Web curiosity = crazy tabs
As a developer, we are curious, and end up browsing a lot of links on the Internet.
Some doesn’t worth more than 1 sec attention and we close the tab right away.
Some catch our attention, and we wish we could come back later,
Perhaps it was funny, or interesting, or heart moving, or chocking, you name it.
That’s what bookmarks are for.
However, imagine what would happen if you bookmark 20 links per day ?
That’s 7000 bookmark a year, and that’s not handy.
Solution 1: Text Editor
I used to copy / paste links in text files.
I would create a new file in my TextEdit / NotePad or Vim like this:
Pros:
- Easy (doesn't need any extra software)
- Lighweight (doesn't consume much memory nor cpu usage)
Cons:
- Content get messy really fast: mixing links, personal notes, various topics
- Not easy to search into for anything older than 2 months.
- Loss of data: we surely backup when we format, or change computer, but still those text get buried into backups that we never open again, because, we’re busy.
Solution 2: App and browser extensions
I actually didn't try this option in the long run.
Using app like Evernote, OneNote
Or extensions like OneTab, Tabs Outliner, Toby.
They all look great, and I should will give them a more serious try.
highly.co is also interesting, as you can highlight text from any web page. It didn't click for me though. Maybe I like simplicity overall.
While I was writing this article I discovered some other options that look awesome.
Solution 3: Self-hosted Web App
Why a web app ? Sounds complicated.
Well, at first I wouldn’t even think about it.
Until I saw Shaarli in action... It's a > 10 years old product, but it's still there, being used every day by the author, with over 23,000 links.
It’s a minimalistic webapp you can host yourself. It aims at storing the links you want to keep track of.
Why I love it:
- Lightweight: It's not a monster.
- Once you install it, you own it: your history won't go on third-party servers.
- Super easy to install.
git clone https://github.com/sebsauvage/Shaarli. Done. - No Database: all your history is stored in one single text file.
- Saving a link should fast and easy. And so it is.
- Interface is clean. You can just browse thousands of links fast and easily.
- You can add notes and tags along your links.
- The "Tag Cloud" feature is actually useful.
- Links can be "private".
Illustration of the popup you get after pressing the navbar button in order to save your current page link:
Final Note
For such a common task as saving links, we all have our personal preferences.
It's a matter of taste and habits.
What works best for you ? Simplicity, or specialized tools ?
While I am eager to test more productivity tools, I have a tendency to come back to the basics, with the good old plain text.
Now that I have rediscovered this Shaarli webapp, I am excited to give it a try on my (empty) personal website.
I would love to know how you handle your browsing gathering and retention.
(If you mind installing your own Shaarli instance, feel welcome to share your url, that could be awesomely informative)
Top comments (41)
I use Feedly for RSS and also for saving interesting articles thanks to its new feature Boards. Works good together with handy extension Save to Feedly Board. I'm satisfied with current setup, though, it's great we have so many possibilities 🤓.
Thanks for sharing your use case. I gave Feedly a try, and it works pretty well.
I also tried "inoreader" and I can't decide which one I prefer yet. Both look pretty solid.
Thanks for using Feedly, Roman!
I have used Shaarli and also got the feeling it was a very good tool. However, I notice that when I want to find some info I mostly regoogle it and Google let's me know that I have visited that page before it even says how many times and last access date.
It seems that I bookmark stuff I find relevant and worth keeping for future reference (not much "read later"). But rarely use the bookmarks I have saved.
I was torned when delicious went down as I lost a trove of links that were like my internet history of interesting sites and articles. Later I used a Tumblr like microblog (tags, my comment, maybe a screenshot), worked well for archive until they shut down. Now i have a self-hosted wordpress blog (but find it rare to keep feeding it) and Google Chrome bookmarks because they get synced, are natively in the browser. I tend to save only very good pages or pages that solve a very specific problem that took me long time to find.
On the subject of tagging bookmarks, one thing that worked really well was tagging each link with 1 to 5 stars.
Beyond links, the problem of how to organise the information we have found interesting (bookmarks, webclips, microblog,...) remains unsolved.
I didn't even notice there are a "visit count" and "last date visit" on Google search :) It's actually weird because this information is sometimes missing even though we did visit the page (and the link color is purple)
I agree it's faster to google again (except for specific information we had a hard time to find, as you said).
Like you I used Tumblr to archive links. I didn't feed it for 6 years (wow !) but it's actually still online.
However, I find it handy to have sort of a "clean history" of what we did actually read over the months and the years, and what we get from it. It produces the same effect with blogging or journaling: we become more conscious about what we consume, asking questions like "What piece of information is useful here ?", "What am I here for ?", "How would I sum up what I just read ?", "How can I implement it ?". Like being more mindful.
Of course, making that extra-effort takes time, and it slows down our browsing experience. That's why most of us don't do it I guess.
