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Jerry Krinock
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Re: Newbie-Do not know where to start
Reply #4 - Dec 1st, 2009 at 5:21am
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OK, BookMacster version 0.5.0 is now available.  In the menu click BookMacster ▸ Check for Update.

nonego wrote on Nov 30th, 2009 at 8:52pm:
In Firefox menu Bookmarks ▸ Organize Bookmarks I then rearranged my bookmarks for the critical ones. I have not invoked the Firefox.bkslf in BookMacster yet.

Should my next steps be:
(1) delete the current Firefox.bkslf
(2) create a new Firefox.bkslf
(3) rearrange the bookmarks in BookMacster
(4) Save and Export

Regarding (1) and (2), you could either delete the current Firefox.bkmslf and create a new one, or else re-use it by clicking in the menu BookmarkshelfDelete All Content, or simply by doing an import with Import's Clean Slate checked on.  I'd re-use the old one.

You're telling me that the collection now in Firefox is now your Gold/Standard/Master.  Therefore, we're going to Import from Firefox.  (Maybe in the How-To documentation we need to talk about a Gold/Standard/Master.)  In the Import list, add/activate a single Client, Firefox. Check ON the Clean Slate under the list, then in the menu click Bookmarkshelf ▸ Import (Firefox) to do it.

Now, after you've imported, yes proceed to step (3).  Theoretically you already did this in Firefox, but look them over again.

Then, save, and then finally, step (4), exporting to the other browsers.  As I said in my earlier message, you might want to do them one at a time, saving Firefox (your Gold/Standard/Master) for last.

nonego wrote on Nov 30th, 2009 at 8:52pm:
1. The original separators in Firefox have been replace by space-taking items labelled "(no title)". I am unable to remove these in Firefox. I want to replace them with the visually better line.

I've seen Firefox get items like that before but can't recall the pathology.  Certainly Firefox should not be displaying items that it can't delete.  See how they look after being imported to BookMacster.  Click on one of them and open BookMacster's Inspector.  If it's a real separator, it should appear in the Content view as a horizontal line, but in the Inspector its name will be "Separator" and (in BookMacster 0.5.0) this name is not editable.

nonego wrote on Nov 30th, 2009 at 8:52pm:
2. Is there a way, in the Duplicates window of BookMacster, to identify from which browser the bookmark came? That way I could retain bookmarks from the preferred browser and delete the others.

There is now (in BookMacster 0.5.0).  However, using the procedure described thus far, of course this is not going to tell you anything because every single item was just imported from Firefox and only Firefox.  However, for future reference, the list of Clients: is now shown in the Inspector panel, near the bottom.

nonego wrote on Nov 30th, 2009 at 8:52pm:
3. I presume that the "Delete All" button removes every instance of the bookmarks identified in the Duplicates window, ie not one of the original bookmarks remains on any of the browsers.

No, it deletes all except one in each Duplicate Group.  For example, if you have three bookmarks to apple.com, it will delete two of them, leaving one.  This will also, of course, cause the Duplicate Group to disappear since one bookmark is no longer a duplicate!  This is now explained (in BookMacster 0.5.0) in a tooltip on that button.  You don't have any control over which one is not deleted, but to see the algorithm (i.e. rules), click the "?" button in the Duplicates report and it will take you to the relevant page in the Help Book.

nonego wrote on Nov 30th, 2009 at 8:52pm:
4. Is there a way to mark/show which of the duplicates has been Marked "Allowed"?

If you were looking at the Duplicates report, that was another bug.  When you mark a bookmark as "Duplicate Allowed", it can't be part of a Duplicate Group any more, so it should immediately disappear from the report.  It now does (in BookMacster 0.5.0).

Elsewhere, you can also see the value of "Duplicate Allowed" (1) in the Content Outline, by clicking either the 2nd or 3rd column header and choosing "Duplicate Allowed", or (2) in the Inspector Panel, there is such a checkbox left center.  To see a list of all bookmarks for which you have "Duplicate Allowed", use Reports ▸ Find.

--------

Regarding the bug in exporting Firefox which I mentioned in my message a few hours ago, that turned out to be a rare thing that probably would not have affected you.  Under rare circumstances, the app would hang during the export.  It's fixed in 0.5.0, though.

Thanks again for the feedback.
  

Jerry Krinock
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Re: Newbie-Do not know where to start
Reply #3 - Nov 30th, 2009 at 9:40pm
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Al, while stepping through the answers to your questions I just discovered a couple bugs in exporting Firefox bookmarks.  Save your work and check back in a few hours.  We're going to update BookMacster again before you finish this.
  

