Right-click Add Live Bookmark

<span style=”voice-family: ‘Doug Whiner’,'Eeyore’”>You aren’t going to need this. I don’t know why I even bothered to make it. It seemed like such a good idea at the time, but now? You aren’t going to need this.</span>

If you are one of the three people in the world testing Firefox‘s support for parsing RSS and Atom feeds as Live Bookmarks, or perhaps one of the unknowable number of people who really, really like Live Bookmarks, you’ve probably noticed that it’s a bit of a pain to add a Live Bookmark when the site doesn’t have the <link> that’s needed for autodiscovery.

LiveBookmarkThis adds a context menu item to “Add Live Bookmark” whenever you right-click a link.

<span style=”voice-family: ‘Doug Whiner’,'Eeyore’”>If there was any way on earth to tell that a link is a feed, other than downloading it, parsing it, massaging it so it will parse, reparsing it, … then it would only appear when you right-click a link to a feed.</span>

Boy, I really hope the horrible antipattern Hot Comments hack that’s supposed to keep this post off the front page of mozilla.org actually works. You know they’ll realize I don’t belong eventually, but I wouldn’t mind having it not happen just yet.

80 Comments

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2004-09-21 21:18:50

Well, I’d have to say that didn’t quite work. What, the Hot Comment has to be in the <rss:description>, not the <content:encoded>? (And yes, I know it’s weird asking Bart here, but his comments say ”Registration is required”, without seeming to make registration possible.)

 
Comment by Kenneth (Kete) Foy #
2004-09-22 14:56:12

What? Are you crazy? Who doesn’t need this? I barely test/file bugs/et cetera at all, and I could’ve used this! This should be default.

 
Comment by settolo #
2004-09-23 11:30:56

yes. Should be the default :)

 
Comment by Peter #
2004-09-26 06:20:11

the ”add live bookmark” does also show up if you rightclick on a mailto: link

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2004-09-26 10:20:11

Picky, picky ;)

gContextMenu.onLink I got for free, from the core. I wonder if there’s a onHttpLink? It’s just so pretty, being only six lines of code.

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2004-09-27 01:39:02

Well, I don’t really like (!(gContextMenu.onLink) || gContextMenu.onMailtoLink), but at least I understand it, which I can’t quite say for onSaveableLink.

0.1.1 shortly, unless I can figure out how to add a button to the Bookmarks Manager’s toolbar, which would amount to 0.2. So far, it’s being quite stubborn about not being overlaid, though.

Comment by Peter #
2004-10-01 14:14:22

I don’t want to sound ….
but what about some other protocols to exclude like:
irc and ftp (can’t think of any others that frequently popup on pages).
irc, because of people using the ChatZilla extension (like me).

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2004-10-01 14:30:26

Or just insist that it be http://-only. I wonder what Live Bookmarks would think if you did add an FTP-feed? I know what it thinks if you add a protocol-less feed: I added localhost/entity.xml distractedly while trying something, and had the hardest time figuring out why it stalled at ”Live Bookmark loading”.

Okay, this time I really mean it. I’m closing 20 open UNCONFIRMED tabs and doing an update (which isn’t going to have the toolbar button for the Bookmark Manager, because it refuses to admit that I exist).

 
Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2004-10-01 23:46:21

Okay, it should be in your morning updates, along with the 0.10.1. I don’t think I’ll bother to add a new post, since it would just highlight how much I’ve been neglecting my poor blog: howevermany days later, having my next post be the announcement that I’ve managed to add a single simple regex, to only match /^https?:/, seems rather sad, even though I know what I’ve been up to instead.

 
 
 
 
 
Comment by Barend #
2004-09-29 03:05:36

Nice extension. Why isn’t it on the U.M.O. extensions page?

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2004-09-29 10:16:35

Apparently, because alanjstr is totally snowed under. In time…

Comment by Barend #
2004-09-29 11:51:57

I see. Thanks

 
 
 
Comment by Anonymous #
2004-10-06 22:35:56

Yea um i right click and there is no live bookmark anywhere on it!!!!!!

