Show HN: my weekend project - Bookmarks made serviceable

by FredBrach • 13 years ago

36 33 13 years ago

jspiros3• 13 years ago

Since I still buy into the benefits of the spatial metaphor, I like this kind of stuff.

But, lately, I've been moving to a more search-driven experience where I can add content/bookmarks/files/whatever to the system and forget about them until I need them later, so I'm not sure if this would scale to the number of bookmarks I've been adding lately.

But, still, neat. At the very least, I see some potential in this approach for curated "launchers", sharing sets of bookmarks with others.

FredBrach13• 13 years ago

Thank you, your feedback is very valuable. May I ask you which piece of software do you use for that?

jspiros3• 13 years ago

For my bookmarks, I got lazy and now just use Firefox/TenFourFox/Iceweasel with a local sync server. So, I use Firefox's system, which allows for hierarchical and tag-based organization, and searching based on title. Prior to that, I used Delicious, which also had tags, and searching.

I can't speak for anyone else, but these days I use bookmarking as a contingency, in case I remember later and need or want the link to whatever. So, I'll bookmark just about anything and everything I might possibly remember, regardless of real value or intention. In the past, I used bookmarks to represent an active intention to go back and follow up on whatever, so I would carefully curate and organize my collection.

Your project seems like it would be very useful for the latter. And these days, for me, the latter comes up most often when I also intend to share the collection with others. For example, sharing a set of bookmarks to websites covering candidates or ballot issues in a local election.

speeder• 13 years ago

Now.it can be done even better by adding a windows 8 or spotlight style search :)

FredBrach13• 13 years ago

Ok, will add that. Thank you for testing.

Hengjie• 13 years ago

It's down at the moment.

PLejeck• 13 years ago

Interesting idea, but I find that spatial systems are problematic for people like myself who end up falling behind on their organizing.

Personally, I use a tagging model because it's easy and quick enough to catch back up.

FredBrach13• 13 years ago

I see. Very valuable feedback, thanks ;)

uslic001• 13 years ago

If I make a mistake in the address it will not let me delete or edit the address. I also get logged into other users bookmarks.

FredBrach13• 13 years ago

Thank you for your feedback. Sorry for the inconvenience. I will address that quickly.

ryiytrye2• 13 years ago

I like this notion of the desktop metaphor being extended to bookmarks. Actually I was quite disappointed to see that Google missed this trick with their new Chromebooks, preferring to stuff app links into a bar at the bottom of their desktop. Your approach makes a lot more sense.

Quick bug report, there is a display issue when one's browser window (or screen) isn't wide enough, it chops off whatever is meant to be at the right hand side at the top: http://i.imgur.com/GfNtJcv.png

Another issue is that sub-memorypools with identical names can be created. Not sure if that is intentional or not.

Also a suggestion, I think that dragging a bookmark icon on top of a memorypool icon should move it into there.

FredBrach13• 13 years ago

Hey ryiytrye, thanks so much for your feedback. I will make my possible to figure out how I can solve that bug. Also, I'm currently implenting the icon move, copy and paste. Stay tuned (it's for tomorrow) ;)

edit: good remark. Memorypools are links too. So if you create two memorypools with the same name, they will "point" on the same "desktop" as expected :)

ryiytrye2• 13 years ago

No problem, it's been fun playing with it :)

Two more issues: http://i.imgur.com/uBpTr0m.png - somehow managed to get two links superimposed ("meteor" and "j"), and moving blocks of links took a rather long time.

desireco42• 13 years ago

I really love where you are going with this. Overall idea is pretty solid, I would say unique even though it is like win8.

As for feedback I saw in comments so far, first thing would be search and organizing in groups like win8 does. Then tagging as alternative way to organize would be good. Overall really nice.

FredBrach13• 13 years ago

Hey thanks desireco42, I'm glad you liked it. I feel the same about the feedbacks and it's going to be a lot of fun to code those amazing suggestions.

calinet62• 13 years ago

Oh, god, the color scheme...

