Test driving Firefox 3 [LWN.net]

Test driving Firefox 3

Posted Jun 21, 2007 4:06 UTC (Thu) by ssavitzky (subscriber, #2855)
Parent article: Test driving Firefox 3

I really hope there's a way to go back to a plain-text bookmark file. The last thing I need is to have my bookmarks in some easily-corrupted binary file. Also, I use the fact that the bookmarks are readable as HTML -- it means I can keep separate bookmark files on different machines, but still swap them around and refer to them.

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Python scripting?

Posted Jun 21, 2007 7:38 UTC (Thu) by AnswerGuy (subscriber, #1256) [Link]

I presume you could easily whip up a suite a Python SQLite utilities for
dumping, merging, and manipulated your bookmarks files in various ways.

(First such util would dump the whole mess an HTML/XML file ... or tab or CSV delimited, etc; and would be able to import back an modified version (merging or just blindly adding).

JimD

Python scripting?

Posted Jun 21, 2007 12:52 UTC (Thu) by Sho (guest, #8956) [Link]

> (First such util would dump the whole mess an HTML/XML file ... or tab or CSV delimited, etc; and would be able to import back an modified version (merging or just blindly adding).

The right format here would be XBEL, which most other open source browsers are already using as storage or exchange format for bookmarks: http://pyxml.sourceforge.net/topics/xbel/

Python scripting?

Posted Jun 22, 2007 2:28 UTC (Fri) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link]

Given their aim (storing both history and bookmarks in a single data store that can be easily searched), you are talking about a lot of information here.

With XBEL, you'd end up having to parse the XML and either store it in memory for searching/display or writing it back out to disk in a form that can be searched quickly. And if you aren't going to be using the XBEL data most of the time, why not make the more efficient form the master and keep XBEL for exchange?

Test driving Firefox 3

Posted Jun 21, 2007 11:06 UTC (Thu) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link]

SQLite doesn't seem to be that prone to corruption (especially if you compare it to Berkeley DB).

But look on the bright side. They could have used mork.

Test driving Firefox 3

Posted Jun 21, 2007 15:07 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

I've heard that it keeps bookmarks.html up to date with the contents of the database, although I haven't tested it myself.

Test driving Firefox 3

Posted Jun 22, 2007 3:15 UTC (Fri) by ssavitzky (subscriber, #2855) [Link]

That would be good. Database for searching while the program is running, file for organizing folders and static storage. Not sure I believe it, though.

Test driving Firefox 3

Posted Jun 22, 2007 3:42 UTC (Fri) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

Oh, it actually uses the database for storage, but provides bookmarks.html in case you want it for something or, I guess, if the database gets messed up.