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Date Last Modified: 24 April 2008

Date Last Checked: 24 April 2008

Thanks to: Firefox and its Add-On writers

1. You can also download the entire thing as a single file in Netscape bookmark format or XBEL format.

There are at least one thousand six hundred (1,600) one thousand seven hundred (1,700) one thousand eight hundred (1,800) one thousand nine hundred (1,900) two thousand one hundred (2,100) different links on the new pages. I don't especially feel like that's "enough" - no, really - so feel obligated to send me any links you think I should have. Also, new categories and re-ordering might be a good idea as well; if you have an idea, send it.

I would very much like to know how I could duplicate HTML anchors inside a Firefox bookmark list, and have them transfer... Because, right now I've got a few deliberately duplicated links, and I also have NO way to make cross-references. #*$*&#%@^.

The old links page is here. It has not been updated since December 2007.

To repeat myself: the reason I am doing this, is that manually adding a link onto the old links page was enough of a pain that I rarely bothered - and never with my own links from my own browsing. That seemed Stupid. Of course, I don't want to give some bedamned marketing website (say, del.icio.us, owned by Yahoo, which might be bought by Microsoft soon) my list of links, because they will Commit Evil with it. And bookmark files are nearly simple... they ought to be transferable and change-able and all that. And, they are, to some degree, I found.

What I wanted (and still want), is to be able to add bookmarks at will during my normal usage, check them all whenever I feel like it, and periodically put the whole complete package on the webserver in a nice old-school doesn't-drop-cookies-doesn't-track-your-browsing sort of way.

So: I

• took Iceweasel as a base, because it had the most tools easily available
• added in all the Lynx browser's bookmarks (800+)
• added all the Links page links (740)
• made a large number of categories in Iceweasel's bookmark file
• tossed each link into the right category (mostly)
• scanned through to remove bullshit text from the title and description (you might not believe just how much bullshit there was in there)
• checked all the links for validity (the idiot computer-did-it way, not the I-looked-at-each-site-myself way)
• exported the Iceweasel bookmark file
• ran 'bk2site' on the exported file (backups!)
• moved the files into the right spot on my local drive
• transferred all the modified files up to the webserver

I don't know why I couldn't figure out the configuration files for 'bk2site' earlier. Sometimes I'm stupid, I guess. It was NOT hard to do.

Things left to do:

• if possible, get 'xbel-utils' to work, and put up a version of the links file as XBEL format as well as bookmark files for Firefox, Opera, Lynx and MS-IE
• go check for valid links again because by the time I get done with all this, some will have died...
• automate everything so I have about three or four steps to do all of the above, rather than thirty or more

Right now, it takes about eight commands in two different environments to go from Iceweasel bookmarks to fresh set-of-links-pages on the website.