Link Saver

Ever find yourself saving a shit ton of links into notepad or bookmarks?

I made this app to solve that problem and hold all your bookmarks in an easy-to-access interface.

I find it much more convenient than any text editor or bookmark system of any browser I've ever used.

The app is hosted here, and it is one of those apps that you have to signup to use.

If you are like me, and are resistant to signing up to a site unless you can try it out first, you can directly access the client part of the app here.

If you remember this post, that was the alpha version of this app.

You get 5MB worth of space to store your links. That's way more than you'll ever need.

No seriously, it took me spamming 400 links (to google) to even consume 1%.

A list of versions [alpha 0.1.0 - 1.1.0] can be found here

A list of 1.x versions [1.0.0 - 1.2.0] can be found here

Browser Compatability

Because I designed this app in Chrome, it works best in Chrome and other Webkit-based browsers. Here's a nice, long list of webkit browsers for your convenience.

Chrome/Webkit: Flawless

Firefox/Gecko: Some weird goofs in drag n' drop and visual alignment, but overall, it shouldn't be problematic

Opera/Presto: Flawless

Internet Explorer/Trident: There's a whole section for that below

Netscape: Lol

Elinks/Lynx/w3m/other text mode browsers: The lack of javascript support means no

Internet Explorer

I think the latest version of Internet Explorer 9 implements "standards mode" which is invoked by using the "<!DOCTYPE html>" tag.

I wouldn't recommend using Internet Explorer because I have no easy way of testing it to make sure it works (I have linux, lolol), so I can't guarantee functionality, but if you must use it:

IE 1 - 8: Don't bother. IE 8 and below are too below the HTML5 spec to even come close to working. As far as I've seen, there is no support for JSON and localStorage, which are the basic parts that make up the very heart of the app, don't know who in the right mind would even use these versions anyway.

IE 9: This is a weird one. I had access to IE 9 a few days ago and decided to test my app, and it worked. I tested IE 9 today on my old Windows 7 partition, and it didn't work at all. That's why I think there might be two versions of IE 9, an old one and a new one. Make sure you have the latest IE 9 if you're going to use that.

IE 10: I have not tested it, but according to multiple sources, IE10 has much better support for HTML5 AND basic JS and CSS standards, meaning it might work flawlessly. But I don't know for sure. Maybe someone could be so kind to boot up their windows 8 and let me know how it works.

EDIT: I just tested it on IE9 (again) and 10. IE 9 can load the client part flawlessy, but for some reason shits itself when loading the client from the server (the full version). IE 10 works great except for one flaw, which is that the Select and Remove paradigm pages, for no conceivable reason, do not render at all. So you can't use paradigms in IE10.

All in all, I suggest Chrome/Webkit, Firefox/Gecko, or Opera/Presto, those work great.

Tablets

I haven't tested it on a tablet to see how it works design-wise, but as long as the web browser can give a landscape layout, and not a portrait, it should work and look fine. I'm not sure how bookmarklets work on it, but all in all, I think it should work fine.

The closest I've gotten to testing it on a tablet is through this website, and it rendered fine.

Phones

Unless you can get your phone's browser to run in landscape (that means wider than it is tall), I wouldn't try to run the site, because the UI would probably be choked up from the narrow screen width. I mean--it would work as long as the device follows HTML5 standards, it just probably wouldn't look pretty. Remember what device I designed this on.

Link Saver

Comments

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TheMajormel 2013-05-19 19:53:59

damn,nice idea

B1KMusic 2013-05-19 19:53:59

Thanks :)

Cyberdevil 2013-05-22 08:20:26

This is a pretty neat idea, but personally... I'd rather stick to .txt files, it seems like an easier way to work with batches of URLs. Easy to paste a long list straight into linkrr and go through all in one swoop.

B1KMusic 2013-05-22 08:20:26 (Updated 2013-05-24 18:06:26)

Before you dismiss it as too much overhead, I should mention that I designed this app purely BECAUSE I got tired of using .txt files. I found it to be far too cumbersome and time consuming for my taste, and they get unwieldy--I counted approximately 400 links from all the text files that I saved.

I use this app extensively, have it pinned in Chrome, and I say this from experience: it is much, much more convenient than going through .txt hell

With txt files, you have to copy and paste a link. With this app, you can add a bookmarklet to the bookmarks bar and use that to save massive amounts of links much quicker than txts. Also, you can then click the link to visit it, and delete it with a single button. I think that's much faster and less annoying than copy/pasting and using linkrr.

