Create Firefox Smart Bookmarks
Firefox 3 changed the bookmarking system from using html files to using sqlite databases. One benefit of using databases is the possibility to run custom queries. Three of the so called smart bookmarks are already available after installing Firefox3: Most Visited, Recently Bookmarked and Recent Tags all make use of database queries to provide the user with dynamic results.
So what's possible with this technique besides the three default dynamic bookmark folders? Users could display all bookmarks that are tagged with a specific tag, display the latest ten pages that they visited on a specific domain or to list the least visited bookmarks. Many additional possibilities exist and it is just a matter of defining the database query correctly to achieve them.
The basics first. Database queries are added as normal bookmarks and placed in the location field instead of the usual url. The name can be selected freely. Database queries use the place:query syntax. Let's take a look at an example:
The above query is “place:queryType=0&sort=8&maxResults=10″ uses the filters queryType, sort and maxResults.
queryType=0 will return an URI for each result
sort=8 will sort the bookmarks by visit count
maxResults=10 limits the results to ten bookmarks.
The guys at the Mozillazine forum did a good job of listing the relevant queries and it would be redundant to simply copy and paste their work here. Just head over to the forum and take a look at the queries. If you want to have a specific query and cannot get it to work let us know in the comments and we try to build it for you.
Firefox 3 changed the bookmarking system from using html files to using sqlite databases. One benefit of using databases is the possibility to run custom queries. Three of the so called smart bookmarks are already available after installing Firefox3: Most Visited, Recently Bookmarked and Recent Tags all make use of database queries to provide the user with dynamic results.
So what's possible with this technique besides the three default dynamic bookmark folders? Users could display all bookmarks that are tagged with a specific tag, display the latest ten pages that they visited on a specific domain or to list the least visited bookmarks. Many additional possibilities exist and it is just a matter of defining the database query correctly to achieve them.
The basics first. Database queries are added as normal bookmarks and placed in the location field instead of the usual url. The name can be selected freely. Database queries use the place:query syntax. Let's take a look at an example:
The above query is “place:queryType=0&sort=8&maxResults=10″ uses the filters queryType, sort and maxResults.
queryType=0 will return an URI for each result
sort=8 will sort the bookmarks by visit count
maxResults=10 limits the results to ten bookmarks.
The guys at the Mozillazine forum did a good job of listing the relevant queries and it would be redundant to simply copy and paste their work here. Just head over to the forum and take a look at the queries. If you want to have a specific query and cannot get it to work let us know in the comments and we try to build it for you.
