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Attributes are keys to values that describe items. For example, some of the attributes of Bookmarks Content items are: name, url, shortcut, tags, comments, date added, visit count.
Although most attributes do not require any further explanation, in this section we explain those that do…
There are two ways of having relationships bookmarks in use by different browser apps.
Most installed web browser applications (Safari, Firefox, etc.) support folders of bookmarks, allowing you to keep bookmarks in “parent” folders that can be “grandparent” folders, etc. In this way, each bookmarks content item has a lineage. The arrangement of folders in the entire bookmarks content is called a hierarchy.
Most online bookmarks storage services (Google Bookmarks, Delicious) do not support a folders. Instead, they allow you to attach tags, also called labels to each of your bookmarks.
For compatibility, BookMacster supports both Folders and Tags. Firefox also supports both Folders and Tags.
The advantage of the Folders 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 Folders, it’s no problem:
Computers
Apple
Food
Fruits
&
Apple
However, 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 engineers of the browser or service and ultimately a personal, organizational preference.
One way to solve the problem of tag organization finding fruit instead of computers is to get in the habit of giving each bookmark many 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 BookMacster does, with its Content Filter. (Select the desired tags in the Cloud at the top and click All.)
BookMacster helps you to translate bookmarks between applications that use Folder and Tag relationships by fabricating folders from tags and fabricating tags from folders during import and export operations.
There are three URLs which BookMacster stores for a bookmark:
Current URL is the URL that would currently be used if you clicked Visit, and the URL that would be passed to a Client during an Export.
Suggested URL is likely a better, newer one which BookMacster has received, usually as the result of a redirection from the website, during a Verify operation.
Prior URL is just a holding place for a URL that was replaced, in case you want to revert to it later.
You can see all three URL of a selected bookmark by opening the Inspector panel and opening its bottom drawer.
Clicking one of the buttons on the left will swap the indicated URL values.
Clicking one of the buttons on the right will visit the site addressed by the adjacent URL.
BookMacster’s main menu and contextual menus contain Visit menu items which visit websites when clicked.
(You can also visit items by doubleclicking them in the Main Window). The Visit this bookmark with: attribute in the Inspector panel sets which web browser is used when you execute such a command.
You can select which web browser will be used for any particular bookmark in the Inspector panel.
We’ll explain the two bottom choices:
Your Default Browser (whatever) Your Macintosh account has a default browser set to use in opening links from other applications like BookMacster. Selecting this option tells BookMacster to use that default browser.
To change your default browser, activate Safari, then click menu Preferences ▸ General and find Default web browser. More info is available in this Apple article.
(We have noted that if you have more than one copy of your default browser installed, the Mac OS sometimes gets confused and defaults to using Safari instead. Also, if your default browser is on another disk drive, it will show in this menu as (Unknown), even though it will probably work correctly.)
Use Document Default Settings Selecting this option tells BookMacster to use the browser that you have set as default in the Bookmarkshelf document’s Settings ▸ General
Last Modified is an attribute supported by Firefox, Shiira and of course, BookMacster. It is imported or exported to Firefox or Shiira during an Import or Export operation.
BookMacster updates the Last Modified of an item whenever any of its nontrivial attributes are changed. In addition, BookMacster updates the Last Modified of a folder whenever it gains or loses a child item. Therefore, when you move an item from one folder to another, although the Last Modified date of the item itself (or any of its descendants, if it is a folder) is not changed, the Last Modified date of the old and new parent folders are set to the current date and time.
As practiced by Firefox, Last Modifed is the last time that any of the bookmark’s attributes such as Name or Comments (Description) were modified. Moving the bookmark does not count as a change in attributes, and neither does changing tags (probably because Firefox considers ‘parent’ and ‘tags’ to be ‘relationships’ and not ‘attributes’). Note that the Last Modified attribute has to do with the bookmark itself and not with the bookmarked website. That is, Last Modified does not change when the site’s webmaster changes the content of the site.
Finally, note that, as of Firefox 3.5, the Last Modified attribute, although updated as noted above, is not visible in Firefox itself.
This section contains “how it works” technical information that will not concern most users.
Say that you export a Bookmarkshelf containing a certain bookmark to Firefox, add some tags to it within Firefox, move it to a different location, and then later import from Firefox to this same Bookmarkshelf. BookMacster needs to know that this is not a new bookmark, and also needs to find the existing associated bookmark in the Bookmarkshelf, move it, and add the new tags to it.
Thankfully, all browsers place persistent identifiers (numbers) on each of their content items that are unique except in a few rare cases involving OmniWeb, Delicious, and separators in Camino. We refer to these identifiers as external identifiers. BookMacster remembers the external identifier when it imports an item, and uses it to recognize moves or changes of items that may be re-imported repeatedly.
Because different clients require their external identifiers to be in different formats, BookMacster stores an external identifier for each client that the item has been imported from or exported to.
You can view the external identifiers of an item in the side drawer of the Inspector panel.
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