Jerry Krinock
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Re: Newbie-Do not know where to start
Reply #2 - Nov 30th, 2009 at 8:52pm
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Jerry
Thank you for your extensive reply.

1. Yes, indeed, I would like to sync my bookmarks across several browsers. (Sometimes sites do not use the same standards as does Firefox and I need to use another browser.)
I can appreciate the problem with the different browsers and the fact that one might use different names for the same item in the different browsers. Thus my desire will need to be modified.

2. I think your Help Book is very well written and that if I had used Bookdog, I would have benefited a great deal. As it is, trying to put it all together to create a HowTo in my brain requires a multi-tasking there that exceeds the capacity of my neural circuitry. Smiley


=========================
After my initial creation of a Camino-Firefox-Opera-Safari bookshelf and seeing what had happened, I created a Firefox.bkslf and deleted a large number of duplicates. (I had 983.)

In Firefox menu Bookmarks ▸ Organize Bookmarks I then rearranged my bookmarks for the critical ones. I have not invoked the Firefox.bkslf in BookMacster yet.

Should my next steps be:
(1) delete the current Firefox.bkslf
(2) create a new Firefox.bkslf
(3) rearrange the bookmarks in BookMacster
(4) Save and Export

==========================
1. The original separators in Firefox have been replace by space-taking items labelled "(no title)". I am unable to remove these in Firefox. I want to replace them with the visually better line.

2. Is there a way, in the Duplicates window of BookMacster, to identify from which browser the bookmark came? That way I could retain bookmarks from the preferred browser and delete the others.

3. I presume that the "Delete All" button removes every instance of the bookmarks identified in the Duplicates window, ie not one of the original bookmarks remains on any of the browsers.

4. Is there a way to mark/show which of the duplicates has been Marked "Allowed"?

Al Maloney
  
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Jerry Krinock
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Re: Newbie-Do not know where to start
Reply #1 - Nov 30th, 2009 at 7:21pm
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nonego wrote on Nov 30th, 2009 at 8:27am:
Using v 0.1.9 with Snow Leopard 10.6.2 and Firefox 3.6b4, Minefield latest nightly build...

Al,  you're ahead of us there with Minefield.  Have not tested BookMacster with Minefield, but it seems like that is not an issue for you, so we'll read on...

nonego wrote on Nov 30th, 2009 at 8:27am:
I attempted to sync Firefox, Camino, Opera, and Safari.

By "sync", I'm going assume you mean that you would like all of the bookmarks in all of the four browsers to be copied to all of the other browsers, in the same folder-locations, and that you would like no duplicate bookmarks in the final result.  Now, in saying that, please realize that I've chosen one of the maybe four hundred ways there are to copy bookmarks among four web browsers, and there are still unanswered questions.  For example, say that in Firefox you have a bookmark to apple.com named "Apple Computer" in the Bookmarks Bar, and in Safari you have a bookmark to apple.com named "Apple" in the Bookmarks Menu.  When these two bookmarks get combined into one and copied to all the browsers, should the result be named "Apple" or "Apple Computer"?  And should it go into the Bookmarks Bar or Bookmarks Menu?

nonego wrote on Nov 30th, 2009 at 8:27am:
The instructions were so complicated that I gave up trying to understand them

Well, BookMacster has a Help Book which documents what everything does, which is fine if you can take the time to understand everything but we don't have a "How To..." guide.  We're working on that.

nonego wrote on Nov 30th, 2009 at 8:27am:
... simply added the 4 browsers then saved the resulting document.

I'll assume that you created a New Bookmarkshelf, and during the "wizard", in the Import Clients dialog you selected all four browsers, and also in the Export Clients dialog you selected all four browsers.  So, in the Bookmarkshelf's Settings ▸ Clients you would have these four browsers listed in both the Import and Export list.

nonego wrote on Nov 30th, 2009 at 8:27am:
This resulted in a total destruction of the organization of my bookmarks in every browser.

Again, given that there are 400 possible settings, if you set your Bookmarkshelf to the 156th possible setting, but you wanted the 293rd possible setting, it might look like that.

nonego wrote on Nov 30th, 2009 at 8:27am:
I have now spent 8 hours trying to correct the order in Firefox, and have yet to start on the others. (I had hoped to sync the bookmarks in all the browsers so that there would be the same.)
I have now created a BookmarkShelf for Firefox only and have removed many of the duplicates that resulted from my previous attempt.