 
Comment by Peter #
2004-10-11 17:14:55

i like it , it works and thanks for making it.

 
Comment by Daisy #
2004-10-13 09:01:46

Wow, this extension is exactly what I wanted…

I got fed up when I first found MSDN’s ’NEW(!)’ RSS feed was just a rss icon and my status bar was none the wiser… I may have sussed out how to add a live bookmark (copy link – Manage Bookmarks – File – Add New Live Bookmark) but it’s just far too silly!

BTW – I never wanted MSDN’s rss feed in my bookmarks, plainly, anything with the word Microsoft and Development in the same sentence has got to be a Contradiction in terms! Apart from ”M$ stuns all Development” of course!

I also don’t care if this extension isn’t protocol sensitive, newbies that would get confused by this can wait until the Firefox team implement it as a default feature.

 
Comment by Tim #
2004-10-19 00:44:11

Even though I’m not writing more until after Nov 2, I stop by to see if you are… I miss the biting wit. Hope you are doing well.

 
Comment by Fatal Fury #
2004-10-26 09:33:26

I really like this extension. However, when I try to install it, I get a ”script not found” error and it doesn’t install.

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2004-10-26 09:46:46

”script not found”? That should only come if you are installing it somewhere that expects install.js rather than install.rdf – like Seamonkey or an earlier version of Firefox, neither of which have Live Bookmarks at all, last I heard.

Or are you using a trunk version, and does trunk still use install.js?

 
 
Comment by Peng #
2004-11-03 13:56:42

Is there any way a completely clueless about things like this person like myself could change it to say something like ”Bookmark This RSS Feed…” instead of ”Add Live Bookmark” to go with the, uh, thing for regular bookmarking?

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2004-11-03 20:39:10

If you’ve got nerve enough, sure: in your profile directory, in a directory named extensions, there’s another directory named {98F7DBD7-CE9B-41f7-B363-EB1BBA01EC0E}, and in that, in a directory named chrome is livemarkthis.jar. With Firefox closed, you can open livemarkthis.jar with any program that knows about .zip files, though 7-zip is by far the best. Once you’ve opened it up, in locale/en-US/ is a text file named livemarkthis.ent, which contains the text for the menu item. Change that, without messing up the quotes or anything that will cause an XML error, then zip the three directories back up (making sure you don’t add another subdirectory into the .jar in the process), ideally using ”store” rather than actually compressing them, since decompressing slows things down a tiny bit when Firefox uses them, and you’ll be set. Set, or completely broken, one or the other.

Comment by Peng #
2004-11-06 13:26:10

Heh. All right. Thanks. I’ll try that. And end up breaking my profile. Oh well.

Comment by Peng #
2004-11-06 14:23:43

Haha. I tried doing that, and it messed everything up. Looked like all my modifications to the, uh, look of Firefox were un-done. Extensions didn’t appear and stuff. Closed Firefox, copied over the old livemarkthis.jar to its folder, and everything is back to normal.

Huh. Even if that didn’t work, it was still fun to do. :)

 
 
Comment by j #
2004-12-19 16:08:32

Can’t seen to find a copy of ’livemarkthis.jar’ on my computer, has the name changed.

 
 
 
Comment by Mike #
2004-11-11 10:11:18

I want to use it, I really really do.. but it says when I try to install that it only works with version 0.1.

Comment by jamin #
2004-11-24 18:13:47

I have the same problem! Any anwsers?

 
 
Comment by Michael Greene #
2004-11-11 12:56:48

I think it’s a fantastic extension, but I really wish you would add something in here about the new version being titled ”LiveBookmarkThis” so that users (such as I) directed from other sites to this page would know where to look to find an updated version.

