How to get Mozilla/Firefox to restore the old bookmarks properties data field?
I am really really angry at what Firefox has done to the bookmarks. Until recently, there was a big field where I could store important data related to a bookmarked website. In their lack of wisdom and user-understanding, they removed that all important box. Thanks a lot. Now I've lost all sorts of of important, hard to recover, website-related data. Some of it was unique usernames and logins. I know know I am gonna be chastised for storing that kind of data there, but that's my choice. I suppose it's part of the misguided quest to over-dumbdown the user experience. Actually, I sorta like Firefox because it isn't so stripped down like Chrome (or is that your goal, to be so minimized as to be useless?) Sorry, but I am angry here. Now, I have to hunt and peck and request all sorts of stuff to be able to use websites again. Firefox, I beg you, put back that data box. I really can't live without it. I am really sad about this.
Chosen solution
Hi massimo1, I understand your feelings about this issue, but I haven't seen any indication that this feature will return. Since it keeps coming up, I'm going to provide a full write-up and you can use whichever information sounds most useful to you.
Step 1: Back up your Descriptions by Exporting your Bookmarks
Firefox 62 no longer shows the "Description" field for bookmarks. The data is still stored, but can't be viewed within Firefox. I suggest backing it up now because the plan is to remove it in Firefox 64.
To do that, you can export bookmarks to a locally saved web page (HTML File). Please see this article: Export Firefox bookmarks to an HTML file to back up or transfer bookmarks.
That creates a web page, so you can open it in a Firefox tab, or in any browser. You'll notice the descriptions nested below the linked titles of the bookmarks that have descriptions. You can use Find (Ctrl+f) to locate the bookmark you're looking for.
Next steps:
This will depend on your needs.
(A) If you just need to consult the existing descriptions from time to time: searching in and copy/pasting from the HTML file may be good enough.
(B) If you need to access descriptions within Firefox, and prefer not to downgrade: you could investigate new extensions. For example, https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/bookmark-notes/ will provide access to Descriptions in the sidebar, and can import the file you created in Step 1.
(C) If you need to occasionally update the descriptions, but don't need them within Firefox: you could consider using a reference program such as Zotero to store your bookmarks and descriptions. See: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1233617. This form of storage might be more resilient than an add-on.
(D) If you can't live without descriptions just the way they were in Firefox 60: you may consider the Extended Support Release of Firefox 60, also known as ESR. The ESR track was designed for companies that only want feature changes on an infrequent basis. So Firefox 60 ESR will only get security updates for the next 10-12 months, staying stable with the features of Firefox 60. Then ESR will jump to a new version, expected to be Firefox 68. We don't know what Firefox 68 will look like; it might not have descriptions, either.
More info on this option: Switch to Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) for personal use.
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Chosen Solution
Hi massimo1, I understand your feelings about this issue, but I haven't seen any indication that this feature will return. Since it keeps coming up, I'm going to provide a full write-up and you can use whichever information sounds most useful to you.
Step 1: Back up your Descriptions by Exporting your Bookmarks
Firefox 62 no longer shows the "Description" field for bookmarks. The data is still stored, but can't be viewed within Firefox. I suggest backing it up now because the plan is to remove it in Firefox 64.
To do that, you can export bookmarks to a locally saved web page (HTML File). Please see this article: Export Firefox bookmarks to an HTML file to back up or transfer bookmarks.
That creates a web page, so you can open it in a Firefox tab, or in any browser. You'll notice the descriptions nested below the linked titles of the bookmarks that have descriptions. You can use Find (Ctrl+f) to locate the bookmark you're looking for.
Next steps:
This will depend on your needs.
(A) If you just need to consult the existing descriptions from time to time: searching in and copy/pasting from the HTML file may be good enough.
(B) If you need to access descriptions within Firefox, and prefer not to downgrade: you could investigate new extensions. For example, https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/bookmark-notes/ will provide access to Descriptions in the sidebar, and can import the file you created in Step 1.
(C) If you need to occasionally update the descriptions, but don't need them within Firefox: you could consider using a reference program such as Zotero to store your bookmarks and descriptions. See: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1233617. This form of storage might be more resilient than an add-on.
(D) If you can't live without descriptions just the way they were in Firefox 60: you may consider the Extended Support Release of Firefox 60, also known as ESR. The ESR track was designed for companies that only want feature changes on an infrequent basis. So Firefox 60 ESR will only get security updates for the next 10-12 months, staying stable with the features of Firefox 60. Then ESR will jump to a new version, expected to be Firefox 68. We don't know what Firefox 68 will look like; it might not have descriptions, either.
More info on this option: Switch to Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) for personal use.
Thanks. Those are all good solutions. Too bad mozilla isn't wise enough to leave unbroken things unbroken. Someone on the team must be bored.
The "annotations" section of the Places database (the file which stores bookmarks and history) is being phased out, but I don't know the exact reasons. Maybe it's in one of the 50 other threads on this topic.
The annotation API that is used for the descriptions is running on the main Firefox thread and thus affects the responsiveness of Firefox.
- Bug 975979 - (OMTPlaces) [meta] Avoid main-thread IO for places.sqlite
Because there is already another description field present that is used for Activity Stream (Firefox Home) it has been decided to remove the bookmarks description field that was exposed only in the Bookmarks Manager (Library) under More.