After your 8 hours of work, and indeed at intervals during the time, you should save your work.  Note: Save, do not Export.  Saving just saves the Bookmarkshelf so you can get it back like any other document.  Export sends it to the other browsers.

nonego wrote on Nov 30th, 2009 at 8:27am:
I fear using v 0.2.0. It might undo all of my work.

You should definitely use 0.2.0 because there are bugs that have been fixed.  It will not be worse than 0.1.9 for what you are doing.

nonego wrote on Nov 30th, 2009 at 8:27am:
What steps can I take to maintain my current organization of my Firefox bookmarks...

I am assuming that you did this organization work in BookMacster.  (If you did it in Firfox, by clicking in Firefox' menu Bookmarks ▸ Organize Bookmarks, let me know because the more steps must be done first.)

* In BookMacster, take one last look at the Content tab and verify that all of the bookmarks and folders are what you want to see in Firefox, Safari, Camino and Opera.
* Click the tab Settings ▸ Clients.  In the bottom adjust Export settings so that they look like the following screenshot.  Import settings are immaterial at the moment.

* Theoretically, all you do now is click in the menu Bookmarkshelf ▸ Export, and the Content will be exported to Firefox, Safari, Camino and Opera 10.  You might want to take them one at a time, though.  You can do that by, in the Clients ▸ Export list, un-checking three of the boxes before clicking Export.
* Save the Bookmarkshelf for future doing imports, adding Agents, etc.

nonego wrote on Nov 30th, 2009 at 8:27am:
In v 0.1.9 and 0.2.0, when I attempt to access items (Forums and Support) from the Help menu, I am directed to Minefield despite the fact that I am running Firefox. There is nothing in the Preferences to designate a default browser for this.

It uses your system default browser, identified by its "bundle identifier".  Apparently, Mozilla has done the same thing with Minefiled 3.6 as they have done previously, which is that both Firefox and Minefield have the same bundle identifier ("org.mozilla.firefox").  So, when another app such as BookMacster asks to open a window in your default browser, sometimes you might get Firefox and sometimes you might get Minefield.  I haven't checked this out lately, but that's what I've seen before.  The same random behavior should be seen if you click a link in, for example, an email message.  Of course, "random" means that you could click links 100 times in, say, Mail.app and always get Firefox.  There may be a pattern to it, but it is not anything that the other app (BookMacster) can control, unless we add a preference, which we could, but since people don't use these menu items that often, my initial conclusion is that this would add more confusion than usefulness.  Your "system default browser" should be the correct answer – it's just that Firefox/Minefield has mucked things up in your case.

nonego wrote on Nov 30th, 2009 at 8:27am:
The Check for Update correctly accessed Firefox and proceeded to the installation of v 0.2.0

I don't understand that because Check for Update doesn't use a web browser.  It shows you the "Update News" in its own window.

Thank you for your patience.  I hope we can get BookMacster working for you now.
  

Jerry Krinock
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nonego
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Newbie-Do not know where to start
Nov 30th, 2009 at 8:27am
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Using v 0.1.9 with Snow Leopard 10.6.2 and Firefox 3.6b4, Minefield latest nightly build, Camino 2.0.1pre, Opera 10.10, and Safari 4.0.4
I have never used Bookdog.
I attempted to sync Firefox, Camino, Opera, and Safari.
The instructions were so complicated that I gave up trying to understand them and simply added the 4 browsers then saved the resulting document.

This resulted in a total destruction of the organization of my bookmarks in every browser. I have now spent 8 hours trying to correct the order in Firefox, and have yet to start on the others. (I had hoped to sync the bookmarks in all the browsers so that there would be the same.)

I have now created a BookmarkShelf for Firefox only and have removed many of the duplicates that resulted from my previous attempt.

I fear using v 0.2.0. It might undo all of my work.

In v 0.1.9, when I highlighted several bookmarks then deleted them, the highlighting persisted requiring a click elsewhere in the window to clear it. This then resulted in bookmarks and titles being highlighted. I feared that this might result in loss of bookmarks if I inadvertently pushe the Delete button.

In v 0.1.9 and 0.2.0, when I attempt to access items (Forums and Support) from the Help menu, I am directed to Minefield despite the fact that I am running Firefox. There is nothing in the Preferences to designate a default browser for this. The Check for Update correctly accessed Firefox and proceeded to the installation of v 0.2.0
====================
What steps can I take to maintain my current organization of my Firefox bookmarks before I try to use v 0.2.0?

Thank you
Al Maloney
  
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