FredBrach13• 13 years ago

Ah? Any resource so I can improve that?

calinet62• 13 years ago

Yes, sorry for the quick criticism without constructiveness. My bad.

Play with this tool: http://colorschemedesigner.com/

Currently you have a color scheme based on similar brightnesses of very similar hues—green and blue are very close together on the color wheel, thus it's difficult to tell them apart and in some sense they "clash" with each other.

The grey you've chosen is also very similar in brightness, which makes the whole theme quite low contrast, and thus difficult to read.

Analogistic color schemes like this can work, but they need to be relatively high contrast so that there's enough of a difference in perceived color to make text readable and transitions more clear. And to prevent clashing, which is just generally perceived as unpleasing.

I'd go with your little memory-chip icon. Take the green off of that (#60B660) and the chip grey (#424242) and choose a contrasting accent color. You can go with a blue, but I wouldn't recommend it, and if you do I'd go with either very dark or very light used in places where it won't clash (such as maybe the top nav bar). Against the green, I'd use an orange or red or magenta in there, or just go with one main color and adjust brightnesses as needed (pretty failsafe).

Something like this would be similar to what you have, but with a better accent than blue (dark magenta) : http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/132637/Odd_but_trendy

Here's an analogistic color scheme that works due to the contrast and hue separation: http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/81885/Hymn_For_My_Soul

It's hard to explain how good color schemes are really created, other than by following the color wheel somewhat and your sense of aesthetic above all, but you can take any of these as a start for reference on what's "good." -- http://www.colourlovers.com/palettes/most-loved/past-month/m... -- Yours isn't too bad, there's just something off about it due to the low-contrast high-similarity colors used. Cheers.

minouye• 13 years ago

Great idea!

I'm reminded of http://www.allmyfaves.com/ (although you've obviously improved on their concept dramatically). If you're looking for a way to monetize your project, I believe they do pretty well just off of affiliate links (for the ecommerce sites).

FredBrach13• 13 years ago

Thank you, that's very kind. Also that links rocks, I didn't know it. Good idea for monetization. About that, I was thinking vaguely about customization (wallpaper, color scheme, buttons, icons etc.) - in case this site is worth one cent for at least one user.

pests4• 13 years ago

Really like it, few bugs though:

You can drag an item to below the fold and it extends the screen and adds a scrollbar. This then causes the logout and the number (which is?) next to it to stack looking weird.

It's weird having to drag a select box to select only one item. Took me a minute to figure out you could even do that (remembered it was based off desktop) but before I was grabbing one, moving it, and then dropping which leaves it selected before I could delete.

Folders have a %20 in the name at the top once you enter them, but no on the icon display.

pests4• 13 years ago

That should be a %20 for spaces.

pests4• 13 years ago

Seems you can't drag items into folders/memorypools or out of them yet either.

FredBrach13• 13 years ago

That's true, I'm implementing that. Thank you for your feedback:)

FredBrach13• 13 years ago

Oh I see. A long click should also select and not open, as well as holding control and then click. I'm still trying to figure out how I will expose these information to a new user.

pests4• 13 years ago

Its been a week but hopefully you still see this.

I notice now what you mention but still hard to discover on your own. Perhaps implementing the Windows double click type functionality (as a setting?) would be familiar to most (as in, most people use Windows) as people are used to one click to select and a quick double click to open. But this also seems to put more emphasis on editing / the interface than the actual functionality.

jigsawhacker• 13 years ago

Nice one.

Can we have a bookmarklet or chrome extension for this? Just a click and the website should be added. I'm using G+'s +1 for this so far.

FredBrach13• 13 years ago

"Can we have a bookmarklet or chrome extension for this?"

Yes we can :) Thanks for your suggestion.

deadairspace• 13 years ago

Nice, this will be good combined with this Chrome extension [1] to set a custom URL for new tabs.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab-redirect/i...

apathetic• 13 years ago

If the title/label is very long, can you make a tooltip to show the whole label/title on :hover? Much appreciated.

Show HN: my weekend project - Bookmarks made serviceable

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