Firefox 2.0 for Del.icio.us Power Users

October 26, 2006 11:04 AM

I am a del.icio.us power use, and I am trying to use the new Firefox 2.0 which integrates with del.icio.us. I'm having some trouble. First, all of the bookmarks I had stored locally that were in folders seem to have disappeared. Where did they go? Second, because I have soooo many bookmarks on del.icio.us, I have the "Bookmaek synching in progress" bar loading constantly, and it REALLY slows down my Firefox speed. Can anyone help me find my missing bookmarks? Does anyone have tips on how to use Firefox 2.0 with bookmarks without the molasses speed?
posted by abbyladybug to computers & internet (10 comments total)

As to the missing bookmarks, does this article, Your bookmarks are still there, I promise!, solve your problem?
posted by willnot at 11:16 AM on October 26, 2006

The theory behind the extension is that it treats your del.icio.us bookmarks as local bookmarks. So what it does is prompts you to post your local bookmarks to del.icio.us (as private bookmarks that only show up to you) when it installs.

If you uninstall the extension, it will ask you if you want to restore your bookmarks from before. I did this and my bookmarks came back when I rebooted. Anecdotal evidence suggests that you can uninstall the extension mid-sync without any harmful side effects.

The syncing sucks, I have over 4500 bookmarks on del.icio.us and it took 40 minutes for it to complete, during which Firefox was unusable.

Also, take a look at this thread on the del.icio.us mailing list (that I started, WarningSelfLink, caveat clicktor) about the exact same problems you're describing.
posted by revgeorge at 11:58 AM on October 26, 2006

By my count, you have 2441(!) unique tags. Over 1400 of your tags only have one bookmark. Of course, each del.icio.us user is free to use whatever tagging convention they choose, but I would respectfully suggest that you may want to consider trimming some of the tags that only have the one bookmark.

You are experiencing the lag, because you have to wait for a minimum of 2441 database calls every time you do something related to your del.icio.us page. Integrating with the new browser surely can't help speed things up, it will only slow it down, as you've already noticed.

Personally (and your tastes may be way different, I understand) I try to make it a rule that I will only have a unique tag if the bookmark does not fit with any other existing tags.

Good luck!
posted by achmorrison at 12:14 PM on October 26, 2006

I agree that I definitely need to do some bookmark cleanup. I wonder if there are any good tools for doing that. I am mostly using del.icio.us on the server. While I do use extensions to add bookmarks, I don't know of an easy way to pare down the total number of tags. And I do tend to overtag since that ensures that I can always find what I'm looking for. I'd like to delete all the posts that have dead links, as well as reduce many of the tags which apply to only one bookmark.
posted by abbyladybug at 1:21 PM on October 26, 2006

I don't know of any tools to automate your trimming process, but I will give you another tip that I use to keep my tags down to a minimum.

If the word is in the title, then it doesn't (necessarily) need to be a tag. For example, you have a tag for amtrak that also has several other tags: travel, train, transportation, etc. But, amtrak is in the title of the bookmark, so if you omitted the amtrak tag, you could still search your bookmarks on amtrak and it would come up.
posted by achmorrison at 2:37 PM on October 26, 2006

I haven't found that always to be the case. I just removed the Amtrak tag, and when I type in http://del.icio.us/abbyladybug/amtrak, I don't get that link anymore. I've often found it irritating when people haven't included the obvious words, since those are almost always the ones I use in my search.
posted by abbyladybug at 5:46 PM on October 26, 2006

So I got an extension (Linkchecker) that allows me to check for dead links, and I ran it on one page of 100 links on my del.icio.us. I have now been banned from del.icio.us temporarily for checking too many links too quickly. It said to check back in a few minutes. It's been hours! Brother!

In better news, my bookmarks have reappeared, although the ones on the bookmarks toolbar have no words with them, just icons.

This is a bad tech day!
posted by abbyladybug at 7:48 PM on October 26, 2006

That URL (http://del.icio.us/abbyladybug/amtrak) won't work, but if you search (choose "My bookmarks") it will come up using the keyword amtrak.
posted by achmorrison at 8:33 PM on October 26, 2006

hi everybody! i know this has dropped off the front page, but i just noticed it. we at del.icio.us are listening to all this helpful feedback and are working hard to improve the extension. there has been a ton of discussion on the extension group too -- feel free to join in there with your comments.

also, there are ideas on our grand todo list for dead bookmark checking and better tag editing. in the meantime, you may want to check out dead.licious and cocoalicious (os x only, sorry -- i don't know of good similar utilities for other os-es yet).t
posted by dreamyshade at 3:10 AM on October 27, 2006

Thanks, del.icio.us person!

Oh please, one of you coder types, make one of these for Windows users!! Pretty please! {bats eyelashes}

:D
posted by abbyladybug at 4:27 AM on October 27, 2006