Plus, if there's one thing you learn from GNU, it's that a product extensively used by its developer(s) is far superior to one that isn't. The developers are also the users, and they design it to fit their needs in a much more specific way than any proprietary product ever could. That's why Linux is an awesome Operating System, why GIMP is an awesome photo editor, why Chrome/Chromium is an awesome browser.

If it's the signing up part that's stopping you, you can simply use the client part directly at http://bradenbest.com/ls/Index.ht ml

I only designed the user account system because I needed a better way to bring my links anywhere I needed them.

Just try it for a couple days before dismissing it. You might be surprised.

Cyberdevil 2013-05-27 05:51:45

I read the post, I think I get the pros of the product. :) I haven't counted the links I've saved, but it's definitely in the hundreds. Migrating all of those to this app would take some time, not to mention they're already partially sorted. Instead of using folders (or paradigms) I just add empty lines between different types of links, it's easy to CTRL+F to find a specific site if I know which one to look for, and then at the same time see everything related. Temporary links are saved in batches I can open up in one go, that's one feature this app is missing btw, though maybe you don't have any use for such a feature?

This tool you've created is a bit similar to the bookmarks feature of most browsers, which you can also link to an account and sync between computers on all major browsers, even FireFox. It might not be cross-browser compatible, but cross-computer comparability would be enough for me. I stopped using bookmarks for all but the most important sites though, places I need to visit frequently or return to eventually, because it's a system that easily gets cluttered, and I imagine it's the same with this. It'll be hard to find a set of links if you only know one of them, difficult to categorize everything in relevant categories, and time consuming to manage the collection. I'm a developer too, though maybe not as proficient in code as you are, but for me txt files are the easiest solution.

Added feats are the ability to easily open up the file with Dreamweaver and make a batch of links clickable, and the fact that it's all stored on my own computer, which makes for better security. I wouldn't really feel secure hosting any personal links on my own site either, even if they are protected by password; encrypted. But thanks for the elaboration! I'm sure this is a great tool for most people.

B1KMusic 2013-05-27 05:51:45 (Updated 2013-07-23 17:28:41)

A temporary folder that opens all the links in one go? Sounds like a neat idea. Maybe I could instead add a button to the menu that opens every link in the current paradigm at once. Though that requires the use of popups and browsers have different policies on event-spawned popups.

Here, I made a tool that allows you to test your browser's reaction to opening multiple popups here:

http://jsfiddle.net/84NyH/

As for clutter, my app leaves organization up to the user. You create your own paradigms, and choose where to save links. The search tool allows you to search for a term, and get a detailed list back, telling you exactly where it found the matches, and makes the results clickable. So whether or not it is a hassle varies from person to person. I actually redesigned it recently, from the ground up. It's much more simplistic. I really should update the screenshot. [Edit: I updated the screenshot]

And I totally get your thing about wanting to keep links private. I mean, if you signed up, and saved some links, all I would have to do to see them would be to go into the SQL database, and copy the json over to a javascript console to read its contents. Luckily, I respect privacy, and wouldn't do that.

However, I did create an anonymous user for the new app. Just log in without filling the form, and you'll be logged in as anonymous. All the links that you save are then stored only on your browser's localStorage; database communication is explicitly shut off, your links won't go anywhere because there's nowhere to go. I added that because I hate having to sign up for sites that I don't know if I'll use. But it also works for just keeping a temporary store of links.

A little warning: the app uses localstorage to save links, and then, if logged in as a registered user, sends the contents to the database on every page load. On login, the app wipes the localstorage entry for the app, and requests the data held on the database. Anonymous works by shutting off the database part, and only using the client-side storage. So if you log in as anonymous, save some links, and then log into a registered account, the links from anonymous will be deleted, and replaced with the links you had on the registered account. There's instructions for backing up the data at

http://ls.bradenbest.com/Client/H elp.html

That page is a help page that attempts to document the entire app.

And you're welcome for the elaboration! Thanks for the feedback :)

B1KMusic 2013-08-15 01:36:11

Update:

Koding links are broken as of a recent update to the beta Koding app. All user directories have effectively been purged from koding in favor of implementing a "virtual machine" feature. Luckily they let users download their old files.

TL;DR --> the koding links are broken. Too lazy to remove them.

Link Saver

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