Who uses bookmarks anyway?
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Absolutely, actually I have to admit that Opera's study is flawed when they think people do not use bookmarks anymore.
For me it was exactly the opposite. When I first started decades ago using the Internet I never used bookmarks. Then I started to use some, but it was a mess. Then I switched browsers, started with bookmarks again. The reason why some people don't use bookmarks anymore in some browsers is not because they don't like bookmarks. No! Its because bookmarks management sucks in those new browsers. No nested folders, and no way to organize them correctly when you have a lot of them.
Does that mean users don't want bookmarks anymore? No, they moved to things which can manage bookmarks better. We all know services like Xmarks and how popular they are, there are so many bookmarks services and plugins, and all of them see to have some success. So yes, people do use bookmarks, but because some of these services provide better management vs standard browsers they moved to those services. Actually things like Read it Later or Pocket are nothing more than glorified bookmarks. In the past people send temporary websites they wished to read later to their bookmarks.
I find it very sad that browsers started to offer such horrible features to manage information. The logical way where bookmarks should be and have to be is of course in your browser, a click away, not in some remote service or another software. Bookmarks in a browser make sense.
Google is partially to blame for this. They offered awful bookmark features with Chrome but we know why. They want google.com to be the place where people find websites, not bookmarks. Its their intention to bring users to their search services, not let them manage data on their own browsers. It would not surprise me if Google removed that feature all together as they want everything to live in their cloud. (read here their cloud, not the clouds).
So, yes, absolutely. People still use bookmarks. I use the speedial for those things that I need to access every single day or several times every hour. Consider speedial like the most important bookmarks you need to access. This are very visible and big so you can almost click them while sleeping.
But then I have several things I need to access which probably cannot even remember. Example are internal websites which are composed by IP's like try to remember http://192.11.358.25/control/url/admin-site-4
Yeah that is right, try to remember 100 like those urls and good luck because you cannot search them on Google either. With a correct bookmark manager, you can put them in folders and organize things into context. Then I can click on a folder and open all of them at once, without having to type or remember anything.
Then there is needs like hobbies, I do gardening, mostly vegetables and there are some very nice websites about all type of plants I want to keep information. I then have them sorted by plant names, and other categories. Some are videos, some are blogs, some are videos, but they are all related to one context.
I think the more people use the Internet and more they have the need to actually use bookmarks, this is why it was a shocker for power users to see them gone in the new Opera. If you are the average dummy guy, all you visit is Facebook and you probably think Google is the Internet, but as with every thing, they grow, and eventually they have bigger needs. Just see how the kids today use iPads and computers, kids are power users of the future. Lets see how this kids use the Internet in 10 years, they are all powers users when they become adults already. And more and more people are using things related to websites, for their daily needs, so more people will need a way to organize all those nice websites they use and visit.
The only thing which I could really use is to have the same data in my phone, on the go, be able to push a link to my browser or from the browser to the phone. I know Vivaldi will probably not have a mobile version anytime if ever at all, but there are great mobile browsers already, example in Android there is Dolphin and they have probably the best sync feature right now. All other browsers sync only to their own mobile version alone so I think this is a great way for Vivaldi to be more open. Maybe you can partner with them or let users actually decide to which mobile browsers they want to sync.
I was using Opera in my phone but lately even the Opera for phones, which always a market leader is completely falling behind, it seems Dolphin is the new Opera in mobile (talking about features and innovation) and Opera Mobile is actually following the same path their desktop version is following. I don't see anymore people using Opera in their phones, they are using Chrome in Android or the stock browser, the reason is Opera is just the same of more, nothing special. In the past Opera Mobile was the best, and I mean it killed every other mobile browser. I remember even back as Windows Mobile Opera was the only one displaying websites better than the rest until the iPhone came of course. Safari was the first thing I saw on phones displaying and rendering full desktop websites and I was shocked you could browse the Internet on such a little device. That was innovation !!!