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2004-11-15 22:54:54

Sorry, where did I miss? The link in the original post, to /mozilla/livemarkthis.xpi, always returns the current version, and if you have software update enabled, when Firefox checks /mozilla/livemarkthis/update.rdf it will find out about the direct URL to any updated versions, and also find out about updates to the maxVersion. We’re not talking about a major project here, just a trivial little menu item: a full changelog and links to historical versions seems a bit excessive.

 
 
Comment by Yokhannan #
2004-11-15 16:45:04

Is there any way to create a Live Bookmark from an ahref ??

Thanks.

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2004-11-15 22:48:57

As in <a href="/index.rdf" rel="alternate" ...>? No, although it’s an interesting idea: it’s quite common for news sites or large corporate sites to not be able to affect the <head> section of their HTML, only a part of the <body>.

I don’t think adding a way to make a link which, when clicked, pops up the Add Live Bookmark dialog is likely to happen, but adding a way to indicate that an <a href=""> should be added to the discovered feeds might.

Unfortunately, I think it would make feed detection much more expensive for Firefox: there’s currently a DOMLinkAdded event, I assume for stylesheet stuff, which fires whenever a <link/> is added to the DOM, so feed discovery just observes that event, which on most pages fires between zero and maybe six times. To catch anchors, you would either have to add DOMAAdded, or observe load and getElementsByTagName(), both of which would be expensive.

There’s no reason why you couldn’t have an extension that did getElementsByTagName(), and added things it thought were probably feeds to the autodiscovery list, but I doubt it would actually make it into Firefox itself, and without having it in the core you aren’t like to persuade many people to add useful attributes to their anchors.

 
 
Comment by Jim #
2004-11-27 19:08:42

hey, for what it’s worth, this was exactly the extension I was looking for – and it works great. thanks!

 
Comment by Shelley #
2004-12-15 18:49:19

Hello

Hello

*puff* *puff*

*tap tap tap*

Is this thing working?

Helloooooo

Is there someone called ’Phil Ringnalda’ here?

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2004-12-15 21:16:05

Help. I’m being held captive in a bug database.

Comment by Shelley #
2004-12-17 05:34:43

You want I should bake you a chocolate cake with a debugger built into it?

Comment by Geodog #
2004-12-23 21:36:17

Anything you can do to bring him back would be appreciated. I miss Phil too.

 
 
 
 
Comment by Anonymous #
2004-12-23 17:13:19

It will not work for me. ;-(

 
Comment by BOB ISH #
2004-12-23 18:57:00

I Followed the links and I got it. It’s a one of those tghings that makes FF the great browser that
it is. To bad the extension page has the wrong one.
That should be fixed! I wont complain tho I’ll
just tell them where to go.

 
Comment by II #
2004-12-28 23:07:12

Why isn’t this compatable with Firefox 1.0???? I tried to install it but it says it’s not compatable with 1.0. :`(

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2004-12-29 00:35:38

Because

  1. External checking for maxVersion updates is underspecified and incorrectly implemented.
  2. Updating listings in addons.fixups.extensions.update.mozilla.org is a trainwreck in search of a explosion. Utterly broken things look at it to feel good about themselves. To make it as obvious as possible, new bugs filed in the Listings component are owned by the ever-popular nobody@mozilla.org.
  3. I forgot that I was leaving it broken to file a bug report, and since the link right here at the top of the page where people keep on telling me it doesn’t work does work just fine, I didn’t get too excited about it.

Anyway, it’s ”fixed” now (as of a few minutes before or after you left your comment, by pure coincidence): you can install the old version linked from u.m.o, and then the next time you run Update it will tell you to get the updated version that’s linked right up there at the top of this very page.

Comment by II #
2004-12-29 11:17:46

Thank you very much. I love this extention. :-D

 
 
 
Comment by Jantje Smit #
2005-01-05 02:44:41

I use TB as a feedreader. It would be good to have the possibility to open the feed not with live bookmarks, but with a program of your choice (i.e. TB).

Just my 2cts.

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2005-01-06 00:50:34

It would indeed. If your reader is open and accessible and aware of the world around it, like dozens are, that would be Feed Your Reader. If your reader is closed and inward-looking and isolationist, like the ’bird, that would be a candidate for some patching.

