Easy Questions
Q. How were you able to get into Shiira's database? Answer: The great people at The Shiira Project have released their code publicly, open source, and said it was OK for my to use their model specifications and some of their code. Again, my sincere thanks to The Shiira Project.
Shiira 2.2 has two bookmarks views: the white Shelf, which appears in a browser window, and new cool black Leopard-like Bookmarks Panel.
Q. In Bookdog's 'File' menu, Shiira is disabled (grayed out). Answer: If you want to manage Shiira bookmarks, click as shown:
Q. Why can't I create a New Empty Bookmarks Document or Save As in Shiira format? Answer: For Shiira, Bookdog does not support "Save As" to a separate file, creating New Empty Bookmarks Documents, or opening standalone Shiira bookmarks files. This is because Shiira bookmarks are an sqlite database. I believe that such a thing would be time-consuming to program without bugs and probably not very useful anyhow. Let me know if you have a need for this feature.
Bookmarks Viewed in the Shiira Application
There are several issues in Shiira 2.2 which users may experience. The Shiira forum shows that other Shiira users have reported some of them.
Since I expect that the excellent and very gracious development team at The Shiira Project will be addressing these issues soon, I have temporarily published this information here, instead of releasing it in Bookdog's documentation, where it might persist for a long time if people don't update Bookdog regularly.
Update, 2007 Oct 09: The issues listed below are all still outstanding in Shiira 2.2 Build 070929.
However, using Bookdog to manage bookmarks is a good workaround for these issues in Shiira 2.2!
BACKGROUND: HOW BOOKMARKS ARE VIEWED IN SHIIRA 2.2
Shiira 2.2 has two bookmarks views: the white Shelf, which appears in a browser window, and new cool black Leopard-like Bookmarks Panel.
Both have their capabilities, advantages, and disadvantages.
There are three ways to view the white Shelf:
1. Click the brown "Shelf" tool in toolbar.
2. Click the "Shelf" button on bottom of of Bookmark Panel,
(which my mouse is pointing to in the screenshot above).
3. Enter "shiira://shelf" into address field.
There are also three ways to view the black Bookmarks Panel:
1. In the menu, click Bookmark > Bookmarks Panel.
2. Type the keyboard shortcut: ⌥⌘B.
3. Click the black "Bookmark Panel" tool in toolbar.
ISSUE #1
Open the Bookmark Panel and move a bookmark.
Quit Shiira.
Re-launch Shiira.
Open the black Bookmark Panel again.
The moved bookmark is gone.
ISSUE #2
The Shelf contains three "Bookmark" collections as shown at the left. The last two contain Safari and Firefox bookmarks as expected, but the first one contains Shiira+Safari+Firefox bookmarks collections mixed together in an apparently random order. I believe this is confusing to the user, and that it would be much better if the top "Bookmark" collection contained only the Shiira bookmarks, like the Bookmark Panel. Having the Safari and Firefox bookmarks available is handy, but they should be clearly shown as such and not mixed with bookmarks that have been set in Shiira. In Preferences > Bookmark, you can turn off showing the "Safari Bookmark" and "Firefox Bookmark" collections. This removes them from the left pane shown above, but Safari and Firefox bookmarks are still mixed in to the "Bookmark" collection, even after re-launching Shiira.
ISSUE #3 (related)
In the Shelf, you can Delete items within Safari Bookmarks and Firefox bookmarks using the contextual menu. The items stay deleted until you re-launch Shiira, then they are back. This is because Safari and Firefox bookmarks files themselves are never touched. Indeed, this is good behavior; I don't think you'd really want to be actually deleting Safari bookmarks when you are working in Shiira. But the appearance that you can delete them is confusing, and scary.
ISSUE #4
In the Bookmark Panel, there is no way to delete a bookmark or folder.
ISSUE #5
Launch Shiira.
Show the Bookmark Panel
Doubleclick a bookmark to visit the site
Click the "Shelf" button at the bottom of the Bookmark Panel.
The Shelf will show incorrectly show that all Bookmark collections are empty, such as this view of the "Bookmark" collection:
If you then click on one of the collections, such as "Safari Bookmark" it gets even more weird:
ISSUE #6
In neither Shelf nor the Bookmark Panel is there a way to rename a bookmark or folder.
ISSUE #7
In the Shelf, you can multiple-select items and use the contextual menu item Delete, but only the first item gets deleted.
ISSUE #8
It would seem to be less confusing to the user if all the bookmarks capabilities were consolidated into either the white Shelf or the black Bookmarks Panel, and the other was eliminated.