Why sabotage our ability to rebuild lost bookmarks - And here are a few suggestions for feature designs.
Dear Firefox Contributors and Developers.
One of your Contributors indicates you are removing or have removed a users' ability to rebuild lost bookmarks or add a section of operating bookmarks from one computer to another operating system. Say it isn't so.
To make this insidious election, a Firefox developer or committee would have to pretend that Firefox never crashes and/or looses bookmarks, and that bookmarks are not really important to most or all users who use and would want to recover personal or business research that took days, months or years to produce, where users would by default due to Firefox failures and crashes to sort and pick through thousands of older bookmarks to find the few or a bundle of super, super important bookmarks that are missing from one session or from a multitude of sessions ago. Sometimes you don't realize bookmarks are missing until you see a difference in the total megabytes from one bookmarks file to another. Firefox is not perfected to the point that it prevents the loss of bookmarks or currently designed to to easily regain missing bookmarks. Why are you taking this all too important function from us, and not adding to our capabilities?
I was actually hoping to interest you in a way to allow users to additionally tag and open and/or save multiple bookmarks (including from a non-successive list of bookmarks (by using the shift-key to incorporate them - like the bookmarks library allows) into a live browser or into a saved bookmarks html.file (using an editor). An editor can then shrink a file down for purposes of appending to an existing bookmark's file, or create a whole new bookmark's file by editing and joining two separate files to append and later delete the original but now incomplete operating bookmark's. A few interesting design features could be implemented here.
And oh, here's a fascinating concept for users who have spent years developing an elaborate architecture of substantially important "folder" categories. It would be the ability to search in a live browser bookmarks column for "folders" and not just a potentially long list of numerous bookmarks in several or numerous folders (where a result would deliver, by election), one of three result options 1) to result with the folder in its current bookmarked column position, 2) as a single or list of multiple found folder(s), or 3) as a combination of found folders and bookmarks. This would avoid the oftentimes long and unwanted search result of too many bookmarks that share the same word, because knowing the name of a folder is much easier, not to mention, the current search regime and not being able to remember an important key word can oftentimes not yield the bookmark. What do you think. If the answer is yes, I can be of assistance in helping you with design features. I really would like a Firefox developer to send this up the committee flag pole.
Thanks for listening.
All Replies (7)
(First, you are using an extremely old version of Firefox, you should be running Firefox 46 at least).
Second, we aren't removing the ability to backup bookmarks or import them from other browsers. Can you please explain where you saw this? We've actually done things recently to improve Firefox's bookmark backups so that they happen more frequently.
Firsly, I have been forced to remain at this Firefox version due to Firefox preventing most of my daily Add-on from working (and there are no updates or replacements - I checked). Secondly, I have slightly older computers with only 2 megs of ram, and the newest version of Firefox sucks up waaaaaaay too much Ram memory, dogs my system and prevents me from opening the number of tabs that I'm use to opening with ease, and I'm afraid you guys will constantly crash my system with the Firefox upgrades. You must think everyone is made of money and will afford to continually upgrade to suit your updates. Not so. Your mission to make things safer and less often crashing, is reducing or eliminating important capabilities, and making my life less enjoyable for sure. I don't get it.
Secondly, I was hoping you would address ALL my other questions and ideas, and then lastly, your answer regarding the existence of bookmarks pertains to the very basic aspects of importing and exporting and does not address the concerns made.
By the way, are you one of the developers
cvmenn said
One of your Contributors indicates you are removing or have removed a users' ability to rebuild lost bookmarks or add a section of operating bookmarks from one computer to another operating system. Say it isn't so.
Is that is referring to my comments made here on the 19th? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1123525#answer-878538 If so, I think you misinterpreted what I 'said' there.
Succinctly, the bookmarks.html file in Firefox has been used as a "legacy" file since 2009, for the purpose of being "universal interchange" format for Importing and Exporting a users Favorites / Bookmarks between different web browsers that support that format.
Your "use" of bookmarks.html files in the manner that you described is not a recognized purpose for the bookmarks.html format files. Firefox uses the JSON format for backing up and restoring bookmarks to protect the user against loss of their bookmarks. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-bookmarks-from-backup-or-move-them
I'm not a developer, but I am a mozilla employee.
First, recent versions of Firefox actually use less resources on average than previous versions (I doubt you have 2MB of RAM, more likely 2GB, which is plenty to run Firefox), on top of fixing known security holes, which by using an old version you are exposing to the internet (And no anti-virus will protect you).
As for add-ons, give us the list of add-ons that you say don't work in Firefox 46 and we can try to help you find alternatives. I think that you'll probably find most work, however, you'll have to update Firefox and then update your add-ons, since newer versions of addons that are compatible with newer versions of Firefox often won't install if you have an old version of Firefox.
Finally, for your feature request, I'd suggest submitting it at input.mozilla.org/feedback
Hi Terry,
Thank you for your responses and direction about where to submit my feature ideas, but I'm not holding my breath based on past awesome and highly logical suggestions being disregarded with no answer as to what happened to my suggestion.
First, you're right about my RAM. It's 2 gigs not 2 megs.
Then, if the Task Manager is any measure of just how much memory is used by Firefox, when previously, 250 tabs (ALL open) used a (guesstimated from memory) 350-640 megs of ram, and now with only 20-50 tabs open, now use 750 megs to over 1 gig of memory, I'd say Firefox has bulked up since a good number of versions ago. I wish I had the older version, in spite of all the crashes and security risks, because now Its like waking a worm. Even one of your top 10 responders agreed two days ago, that Firefox has substantially increased RAM requirements, and that the bookmarks options have substantially diminished and will most likely not survive 2017. How is it you are each providing polar opposite answers the the same question. Frankly, my experience with RAM absorption has been totally in line with his answer.
cvmenn said
... and that the bookmarks options have substantially diminished and will most likely not survive 2017.
That is an absurd interpretation of my comments in this posting - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1123525#answer-878538