Whatever became of searching within bookmarks?

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Back in the days of Netscape there was a "search within bookmarks" command which was incredibly useful. Three search options were available: searching either in the title of the page, the URL of the page, or in a description of the page that users were able to construct by themselves. In other words, even if we didn't place a particular page in a logical folder, numerous options were available to us to still try to find it. And if we filled the description with useful keywords, chances were good that we'd be successful in getting back to an almost forgotten bookmark.

But Internet Explorer changed all that. I can't prove it, but my guess is that Microsoft didn't include a search function within their browser because this was another way of trying to show that the browser was, to their mind, an integral part of the operating system. Searching within Favorites is, after all, quite simple - it's the same as running a search in any other part of Windows. Favorites aren't even stored as part of the browser, as in Netscape, but instead as part of Windows. I doubt that many people run searches on their favorites very often, but it's certainly possible - I've done this often. On the other hand, I don't know whether it's possible to add something similar to the description from Netscape, and if so, how to run a search on the various descriptions that accumulate. Here my guess is that they simply didn't think that anyone really wanted to run a search on their favorites so that there was no reason to devote much of an effort to developing that feature. And I sadly tend to them that they were right.

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Go to: Bye-bye Bookmarks