If someone builds a great browser with great features, it will create a market all by its own. Saying we don't need bookmarks is like saying we don't need a contact list on our phones or we don't need a calendar or agenda. Tons of websites is not something anyone will remember, so we need a way to organize them in some database, and that only places it makes sense is the browser a click a way.
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Safari was the first thing I saw on phones displaying and rendering full desktop websites and I was shocked you could browse the Internet on such a little device. That was innovation !!!
Actually it was Opera on the p800 the first browser to render a desktop version of a website on a proper smarphone.
And was FIVE years before the iphone release.
Those were innovations (both the first real smarphone an the browser).
Then we cannot forget Opera Mini. That was not innovation that was a REVOLUTION, altough the idea itself was not new (some crappy compressed browsers were available on PalmOS before the opera Mini arrival) operamini was the first practical browser usable on almost any phone. Even if underpowered, even if old, even if tiny.
I remember when once my P800 ran out of battery (was 2003 or so) an d I used the Siemens SL55 of my mom to book a train, while traveling in another train, thanks to Operamini
For younger people who haven seen it, the SL55 was a minuscule phone (one of the smallest ever) with a stamp sized display and a GPRS connection.
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That reminds me of my phone the Xperia Mini Pro.
The smallest Android phone in the world.
I actually purchased two of them, since I wanted a phone that was small to carry around.
Since Sony never upgraded it I rooted with Cyanogen, it was terrible laggy and slow with Android 4 but it worked. This phone was so nice in size, credit card size and had a physical keyboard too. Eventually I had to buy a new phone because it came with terrible small space and I was not able to install anything on it, the phone hardware was also very weak. I actually like my big screen now, its comfortable but somehow your picture made me miss that small phone.
Sadly, today there are no small phones anymore. I purchased the smallest I could find but still powerful, which is the Xperia Z Compact and its not that small either.
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That reminds me of my phone the Xperia Mini Pro.
The smallest Android phone in the world.
I actually purchased two of them, since I wanted a phone that was small to carry around.
Well, while I believe the photo I linked doesn't tell all the truth about how small was the SL55 (see the image in scale), I agree with you the Xperia MINI Pro was (and still is) an amazing smartphone, I sold it just because someone paid me for that phone more than the double of what I paid it
Since Sony never upgraded it I rooted with Cyanogen, it was terrible laggy and slow with Android 4, Cyanogen was the best choice for that "small" phone but you must use the 7.2 version. The Gingerbread based one.
Fast, light, customizzable and free of the post-gingerbread idiocies, with small additions, like the Stock sonyericsson keyboard, the phone was just perfect.
Sadly, today there are no small phones anymore. I purchased the smallest I could find but still powerful, which is the Xperia Z Compact and its not that small either.
ATM I'm using a Droid 4 and his younger and updated brother Photon Q, although the latter has a way crisper screen, more features, more CPU power and so on, I consider its 4.3" display not as small as I wish, the 4 inch sized one from Droid 4 is way better.
Anything bigger is not for me. Because of this and because the incredible keyboard of both of them, I bought two of each, like you did with the Xperia.
I can't see nothing better now and in the foreseeable future.
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Using Bookmarks and Speed Dial.
Is the poll closed? I can't seem to find how to vote…
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The question is who doesn't use them? Personally I have a few thousands of bookmarks, I use speed dial too, plus pocket for temporary things. Can not imagine a browser without them.
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Both, Speeddial and Dropdown it organizes thing better. If I had to give up one it would be speedial with good bookmarks as 12.16 Opera had you really don't need it.
I think LOTS do, just as directory file structure it organizes things better. Just these idiot punk kids that don't know anything just punch buttons ( like my smartphone is going to REPLACE my desktop) and haven't used them.
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I am the most intense user of bookmarks on the internet. I have a precisely designed directory structure for them that often goes four directories deep. I also make huge use of the Speed Dial, and currently have mine set up in three major divisions - Entertainment, Applications, and Social Networks.
So yes. VERY YES.
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So, let's see. How many unique web page URLs already exist and/or no longer exist? Trillions??? Quadrillions??? More???
