
Deep Dive: New Bookmark Sync in Firefox Nightly - sohkamyung
https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2018/05/14/deep-dive-new-bookmark-sync-in-nightly/
======
BlackLotus89
> For the last two years, the Firefox Sync team has been hard at work
> improving bookmarks on all our platforms

If they only would improve the actual bookmark manager. It's been a thorn in
my eyes for quite some time now.

\- you can't find duplicates

\- it takes 0.5-3sec/bookmark to delete bookmarks (on my devices at least)

\- you can't cut found bookmarks out of a search (it copies it)

\- the bookmark search sucks

And there are multiple other minor annoyances that bug me or features I would
wish for (searchable offline bookmarks anyone? [I know that's going more in
the direction search engine, but it sure as hell would be nice])

I'm kind of a horder when it comes to open tabs and bookmarks, so it is a pain
in the butt to manage those. Last time I cleaned all my bookmarks I exported
them and managed them with buku[0]. "Lost" my directory structure through this
but it was worth it.

[0] [https://github.com/jarun/Buku](https://github.com/jarun/Buku)

~~~
Brakenshire
An offline full text search for bookmarks would be really useful.

~~~
amelius
What would be even more useful is if this would integrate with a web search
engine somehow. E.g., search for a term, and it will first show matches in
bookmarks, and then matches from the web. Also nice if this would integrate
with the filesystem, e.g., it would show matches in documents/filenames on the
local system.

~~~
hadrien01
That's already what the Awesome Bar does if it's configured to show search
results (in Preferences > Search). You can also search only bookmarks with the
* keyword.

~~~
BlackLotus89
Thx didn't know about the * keyword will use this from now on. (I disabled the
search and justed used the open tabs, history and bookmark suggestion function
from the awesomebar)

------
sloxy
> You might visit dozens or hundreds of sites in a week, and it’s okay if some
> pages get lost in the shuffle

My opinion is it's not okay. Why would it be?

~~~
gilrain
Yeah, I'm now remembering a handful of really frustrating sessions of pouring
over my history looking for a now-important resource I didn't bookmark,
triple-checking and etc... and it may have not been there in the first place?
That's awful.

~~~
cup-of-tea
*poring

------
tvanantwerp
While I recognize not everyone liked it, I really enjoyed Chrome Bookmark
Manager extension[1]. It made it a lot easier for me to sift through my
hoarded bookmarks. I switched to Firefox after Quantum because it was
noticeably faster, and this style of bookmark management is something I miss
from Chrome. I haven't found a Firefox alternative yet.

[1]: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bookmark-
manager/g...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bookmark-
manager/gmlllbghnfkpflemihljekbapjopfjik?hl=en)

------
blauditore
I once accidentally deleted some of my bookmarks because I thought I had
disabled sync (which I hadn't). To my surprise, I found out that Firefox
maintains a (local) bookmarks history, so I was able to fully restore them.
This was really a lifesaver.

------
joaomsa
While I've never experienced conflict issues with bookmark sync, one pet peeve
of mine is how their sync implementation has never supported syncing search
engines.

I mean proper OpenSearch support, different from using keyboard bookmarks with
%s as a hack, since you actually get proper autocomplete.

In fact that whole situation there is just a mess, no proper way to use sites
that implemented OpenSearch from the awesomebar like the Tab to search in
chrome's omnibar.

~~~
yoklov
Historically this has been a little tricky to add due to some peculiarities
with addons. That shouldn’t be an issue anymore, although I don’t think
anybody’s jumping at implementing the bug, presumably since it seems like it
will require walking on eggshells to avoid upsetting search contracts (for
example, it becomes tricky when you consider that search contracts are by
location but users could have devices in multiple locations. There are several
other headaches around this too).

We do sync bookmark keywords FWIW, which can be used as a sort of search, but
it’s a bit indiscoverable and not the same as syncing settings like your
default search engine.

(I work on firefox sync)

~~~
joaomsa
I did mention using bookmark keyword searches as hack to get sync, but I'm
talking about proper support for syncing user registered OpenSearch[1]
providers (and any user configured keyword shortcuts for them)

As of now you can add an OpenSearch[1] provider in Firefox using the
javascript api `window.external.AddSearchProvider(engineURL)` where engineURL
is the XML file description of the search engine like this one for IMDb
search:

[https://m.media-
amazon.com/images/G/01/imdb/images/imdbsearc...](https://m.media-
amazon.com/images/G/01/imdb/images/imdbsearch-3349468880._CB499558879_.xml)

This is the method the Mycroft[2] project uses, which Firefox recommends.
Chrome though, besides also supporting that API, looks for a search meta tag
in a page's head after you visit it liking to the same OpenSearch provider xml

<link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml"
href="[https://m.media-
amazon.com/images/G/01/imdb/images/imdbsearc...](https://m.media-
amazon.com/images/G/01/imdb/images/imdbsearch-3349468880._CB499558879_.xml")
title="IMDb">

In Chrome, after you visit their home page with that metadata it's registered
as a provider so once you start typing Imdb in the omnibox, you see an
indication to press 'Tab' in the right corner of the omnibox, and it switches
to searching imdb instead. Even providing autocomplete if the search provider
supports it.

