What are some good non-browser based bookmarking options?

I’m not sure what you mean by non-browser based bookmarks, as bookmarks by definition are part of the browser. Anyway, I use xmarks which has some nifty organisation features, seamlessly syncs across browsers and computers and is free.

@meiosis Delicious and Google bookmarks are both non-browser bookmark systems, they just aren’t as good as bookmarking I use now with Firefox (which is a browser plugin). I used to use Xmarks, but those only synced my Firefox browser with Firefox on other computers I had privileges to install Xmarks on. A non-browser based system would allow you to access your bookmarks on any computer.

Use something like portable Firefox.

Install it on a ten dollar USB thumb drive and have the same Firefox on every computer you use.

What do you miss in the capacity for organisation? If you use the Delicious Firefox extension it works almost the same as the Firefox bookmarks, but with labels instead of folders (which can be used about equally).

@Vincentt Labels don’t work as well as folders for me. I need to be able to establish a nesting hierarchy or it gets out of control. I really do have a staggering collection recipes bookmarked. I have a folder for baking….and it’s got another 20 folders inside it. You get the idea.

With something like Delicious or Google bookmarks I just get a list of 300 labels. It is not easily navigated.

@johnpowell That sounds interesting. I’ll look into it.

This is not quite what you want, but Clipperz is convenient for storing links, user ids and passwords. You only have to remember the user id and password for logging into Cipperz. They have a way of setting up direct links to other sites, so that with one click you can log on and have your user id and password automatically entered.

I use xmarks to synchronise bookmarks on four separate PCs using a mixture of IE8, IE9, Firefox and Chrome. No problems at all.

How do you deal with link rot (old links that no longer work) and such in a system like that? It seems like you may be better off printing the recipes you enjoy and filing those?

Just an alternative. The web is great at a lot of thing, but by using bookmarks you’re leaving your recipes (that theoretically won’t change) in a thousand different places, then storing a map of how to find them all.

Why not just store the recipes?

Edit: by “print” here I just mean store locally, whether as a pdf, a screen shot, or a piece of paper

@fundevogel Can’t a hierarchy be simulated by applying multiple tags (e.g. “recipe baking eggs” and “recipe baking fishfingers”) and then filtering on multiple tags to just get all baking recipes?

Apart from that a big +1 to @funkdaddy‘s answer.

@Vincentt maybe…but not without a lot more difficulty and navigation than with regular folders. I don’t want to do something that takes more effort and navigation than my current method.

@fundevogel How is it more difficult? You type in or click the tags you want and that it, just like with regular folders! I really see no difference in the effort you have to put in (if you have the Firefox extension installed), and this is a sevice that is available :)

@Vincentt In my firefox bookmarking I have 12 main folders and those each have a variable number of sub-folders, some of which have sub-folders of their own. I can quickly and easily navigate up and down the hierarchy without ever having to wade through a wall of bookmarks. My cooking folder is virtually bottomless and only works because of this. Organization is all a drag and drop thing.

With Google Bookmarks (once I managed to import my existing bookmarks through a third party) made each folder a tag but ripped out all of the hierarchy. So rather than minimizing the content I have to wade through at a giving to time to find what I need I have one list of 300 tags, listed alphabetically. That might seem organized, but it means that I don’t even have topical grouping. It’s all mixed up. I can’t group labels under other labels either (even though you can in gmail) so I can’t even use nesting to get rid of that wall of labels. There is no drag and drop organization so every change becomes…data entry.

I can’t keep 300 tags in my head to navigate (let alone tag). I can hold twelve, a few sub-folders and after that I relay on intuitive nesting to lead me where I need to go.

@fundevogel I don’t really know Google Bookmarks, but with Delicious you can just install the extension and then you will get a list of your tags. If you click one of those tags, a new list of tags will appear that only appear on bookmarks that also have the first tag, so you can once again click on that tag to narrow it down yet again. That way, you have a hierarchy. (Though it now does seem to be limited to two levels, and of course, all “subfolders” are also already visible at the main stage, so you’ll have to remember for yourself which twelve tags you use as top-level folders.)

Anyway, do what you want with that, if it doesn’t satisfy your needs, good luck with the rest of your search :)