 
 
Comment by Peony #
2005-01-26 00:31:33

My several friends are using the FireFox Explorer .But as a web site founder ,when you’re debugging with the Microsoft Internet Explorer ,perhaps there will be somethig disorderly on our pages .
I’m sorry to mention something disrelated on this subject.

Comment by Peony #
2005-01-26 00:38:17

Perhaps there will be somethig disorderly on our pages if you browse with the FireFox Explorer.

 
 
Comment by Sean #
2005-03-26 18:30:40

When I look at link/headlines for a live bookmark,I sometimes see ' (any number can show depending on what charactor it is replacing)
Example:
&#33 is a !

So full example:
Pop Up Boxes Don’t Work!
Pop Up Boxes Don't Work! This is how I see it in the feed.

 
Comment by bwana #
2005-05-05 21:41:43

Until now I’ve been stuck copy-and-pasting the address over an existing live bookmark’s address, and then renaming it. Big Pain in the Butt.

Thanks for making this!

 
Comment by Peter van der Woude #
2005-05-31 14:35:41

Phil, can you update the Maxversion to 1.1 please

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2005-05-31 15:11:26

Again? Seems like just last week that we went to 1.0+, probably because it was.

It’s done, thanks for the warning.

 
 
Comment by Peter van der Woude #
2005-06-01 01:25:06

hmm,
are you sure Phil ?

I’m still getting the following message from EM:

LiveBookmarkThis 0.2 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox 1.0+.
(LiveBookmarkThis 0.2 will only work with Firefox versions from 0.10 to 1.0)

 
Comment by Peter van der Woude #
2005-06-01 03:40:17

install.rdf still has
1.0

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2005-06-01 09:49:05

Indeed. install.rdf says <em:maxVersion>1.0</em:maxVersion>, just like it should, because there’s no point in repackaging and releasing a new version to bump maxVersion. It also says <em:updateURL>http://philringnalda.com/mozilla/livemarkthis/update.rdf</em:updateURL&gt;. LiveHTTPHeaders, which installs because they cheated and bumped the maxVersion in install.rdf, says that update.rdf is fetched during installation, and the JavaScript console agrees, with

RDFItemUpdater:checkForUpdates sending a request to server for: http://philringnalda.com/mozilla/livemarkthis/update.rdf, item = ({id:"{98F7DBD7-CE9B-41f7-B363-EB1BBA01EC0E}", version:"0.2", installLocationKey:"app-profile", minAppVersion:"0.10", maxAppVersion:"1.0", name:"LiveBookmarkThis", xpi

Since in update.rdf the maxVersion is (now, back to) 1.0+, which is the Deer Park app.extensions.version, it ought to install, and in the JavaScript Console we see

RDFItemUpdater:onDatasourceLoaded: Found info about the installed
version of this item: ({id:"{98F7DBD7-CE9B-41f7-B363-EB1BBA01EC0E}", version:"0.2", installLocationKey:"app-profile", minAppVersion:"0.10", maxAppVersion:"1.0+", name:"LiveBookmarkThis", xpi

So, am I missing something, or did someone break externally-raised maxVersion?

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2005-06-01 10:04:33

And indeed, someone did: Robert typoed it. Edit /components/nsExtensionManager.js and change the double-underscore in line 4664 to a single-underscore, and it installs just like it should.

 
 
 
Comment by Complainer #
2005-06-08 13:05:13

Is there a way to make the columns wider on the Live Bookmarks? I have a News folder on my Bookmarks Toolbar with various news sources in there Live Bookmarked, and some of the headlines are so long the bulk of the headline is chopped off. Fark.com for instance.

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2005-06-08 21:41:25

Say, that’ll do until something wildly off-topic comes along, won’t it?

