Tuesday 15 December 2009

Bookmarks - They are a bit pants.


This Thursday I intend to strike the first blow against the Grammar W*nker. For this historic occasion I required some sound effects.

There is an excellent resource for Creative Commons licensed sound effects called Freesound. 
I can never remember the name of this site and as such, I have it marked in my bookmarks and this is where the problem lies.

Opening up the bookmark menu, I have a few folders at the top - fodder left over from previous attempts to organise bookmarks logically. There is one folder called film and nope, the bookmark is not there.  I then have a massive long list of unsorted bookmarks e.g.. 

Famous Curves Index 
Diliettante
Untitled document

Finally after scrolling down and clicking on a few similar named sites I get to where I want to be.  At this point, I think it would be fair to argue that surely this is my lack of organising my bookmarks in the first place, and I am always one of the first to shout out a bad workmen blames his tools. In this case, I feel the mechanism is all wrong and what is the computer there for if not to make life easier.

Looking through my bookmarks in more detail, the vast majority of bookmarks I have are for 'one off references'. They are for things like the above famous curve index(I hate to disappoint you - its  geometry related) which I marked for inclusion in a post I wrote on drawing skeletons

They stay in the bookmark menu because its six steps to remove them* and most likely I will be referring to the content within them from another application such as Pages or Word.

There are then another chunk of bookmarks where I have been looking for things such as suppliers - sometimes quite specialised such as I have a long list of Roman Armour suppliers. These are lists, which why I don't use that often, I do like to have them easy accessible.

I am also an Archaeology student and have a plethora of archaeology and history related sites, some of which I need for the duration, others to serve the purpose of a paper - which really reminds me I need to get on finish my latest paper about Otzi the iceman and his tatoos

Next up I have a big mix and match of things which people have emailed me or I have come across which seemed funny, articles I will one day get around to reading and addresses and maps for places I have once been.

Finally the bookmarks which I use daily such as twitter, facebook etc. These all exist on the toolbar.

I know there are tags you can add to bookmarks , but this is cumbersome and retrieving tagged bookmarks is not efficient. I know you can also add folders when adding a bookmark - but as mentioned earlier I think the mechanism is all wrong.

How does this sound ?

Firstly when I open my browser I want to state why I am on the web (will do a future post of my thoughts on this, a profile if you like)  If I am catching up with friends etc , then I am pretty much going to be diving straight into facebook and twitter and my email.  If however, I am going on line to research for an archaeology paper I am most likely going to be starting off with the bookmarks I have, wikipedia if I have to and I don't want my search results to include shopping sites or amusing you tube videos to be distracted by.

The interface should change to reflect this, I am not talking dramatically and it should be easy to switch back and fourth between profiles(one click).  What this does mean that say I am in my archaeology profile, anything I bookmark now will be marked as such and pages I have already marked would automatically be at the top of the menu - sorted by frequency.

On a mouse over of the item in the menu, a quick preview would appear if i need to refresh my memory.

Say I was researching for something specific , such as in the case of the aforementioned Otzi the Iceman. What I would do then is the following (this would also work If I was looking to make a list of suppliers or wanting to collect some recipes)

From the bookmark Menu I would click 'Add Topic' and type in the word "Otzi".A big X button would appear on my screen and until I click that big X, everything I bookmark will be marked Archeology - Oetzi

On top of this, Say I am only after a reference I could right click on the screen, select 'Booknote' which would then allow me to draw a red circle around the part I wanted on screen. This would save a screenshot, link, section of the page  and display all such snippets on a single scrollable page accessed from the bookmark topic menu. Each snippet would have a big red cross on it so it could be deleted easily ( a history of deleted snippets just in case)

As a Buffer , say I came across a fantastic tutorial on photography whilst in my archeological profile and I don't want to move focus from my reasearch, I could right click and choose "Bookmark under another profile" and this would save that site under the top level for my photography profile.

That's my two pence













*I'm refering to Mozzilla Browser

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