Firefox could make registering these more discoverable from the UI (adding via
a page action as an example at least?)

[1] [http://www.opensearch.org/Home](http://www.opensearch.org/Home) [2]
[http://mycroftproject.com/](http://mycroftproject.com/)

------
gadders
I remember using FoxMarks/XMarks [1], started by Mitch Kapoor. I just looked
it up and saw it came out in 2006. That made me feel old.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmarks_Sync](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmarks_Sync)

~~~
hartz
Wow, I didn't know that they just shut down this month. I definitely still
have the add-on installed in all my browsers, and thought it was still
syncing...

------
ArmandGrillet
Using this post to ask a question about bookmarks sync: does anyone have found
a way to periodically sync bookmarks from Firefox/Chrome with Safari?

I use Safari on iOS for obvious reasons and the inability to export the
bookmarks I have on my Mac browser to Safari is really annoying. Fun fact: if
you have a Windows computer you can do it [https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT203519](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203519)

~~~
josteink
> I use Safari on iOS for obvious reasons and the inability to export the
> bookmarks I have on my Mac browser to Safari is really annoying.

What obvious reasons? Why not just use Firefox for iOS instead?

~~~
JasonSage
Firefox for iOS is abysmally slow. We're talking 6-10 seconds from cold start
to being able to navigate.

One of the main reasons I wanted to use it was to pass pages from desktop to
Firefox for iOS, but on top of start time it would take upwards of 20-30s just
for the tabs to sync across devices.

~~~
josteink
It has a slower startup, but seeing as it is one of only 4-5 apps I run on a
regular basis, I don't really notice.

What I _would_ notice is constantly having to look up my sync-data like
history and passwords from elsewhere because Safari is a walled garden. That
would seriously hinder me and slow me down on a quite so regular basis.

Different folks, different strokes, I guess.

------
ktosobcy
I really hope they improve also tab sync - for some reason it usually doesn't
work (or better yet it works but I see tabs from months ago, which is quite
useless)

~~~
yoklov
It shouldn’t unless your device is unable to sync for some reason. You may
have error logs in one of your firefoxes at about:sync-log. Either way it’s
probably worth either filing a bug or asking in #sync in mozilla IRC.

~~~
gilrain
I'd just like to say, as kindly as possible, that this is another thing that
drove me away from Firefox. There is so much community support! ...but it's
always of the "works here, have you tried rebooting" school of thought.

The classic is deleting your profile, that unique Firefox troubleshooting
standby. As if regularly nuking all of your browser personalizations to fix
inconsistent bugs is at all acceptable even if it did work.

~~~
yoklov
Yeah, sorry. I worked on tab sync and the debugging process would be involved
enough that it’s not practical to do over HN comments. In practice there are a
couple concrete things that can cause this, and but all should be reported in
about:sync-log.

Not sure how to help more specifically than that.

------
tomcooks
I'd like to self host my bookmarks and sync them myself across devices, seems
impossible and I might end up using cronjobs.

~~~
BlackLotus89
If you mean your own firefox sync then here you go [0] if you mean an actual
cross device, cross browser sync then you probably need to write something
yourself. It seems like a need for something like this does exist [1]. Maybe a
simple sync server and a cross browser plugin? Anyway have a nice day :)

[0] [https://github.com/mozilla-
services/syncserver](https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncserver)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17072977](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17072977)

~~~
tomcooks
I had problems trying to install syncserver in the past, maybe it's worth
giving it nother shot - thanks!

I'd rather skip plugins because I'd like to use the default bookmarking
function (especially on mobile)

~~~
tomcooks
ah the problem was related to the auth server, given Mozilla's attitude
towards data I'd rather avoid their system.

I think I'll stick to an hackish backup to my server via scp and Termux -
thanks again!

------
_pmf_
> Thanks to the magic of complex distributed systems, corruption also isn’t
> stable: inconsistent data can become eventually consistent, and much of Sync
> relies on this property to work.

Oh boy. The whole article reads like a lesson in over engineering and trying
to find the most complex solution. "But it's a really hard problem." \- yeah,
every problem can be framed in an arbitrarily hard context if you need to
supply a group of people with work and resume-includable buzzwords.

~~~
nikbackm
Seems more like they used an existing solution that was not quite up to the
task. Also had the handicap of not being able to rely on the server due to
client-side encryption.