Your technique to tag bookmarks with 1 to 5 stars is interesting. So you differentiate what's really awesome from the casual bookmarks.
In the end, Organizational and Productivity tools are tricky, because you need to find out what works best for you. It requires you to be pro-active, to try a bunch of it, and see if you can stick with it over time.
I agree with you. Most likely while we keep curious we will, from time to time, look for a better way to do things (like saving bookmarks).
About the star system, I would tag this page here as "bookmarks, organisation, dev, ****", while one of those curated lists of awesome software would probably got "*****".
I also found that if we do take the time to feed those "note to self" blogs we get something like better consciousness (or something like that) about what we have been doing. It also demonstrates that you did something with all that online time :)
Currently I'm using Pocket, but frankly I find this overwhelming. I love reading and learning so my Pocket is filled with tons of articles I want to read one day.
I found your solution interesting but also it's also comforting to know I'm not the only one who hoards articles for "later" and thinks of ways to hoard them better. xD
Hehehe it's a good thing to be curious about so many things, only that our to-read list keeps expandig to infinite !
I don't save that many links so I use bookmarks: they have a name, metadata, they can be searched and automatically synchronize between devices.
I used to use Instapaper but not that much lately.
I still have a Pinboard with a bunch of links as well
Bookmarks with meta sounds good. I probably don't use them at their full potential. Firefox support tags natively, but it looks like it needs an extension with Chrome (like EverSync).
I meant the basic metadata you get when adding a bookmark :D
I don't use tags, just folders.
Again, I don't have thousands and thousands of links.
Most of the times I end up using google anyway to go back to the page (because I did not remember I had it already saved in the bookmarks :D)
Another option under solution 2 is Workona which allows you to separate your tabs into workspaces and share workspaces with others.
Full Disclosure: I know the founder and I have been a user tester. But I do actually like and use it in my daily life.
Just started using worka this week and I'm really loving it so far
One question: when I try to bookmark existing link again, does it add same link or it inform me that is already in the list?
p.s. more up-to-date and modern fork according to original author can be found here:
github.com/shaarli/Shaarli
Sorry for the late reply,
I use Vivaldi as my browser and the features that browser has gives me the ways I can easily save things for later without having to get an extension.
I can easily add and manage notes/links. They can either be a hotkey away or I also have them on the sidebar Vivaldi has so I can easily browse them.
I didn't know about Vivaldi. I gave it a try and it looks like the next generation web browser, with awsome tab previews and features we only see in extensions for other browsers.
It also looks proc consuming on my laptop.
I test internet research productivity tools. I believe there is no one size fits all product yet. Bookmarks are only valuable if they can be found and utilized when needed. For this most people need saved links to resurface when using google searches. There are three products that I am aware of that immediately show you bookmark results along side of your google searches. I have only tested and used Chrome extensions for the following...
Raindrop.io is a good fit for many and for free you can manage large link collections.
If you want to store links with sensitive data, log ins and passwords, I'd use Roboform. It is the only password manager with bookmarks, secure notes and log ins. Making it easy to log right into a site saved. The bookmark folders are about the same as most browser folder bookmark systems, if that works for you.
Start.me has a unique market position with a tabbed based start page that you can store bookmarks, widgets such as rss and weather. Much like the iGoogle pages of long ago only more modern.
Personally I use Diigo premium. Tags, screenshots, sticky notes saved to webpages, annotate, highlight, share, outliners and returned results in google are very helpful. I only wish it had column views but ... it is as close to perfect as I have found.
Just my 2 cents worth..
Check out notion.so
Yes, I have been playing with it some. Got annoyed with image sizing. Need to go back in there and play some more. It is a very impressive application. Like dropbox paper and airtable had a beautiful baby! lol
Yea in the last few months that it has got a lot better. Especially with table support.
I end up with this solution :
getpocket.com for easy bookmarking, I put a lot of tag
workflowy.com/ if it's not from the web (a book or stuff like that) as part of my GTD tree.
Sometime I forgot to save in pocket and use my browser history, and I have to say that in all competitor (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE, Opera) search is not so great...
I tried Pocket, indeed, so simple. I like the one-click-to-bookmark extension that comes with it, with the possibility to add tags on the go (unlike with feedly or inoreader). Tags are surely a key to find informations afterward.
In that sense, it is very similar to "Google Keep".
I didn't know about workflowy, thanks for mentioning it here.
I created an account and started to play with it. It looks fantastic because of its simplicity, and how fast it is. All the articles by Frank are fascinating to go beyond its basic usage. I'd like to implement GTD too and see if it fits me.
I use Pocket a lot, coupled with its browser extensions. One click on the icon in the browser, and the link is automatically sync'ed across all my devices, with support for offline reading. I also like the search and suggestions features. But will soon switch to a self-hosted instance of Wallabag, as an Open Source alternative.
It sounds great, I want to try the self-hosted Wallabag too !