Re: UMarks - a universal bookmark system.

Hi Toby,

Thanks for your response. XBEL doesn't seem to be used by any of the
mainstream browsers at all.

As for developing XBEL rather than introducing a new format - I'm not
convinced this would be productive. I would agree if it was the established
standard, where an improvement would make more sense than a new start.
However the purpose of UMarks was to try something a little different.

I accept this is a Sisyphean task, but the task itself was to try and
establish a standard that stood outside browser software, and avoided the
need for plugins and the like to sync bookmarks between browsers. XBEL
doesn't seem to have had this goal in mind, although if it was a widely
adopted standard it probably could work in this way.

In a sense, then, UMarks is a development of XBEL in that it attempts to do
the same thing, albeit with a few more elements in there that reflect more
modern conventions.

Finally, it's more fun trying something new :-)

Thanks for taking the time to comment.

gdoc



On 03/09/2010 09:37, "Toby Inkster" <tai@g5n.co.uk> wrote:

> On Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:35:01 +0100
> UMarks <info@umarks.org> wrote:
> 
>> I hadn't heard of XBEL, so I have checked it out in an attempt to
>> answer your question.
> 
> It's a pretty well-known format for bookmarks, and is the native
> bookmark format for several browsers. Revising XBEL to create a v1.2
> compatible with existing software seems a much more productive route
> than devising a new format.
> 
>> Firstly, it looks like it has been some time since XBEL was updated.
>> Much of the documentation dates from 1998, and the last update to
>> anything I could find was 2002. It doesn't seem to be under active
>> development.
> 
> One man's "not under active development" is another man's "stable".
> 
>> Bookmarks have moved on since then, and this shows in the scope of
>> XBEL. For example it lacks support for favicons, keywords or
>> summaries; most of which are additions that have become more
>> commonplace since the late 90's. There is a <metadata> tag where one
>> could ostensibly capture some of this mind you.
> 
> There is a <desc> tag suitable for summaries. Keywords/tags can be
> stored using <metadata> (there's an example of using <metadata> for
> tags here - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/03/02/restful.html). There is
> an "icon" attribute on <folder> and <bookmark> elements, though it's
> not a URI, so may be of limited utility.
> 
>> I couldn't quite work out how a bookmark hierarchy was maintained,
>> although I assumed it was by creating a nested arrangement within the
>> file itself.
> 
> The same xml.com article I linked to above (which is the first hit on
> Google for 'xbel example') contains an example with nested <folder>
> elements.

Received on Friday, 3 September 2010 11:28:46 UTC