggested User Enhancements (#user)

URLBAR - FIX awesomebar (URL bar autocomplete list) (#awesomebar)

The awesomebar is the location dropdown that finds bookmark, and history items that match what you've typed so far in the location bar (url bar).  In FF 3.0b2 each item is two rows plus a separator and makes it difficult to see much on one window.  (was much better in version 2 spacewise and by appearance)

less_awesome

Bug 392143 – show keywords as url bar autocomplete choices (comment #64), also provides a way of choosing which keyword bookmark you really want if you have duplicates and they go to different urls.

Look for symbols on awesome bar such as magnifying glass, key, star (bookmark)

The following addition for userChrome.css includes later enhancements made in the same thread that does not interfere with Tools, Addons list (be sure to verify that it remains valid).  I like this one because link in FF 2 each item is on one row instead of three, and you can hover the cursor on the url portion or the title portion of those that ARE too long to display.  You may find enhancements later that you like better in the same thread.  Included in my userChrome.css

/* FF3 URL-dropdown, Lars-Erik Østerud, 2007-12-21, revert awesomebar to Ff2,  
 http://google.com/groups?threadm=b6qdnYdC8JgZiPHanZ2dnUVZ_u-unZ2d@mozilla.org 
 to see tooltips may need  browser.chrome.toolbar_tips True (default) -- */
.autocomplete-richlistitem spacer,.autocomplete-richlistitem
  label{display:none!important}
.ac-title{margin:-4px 8px 2px -4px!important}
.ac-url{margin:-6px 0px 0px 20px!important}

less_awesome

You can test the limits by pasting this string into a Google search and then checking the location bar dropdown, the expansion is not limited to url bar size, nor window width and will be folded at full width of the screen:  (Firefox 3 changes newline characters to space for searchbar entry)

one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three twenty-four twenty-five
Browser.urlbar.richResults, True: Display the dropdown of the Location Bar as a richlistbox widget. (Default), False: Use the standard dropdown widget for the Location Bar. Mine is set to False, and I see no difference either way

Or if you want green URL on top, and blue titles on below, space waster (Foteos Macrides, 2007-12-23) [screenshot,] 

Or if you want green URL on left, and blue titles on right
(Foteos  Macrides, 2007-12-24) [screenshot] 

/* Compact horizontal urlbar dropdown via oldbar add-on 
   -- Foteos Macrides  2007-12-23*/
#PopupAutoComplete>.autocomplete-tree{color:green!important;}
.autocomplete-treebody::-moz-tree-cell-text(treecolAutoCompleteComment)
  {color:#4488cc!important}
.autocomplete-treebody::-moz-tree-cell-text(selected)
  {color:white!important}
treechildren.autocomplete-treebody::-moz-tree-row(selected)
  {background-color:#66aaee!important} 



about:config  for maxrich    (#maxrich)

Check these out in about:config -- browser.urlbar.maxRichResults   and browser.urlbar.richResults


Tracking Bug   (#trackingbug)


https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=409892


Bug 364745 – Extension tracking for Firefox 3


paren tips

Bug 223735 – _search does not work as a target when using window.open, so can't use 
cheatsheet in sidebar.

 


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411817 411818 411819 411820 411821 411822 411824 411829 411830 411975 411986 411998


Developer's documentation  (#developers)


Just in case anyone is wondering what it takes to follow the developer's documentation mock-ups this is what I see (certainly could not do this 6 months ago, well I wouldn't have even been able to install a second version of Firefox then either, not until Sept 2007).  If you really wanted to 
look at a mock-up of some of places could be made to appear see 2007-12-20 the 
following is what you would have to be able to do:

Looking at  the 
  Documentation for tracking bug: 393508 – Mockup: Location Bar Autocomplete, one of the screen-shots is 
  http://people.mozilla.com/~faaborg/files/granParadisoUI/places_UnifyingSearch_i1.png

Bet you wished you'd had imput for bookmark tracking bug -- 
Bug 393509 – Mockup: Bookmark Contextual Dialog before it was too late.

  
A   20 inch auxiliary monitor set at 1680 x 1050  not easy to read other 
stuff with, or a spanking new laptop set at  1280 x 800 sort of works but I wouldn't use either
to do anything else at those settings.    So anyway they are five full size screen shots
or upper portions of such  like for 1024 x 768 (I  guess)  with information shown to 
left and right side of the screen shots -- actually the whole page is a  1/2 MB  image.  Glad I'm able to see that now thanks to Windows Vista and a new laptop.


Testing   (#testing)