I have no idea. But I have thousands of bookmarks (and if I could ever get all of my bookmarks from many browsers on old machines no longer in use, I'm sure I would have in the tens of thousands). And yet that is but a thimble or cup full in the ocean of URLs.
So do use/need bookmarks? H3ll yes!!! If I find any page (a drop in the ocean) to which I have any thought that I even might want to return, I want to be able to bookmark it! For probably half of my bookmarks I would never find the site again without the bookmarks (or else spend an exorbitant and unacceptable amount of time trying to re-find them). And maybe half of those I would't even recall that the site existed without the bookmarks.
Then there are the bookmarks to sites that have moved or are now defunct. But with my bookmarks, I at least have an old URL to enter the the Wayback Machine and can usually find an archived copy of what I'm looking for.
And unlike some users' remarks here, I can't possibly keep up with organizing all those bookmarks. But Olde Opera's ability to filter the bookmarks view from the Find textbox basically does away with the need to organize them. (Of course, I make some organizational efforts for the most important ones, but anything beyond that is hopeless.)
It looks like Vivaldi intends a similar Find functionality, but so far (IME) it is pretty sluggish and erratic with just a few dozen bookmarks. Like many other features, I imagine the developers will eventually improve that.
So do I use/need bookmarks? Absolutely!!! And I need a simple, effective way to organize and edit them (even though I can't keep up with that as much as I'd like), and a simple way to back them up.
Now, not that I'm looking to Vivaldi for this, but on my wishlist would be a "universal" cross-browser bookmarks synchronizer and manager with easy manual 2-way control over which bookmarks to keep/delete/modify. It could be in the cloud, but it needs to easily allow keeping a local copy of the bookmarks on each machine. The sync cannot be automatic (like Olde Opera's sync was), because I don't trust, and frankly don't understand, how any software can automatically determine which bookmarks I want to keep/delete/modify when resolving discrepancies between 2 or more individual instances of the bookmarks DB. (Numerous were the complaints in the MyOpera forums of unwanted bookmark changes or even complete bookmarks DB deletions.)
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Hear, hear! People who do research over time and need to organize results into taxonomies (i.e., outlines) and to cross-reference bookmarks and bookmark folders. Alternatives, e.g., evernote, are a poor fit for many reasons (not lightweight enough; data mining issues; cost).
I understand that Opera deprecated bookmarks because supposedly a small percentage of users use them. Generational differences aside, I'd guesstimate that at least 100 million people - from boomers to millennials - are knowledge workers who would benefit from a robust Opera 12.17 style bookmark feature. If 10% bought a $20 version of Vivaldi w/ robust, private, permanent bookmarking that would be $200 million! More than enough to subsidize Vivaldi
Please see my posts at "Why not subsidize Vivaldi browser w/ Standalone Pro BkMrk. Mgr.?" and "Thank YOU! Now if you could catch us up to Opera 12 :)". Viva los bookmarkos!!
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I never really used bookmarks and I really think the hierarchy of folders is a painful manual rigid archiving method: if i need to save a link, I'd rather push a button somewhere and TAG it with some meaningful words, then Vivaldi, the browser, AND NOT ME, ought to remember it, store it and manage it.
Vivaldi should just show me a search field and the list of the TAG I defined.
Why are we using machines, if we continue to do things (that is: creating rigid folder hierarchies) manually?
(did you notice that you can go to the library and just ask for: "Hemingway, The old man and the sea" instead of saying "Please bring me the book which is on the third shelf, in the second row, of the third floor, after the fourth volume, starting from the right"?
Hopefully your winking emoticon indicates that you are not seriously suggesting that tagging is a sufficient alternative to a hierarchical DBMS, which is what Opera 12.17's nestable folder bookmarking system is.
Although less powerful (queryable) than a relational datastore, Opera's resortable hierarchical data store is more approachable system than an RDBMS system that would require users to craft SQL queries to find bookstores.
