CFA/Bookmarks-Research

« Comparative Feature Analyses

General browser capabilities

In the following table:

• P = available through Primary UI (menu items, toolbar)
• S = available through Secondary UI (anywhere else)
• blank = not available
• # = see item in Notes
• The browsers listed are, in order: Firefox 2, Camino, Flock, iCab, IE7, Maxthon, Netscape, OmniWeb, Opera, Safari, SeaMonkey, and Shiira.

	Fx2	Cam	Flo	iCa	IE7	Max	Net	Omn	Ope	Saf	Sea	Shi
Add/manage regular bookmarks	P	P	P	P	P18	P	P	P	P	P12	P	P
Add/manage quick bookmarks			P					S5			P	P
Bookmark toolbar	P	P	P	P		P22	P24	P	S	P	P	S14
Multiple bookmark toolbars			P				P24
View bookmark organizer	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	S
Bookmark organizer as sidebar	S				P19	P	S		S		S
Bookmark organization - Tagging			P			S20
Bookmark organization - Folders	S	P	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	P	S	S
Bookmark organization - Smartfolders
Bookmark organization - Simple list sorting	S		S				S	S	S		S
Bookmark organization - Advanced sorting		S10						S11
Search bookmarks - Simple	S		S			S	S	S	S	S	S
Search bookmarks - Advanced
Bookmark single tab*	S			S			S
Bookmark all tabs	P	S	P	P	P	P	P				P	P15
Open all bookmarks in folder as tabs	S	S	S	P	S	S	S	S	S	S
Export bookmarks	S	P	?	?	P	S	S		S	P	S
Import bookmarks	S	P	P2	P	P	S	P23	S2	S	P	S	S16
Sync bookmarks, no server component											S13
Sync bookmarks, server component						P21		S6		S9	S13
Sync bookmarks, server + web app components						?
Share bookmarks - public			S			?
Share bookmarks - with group						P21		S7
Share bookmarks - with one other person						?
Share bookmarks - with self (private)			S			P21
Bookmark keywords	S	S					S	S	S		S
Bookmark smart keywords	S		S	S				S	S
Annotate bookmarks	S1	S1	S1	S1			S1	S1	S1		S1
In-page annotations
Share annotations			?
Organize annotations
Sort annotations	S3		S3				S3
Search annotations			S4						S8
Web feed handling**	P		P	S	P	P	P	S	P	P		S17

Notes

• ^* - Different than regular "Add page as bookmark"
• ^** - Web feeds will be dealt with in more detail in another report
• ? - Not 100% sure about this

1. In these browsers you can add a "Description" in a bookmark's properties.
2. Only found Safari, not Firefox.
3. Alphabetical sort only, in bookmark organizer.
4. Bookmark search also searches annotations, but you cannot specifically search only annotations/description field.
5. You can only do regular or quick bookmarks in OmniWeb, not both. It's a settable pref.
6. .mac or webDAV, settable through preferences.
7. Local network share only.
8. If search term is in description field, bookmark shows in results but the description/annotation is not shown in the results list. It's a little strange.
9. .mac only
10. Top 10 List only -- not very advanced, but better than nothing.
11. Sort by "most visited" available.
12. Includes a toolbar button.
13. Experimental (pre-alpha?) Roaming User Profiles. Appears to allow automated local export/import of profile data, as well as to a remote server. Couldn't figure out how to make it work.
14. No clue who this works. Couldn't get the bookmarks bar to do anything.
15. This doesn't seem to be implemented, but there is a menu item for it.
16. Seems to do this automatically -- not sure if modifying bookmarks in Shiira will modify bookmarks in the other browsers as well.
17. Just renders the feed, no subscription options.
18. There is a button, but the button opens a menu and you have to click the menu item to bring up the dialog. It's somewhat bewildering.
19. Bookmark organizer is only available as a sidebar.
20. Not sure if these are properly tags or not. I can add them, and they're called "tags" in the dialog, but I can't seem to figure out what they do, if anything.
21. Not sure how to make this work yet. Service was "busy" and not available when I tried. This is listed as "Primary" because it is explained in the first-run dialogs when creating a new Maxthon account.
22. Doesn't really work like a proper bookmark toolbar. Includes all bookmarks, not just a specific subset, and cannot be drag-and-dropped to, etc.
23. Appears in a first-run dialog.
24. Not really bookmark toolbars - called the "Multibar". Not sure how (or if it's possible) to add bookmarks to these. Very odd and awkward. Not sure how to use these at all.