Bye-bye bookmarks!

Of all the interesting things I did last week - including a long-awaited install of Windows Vista Beta 2 - the one that proved most satisfying was the move away from static, offline bookmarks.

Del.icio.us has been my choice for online bookmark management for a long time now. It was the first application of it's kind that I tried, and a couple of years and a few dozen trials later, nothing else has stuck with me the way del.icio.us has. The only problem I've had with the application really is that I've never had a good enough reason why I preferred it. I've always used it as a website to keep my bookmarks collection safe and to go back once-in-a-while to really hunt for something I thought I had seen earlier. For everyday collection and retrieval of bookmarks though, I've continued to used the built-in Firefox bookmark manager.

That's changed forever now. Yesterday, I let the 'del.icio.us bookmarks' extension completely take over the bookmark system on all three installations of Firefox I use everyday (work, home and Vista beta). The only question I'm asking myself now is why I didn't stick with this extension when I tried it last month. Probably I was too attached to the bookmarks toolbar and couldn't imagine letting it be taken over. Fortunately, the extension doesn't just do a good job replacing the toolbar, it makes it much more powerful.

I'm absolutely convinced that I'm done with offline bookmarks forever. Just one enhancement - the ability to visually tell whether the current web page is bookmarked or not ala Flock - and this is going to be one feature-set too difficult to improve!