That said, Opera's ability to find a sequential characters in strings (i.e., folder and bookmark names and nicknames and description fields) would be nicely augmented with the ability to use wildcard search for non-sequential strings. That would REALLY support tagging well; but it would require the devs to add recursive or regex evaluations and thus would be more complex and hit performance.
On the other hand, if you were seriously suggesting that all of us dozens of people responding to this post who have, collectively, meticulously crafted, cross-referenced and refined tens of thousands of folders and sub-folders to form taxonomic subject outlines, procedural steps, project management timelines, time series, ordinality, or god knows what other types of data structures and attributes to store and cross-reference, collectively millions of bookmarks, please believe me that:
- This "painful manual rigid archiving method" has served us well!
- We DO know what tagging is!
- We DO use tagging in numerous creative ways to enhance bookmarking, i.e., as an aid to the rapid filtering of thousands of folders and bookmarks down to a handful of relevant items with entry of just a few (4-10) characters in the bookmark search bar!
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DBMS, queryable, relational datastore, resortable hierarchical data store, RDBMS, SQL,recursive, regex evaluations
I'm not that technical.
I only wished that Vivaldi could grant me (on a few dozen of links that I am sure that actually exist into my browser) the kind service that Google offers me on billions of internet pages (that could even not exist all around the world): finding the right internet page with a query of one or two words, only, in milliseconds.
I'm not that technical, but is it really that complicated?It could just be implemented into the CTRL+Q menu: THAT would be an innovation.
newscpq
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I only wished that Vivaldi could grant me (on a few dozen of links that I am sure that actually exist into my browser) the kind service that Google offers me on billions of internet pages (that could even not exist all around the world): finding the right internet page with a query of one or two words, only, in milliseconds.
I'm not that technical, but is it really that complicated?My huge bookmark collection would be way more useful, if Opera had saved a MHTML copy of each page and build a search index based the contents. The indexing&search technology is already there with M2! And I would never experience a bookmark to a dead page again. I regularly go through my bookmarks and replace them with links to the Internet Wayback Machine (archive.org), to make them working again.
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I don't use book marks. But do find the speed dial feature quite handy for short term URL remembering.
Am I the only one who uses a web page for frequently visited sites? A simple webpage is easy and can be built anyway you want. -
I use bookmarks, and I have been happily doing it for 2 decades now, that's why I 've stayed for years with Opera in the first place . Because I am lazy I occasionally use speed dial too, but I only have 5-6 generic links there. I'd like to see a new bookmark system that is focused on desktop computer use. Give us both hierarchical and tagging capability, ability to colour them and put comments, keep history for each one, selectively online sync/share to owncloud, offer offline recommendations, etc. With the cpu power, memory size and storage performance available nowdays there is little excuse to go for less.
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I use bookmarks constantly. In Oxxxa (12.x), for example, I have more than 1,000 bookmarks. Open the bookmark manager there, type a keyword in, Bob's your uncle. Organizing bookmarks (date accessed, A-Z, Z-A, any number of other typical sortings available in most computer apps for years) should be a snap. . . just as it used to be in Oxxxa (12.x). Not quite there for ease of sorting in Vivaldi, but the search function ("filter") almost makes up for that. Much, much, MUCH more usable than the new "Chopera". In fact, the lack of any useful bookmark feature (and really, really messed up importing of old bookmarks. . . sort of) in "Chopera" as opposed to the very nearly as useful as I'm used to implementation in Vivaldi has me teetering on the brink of making Vivaldi my new default browser.
Very Good on you.
I hope that as the browser matures, you continue to pay at least some attention to regaining pieces of bookmark functionality still missing. Oh, I've tried a few Chrome extensions to improve sorting, etc., but nothing–so far--has rung my bell. Still, having my collection of bookmarks in an even mostly-usable format is a BIG DEAL, and I thank you.
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Bookmarks only and I didn't vote, speedials take too much room, aren't easily sortable and have to be loaded. Sometimes things just get to gimmicky…KISS is the game.
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