There are fundamentally two different ways of organizing bookmarks now in use by installed web browser applications and online bookmarks storage services.
1. Hierarchical Organization Most installed web browser applications (Safari, Camino, Firefox, Opera, OmniWeb, Shiira) support a folder hierarchy of bookmarks, allowing you to keep bookmarks in folders, like this:
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2. Tag Organization Most online bookmarks storage services (Google™ Bookmarks, del.icio.us) do not support a folder hierarchy. Instead, they allow you to attach tags, also called labels to each of your bookmarks, like this:
In addition to featuring tag organization, some services such as del.icio.us and ma.gnoli.com allow you to share some/all of your bookmarks publicly, which is called social bookmarking. You can learn about this in a Wikipedia article or a short video. |
Comparison
The advantage of the Hierarchical organization is that you can use simple names which are differentiated by their context. For example, if you gave all of your "Apple" bookmarks the tag "Apple", you might end snacking on an Apple Computer. (Actually, it can get alot worse than this.) But with a Hierarchy, it's no problem:
ComputersHowever, there are advantages of the Tag organization too. First, you can reference the same bookmark from multiple contexts. For example, say you're in the remodeling business and found an article on kitchen sinks. Do you place it in the folder "Kitchens" or "Plumbing Fixtures"? In a Tag organizational system, there's no problem - you can give it both tags and you can find it in either case. Second, using Tags you can share your bookmarks with other people, which is why the services that use Tag organization are called social bookmarking tools.
It's a design decision by the publisher of the browser or service and ultimately a personal, organizational preference which will affect which browser or service you favor to use. Bookdog supports both (as does Firefox, since Firefox 3).
Making Tags Work Smarter. One way to solve the problem of tag organization finding fruit instead of computers is to get in the habit of giving each bookmark lots of tags. For example, you would Apple computer bookmarks with "apple" and "computer" and apple fruit bookmarks with "apple" and "fruit". Then when you wanted a snack you could search for bookmarks tagged with "apple" and "fruit". This would eliminate Apple computer bookmarks. The web interfaces of web service providers don't provide this, but Bookdog does, in its Main Window. Select the tags in the Cloud at the top and click "All":
Bookdog can automatically translate the Folders to Tags and vice versa when you migrate or paste bookmarks between a Hierarchical organized browser and a Tag organized service.
This compatibility is provided by several on/off-switches, described below.
Migrations. When migrating, the switch options are at the bottom of the Migration window.
Preference for Pasting Bookmarks. When pasting (as a result of copy, move, or drag/drag), these two options are switched on/off by Preference settings for each browser/service. You have three choices, which work like this:
This setting is available when moving/copying/migrating from a browser which uses Hierarchy to a browser or service which uses Tags. When switched on, the names of a bookmark's parent, grandparent, etc. folders are added to its tags/labels/tags. Only editable folder names are added however; names of immoveable containers such as Bookmarks Bar or Bookmarks Menu are not added as tags.
If this setting is switched off, only the bookmark's existing Tags (if any) will be copied.
This setting is available when moving/copying/migrating from a service which uses Tags, to a browser which uses Hierarchy.
When migrating, an secondary switch tells Bookdog to deal with bookmarks that have multiple tags by either Create multiple copies, one for each tag, or Create only one copy, using one tag. Incoming bookmarks will be placed in folder(s) named after the item's tag(s). The folders will be created if necessary, which may cause many folders to be created if this secondary switch is on and the required folders do not already exist.
When copy/paste/dragging (not migrating), Bookdog will compare the tags with the names of the new parent's subfolders and copy the bookmark to the subfolder with a matching name if a match is found. If more than one match is found, one will be arbitrarily selected. If no match is found, one folder will be created and the new bookmark will be put into it.