"Google Bookmarks will no longer be supported"

[thedivclass]

Hi there, big fan of yawas - just a quick query:

As Google Bookmarks will "no longer be supported" after September 30th, 2021 [source] - are there any plans to migrate to an alternative bookmarking service? If so, might I suggest pinboard - which, despite being a paid service, has many blessings, including; descriptions of unlimited length, a privacy focus and a plethora of community creators and resources.

Thank you for providing and maintaining this excellent utility

[ldenoue]

@thedivclass thanks for the heads up.
Perhaps we could add several options to pick which backend storage to use?

• google bookmarks (soon to be obsolete)
• google docs (maybe, I haven't checked)
• pinboard

What other service could we support?

[thedivclass]

Sounds excellent - more the merrier!

Suggested considerations:

• pinboard
• raindrop
• google sheets
• (google bookmarks)

Alternative considerations - less/not suitable:

• Notion
• Evernote
• Outliners: Workflowy, Dynalist, Roam Research

Thanks again

[ldenoue]

@thedivclass I just got an idea: why not use the built-in chrome.bookmark API?
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/bookmarks/

It only has title and url fields but we could store the highlight inside the title like TITLE#__#ANNOTATIONS

And when users first start Yawas, they could be asked Do you want to export your Google Bookmarks to Chrome Bookmarks?

[thedivclass]

While any solution would be greatly appreciated, my only concern with using titles in this fashion is if the archive of bookmarks becomes illegible as a historical and searchable resource. I can appreciate this may be a nonissue for users who predominantly sought web highlighting functionality from yawas. Personally I don't fall into that camp, but given this discussion is about replacing google bookmarks, a product without any meaningful updates in a decade, it wouldn't surprise me if I was in the slim minority here.

(An accessible and orderly bookmark log was one of the key determinants in suggesting pinboard initially - perhaps this can be considered or reassessed at some point in the future?)

If this is the chosen implementation, could Firefox bookmarks be included as a 'Google-free' alternative? (It too lacks the description field).

Once again, thank you!

[ldenoue]

Firefox implements the same API for bookmarks, and also has an options to sync them across several Firebox browsers. I'll do some testing about adding long text inside the title field to see the limit.

[ldenoue]

@thedivclass implemented saving to chrome.bookmarks and added a button on the popup that lets you import all your google bookmarks into chrome.bookmarks.
See the last 2 commits: https://github.com/ldenoue/yawas/commits/master

[thedivclass]

awesome work, thanks!

[thedivclass]

Hey @ldenoue, loving the update, it looks like the Firefox title field limit is 4096 characters - to extend the number of highlights that can be taken (and stored) on any given webpage, could an option to use truncated text excerpts be included, e.g. <<Identifier~~End of excerpt>>?

[thedivclass]

Apologies, just seen this thread is closed - added as a new 'issue' #19. Thanks