scott wrote on Jan 30
th, 2010 at 2:15am:
How do I set up BookMacster to do this:
- I have 4 places that I have bookmarks: Safari, FireFox, Google Bookmarks, Delicious (and actually Chrome also, but we can add that in later)
- All I want it to "sync" the bookmarks between all clients (do you understand what sync means or should I define it?)
The only exception to mirrored syncing is: I don't want to ever delete anything at Delicious. (Delicious gets changes, mods, additions, but no deletions: call that "archive")
That defines it good enough.
scott wrote on Jan 30
th, 2010 at 2:15am:
So how do I set up BookMacster? Step me though it please...
First of all, use the New Bookmarkshelf wizard...
- In menu click File ▸ New Bookmarkshelf
- Select "Manage bookmarks among Multiple Browsers", then "OK"
- Select a Delicious account, Firefox, Google Bookmarks account, and Safari, then "Continue"
- These Clients will be pre-selected for you in Export Clients. Just click "Continue".
- Accept default "I'd rather Import and Export manually" and "OK".
- Choose first Import and whether or not you want to skip initial dupes, then "OK".
- Name the document "AllMyBookmarks" or something like that, then "OK". It may take a few minutes to import and download all of your bookmarks.
- After it's done, to meet your special requirement with Delicious, click in the toolbar Settings ▸ Clients and in the Export list, in the Delicious row, un-check "Clean Slate".
- Save the Bookmarkshelf document
scott wrote on Jan 30
th, 2010 at 2:15am:
I hate to have to start another topic, but it "seems" that every case is different (though I think that appearance is what's causing problems)
You are doing it correctly. New topics give better results for people searching the forum archives.
scott wrote on Jan 30
th, 2010 at 2:15am:
I think the average user wants to keep their bookmarks the same regardless of what browser/client they are using, which I would call "syncing."
This is what you get when using the New Bookmarkshelf wizard dialogs and accept all of the default settings.
scott wrote on Jan 30
th, 2010 at 2:15am:
Any more complex mixture of common/shared and client unique bookmark sets should be clearly separate (like "auto" and "manual" mode)
I realize that the Clients tab is a problem, but haven't figured out what to do with it yet. Seriously, maybe we should put a big warning on the Clients tab of Settings. The first time a user enters it, instead of showing the controls, just put a statement that says "Warning. You are about the enter the Clients tab. This has lots of checkboxes and scary stuff which allow you to customize the way your Bookmarkshelf will import and export from each Client. If the New Document wizard set it up for you, and you just want bookmarks synced in the normal sense, and things are working OK, you have no need to go in here. Are you sure you want to look at this? [Yes, I can take it] [No (Default button)].
scott wrote on Jan 30
th, 2010 at 2:15am:
I'm still very unclear about the CleanSlate issue
Well, in your case Clean Slate was needed, to never delete bookmarks in Delicious. It's there for people who need it.
scott wrote on Jan 30
th, 2010 at 2:15am:
it seem that has just created another layer in the old BookDog scheme -- never having permanent database of bookmarks. If this architecture was used in iTunes, we'd all shoot ourselves in the head!
Long story short: "Don't get me started" with iTunes.
"Syncing" can only be done between two databases at a time. Address Book, Mail, iTunes etc. simply sync a local database with the cloud or an iPod. And that's what Bookdog does with a "Migration". One source, one destination. To sync more than two in Bookdog, you need to write an Automator action, and some astute users have actually done it, with three Clients. With four, it becomes even more complicated. You'd have to do something like this...
- Sync A to B
- Sync B to C
- Sync A to C
- Sync A to D
- Sync B to D
- Sync C to D
Here are some of the problems:
- You'll get different results by doing these in different orders.
- In each of the syncs you need to specify which one is "favored", and set the other checkboxes in the Bookdog Migration window, some of which are equivalent to some of the settings in the Clients tab. It's not any simpler.
- It is easy to lose attributes. For example, if you sync from Firefox to Safari, tags will be lost because Safari does not support tags. Then if you sync from Safari to Delicious, you've got no more tags.
- If anything goes wrong with any of the syncs, you've got a holy mess.
The paradigm in BookMacster for this use case is much easier to understand.
- You import from Clients.
- BookMacster supports all attributes. You edit, reorganize, verify, delete as desired.
- You export to Clients.
scott wrote on Jan 30
th, 2010 at 2:15am:
If you then added "history" to BookMacster it would then be better than Apple syncing (cause being able to undo changes/mods/deletes in the syncing of Address Book is what is sadly missing on the Mac)
Yes, history requires a separate database. BookMacster and Time Machine together do what you want, if you take the .bkmslf file back in time. We'll save anything more for "BookMacster 2.0".
scott wrote on Jan 30
th, 2010 at 2:15am:
My head's spinning again... This program seems sooooooo complicated... help...
I hope that starting over again with the New Bookmarkshelf wizard, as described above, will make it simpler. But then I realize that we need a way to get other new users to do that, instead of agonizing over all the checkboxes and settings in the Clients tab.
Thanks again for the feedback.