Looking at browser.css, it looks like the width of the bookmark menu is set by

menu.bookmark-item,
menuitem.bookmark-item {
  min-width: 0;
  max-width: 26em;

and sure enough, dropping

menu.bookmark-item,
menuitem.bookmark-item {
  max-width: 300em !important;
}

in userChrome.css stretches them out (perhaps more than too much, I didn’t have an infinitely long-titled feed handy to see what happens when the title’s wider than the screen).

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2005-06-08 21:47:34

Wups, you wanted the PTF wider, not the Bookmarks menu. Make that

menu.bookmark-item,
menuitem.bookmark-item,
toolbarbutton.bookmark-item  {
  max-width: 300em !important;
}

then.

 
 
 
Comment by Anonymous #
2005-06-12 11:13:41

How not to get noticed II:
I’m looking at Firefox extensions. I see yours. It’s here.
The description of what it does isn’t very clear, but it has a link to your home page for this extension.
Great — maybe there’s a better explanation of what it does.

It brings me to this blog page.

Buh-bye!

 
Comment by Peter van der Woude #
2005-06-15 03:04:01

my bad Phil,

somehow there was a borked version staged to be installed, and worse, not removed.
So every time i tried to uninstall/reinstall it would reuse the staged xpi again.

 
Comment by Eduardo #
2005-09-11 19:37:17

I’ve translated LiveBookmarkThis to brazilian portuguese (pt-BR). How can I send it to you?

 
Trackback by Talkin' A Loud MT #
2004-11-16 01:24:55

FireFox 1.0正�版

phil ringnalda dot com: Right-click Add Live Bookmark 「ã?¾ã?Ÿæ–°ã?—ã?„ブラウザã?‹ãƒ¼ã€?ã?¨ãƒ™ãƒ¼ã‚¿ç‰ˆã?®æ™‚ã?¯ã?‚ã?¾ã‚Šæ°—ã?«ã?—ã?¦ã?„ã?ªã?‹ã?£ã?Ÿã?®ã?§ã?™ã?Œã€?æ­£è¦?版ã?Œå‡ºã?¦ã€?記事をよã??読んã?§ã?¿ã‚‹ã?¨ã€?ã?“ã?®LiveBookmarkThisã?¨ã?…

 
Comment by Peter van der Woude #
2005-11-01 02:00:39

Livebookmarkthis generates
Error: livemarkAddMark is not defined
Source file: chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
Line: 1
in JSC and doesn’t work anymore in FF1.5RC1 (Win32)
(Checked on 3 machines)

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2005-11-01 08:58:29

:(

I can’t believe I forgot that although Feedview ended up not making it obsolete, by virtue of Feedview not existing anymore, it still changed livemarkAddMark to Feedhandler.addLiveBookmark.

I’ll fix it tonight: have to figure out whether it’s more painful to do a new version that only supports 1.5+, or one that figures out which to call.

 
Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2005-11-01 20:35:39

And I can’t believe how badly we suck at API stability and branching: practically speaking, ignoring the boilerplate, this extension is four lines of code, all of which were working fine after the 1.8 branch. Now, two of the four lines have been bitrotted by API changes, one in a still-security-sensitive bug so I can’t even see why (though I guess I can see why from the code).

 
Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2005-11-01 23:16:14

Okay, 0.3 beta: should work in branch and trunk, not in 1.0.x, and for a little bonus besides just being unbroken, will work with those annoying feed:http: and feed:// links that, er, I seem to be using myself now.

It’s mostly a beta rather than an automatic update because I need to make a test build with a separate update.rdf to be sure I get it working right to update 1.5 and 1.6 but not 1.0.x, since last time I tried something similar, I wound up triggering an update bug that I don’t think I remembered to file, and I’m not going to get that done tonight.

And yes, it’s sad that I’m commenting about that so I’ll have something written down to remind me about what I need to do tomorrow night.

 
Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2005-11-02 21:12:22

Amazing how many comments I get, when I comment four times for every comment by someone else, eh?

Update is live, and seems to work whether you have 0.2 in 1.0.7 and update Firefox, or have 0.2 in 1.5 and update extensions. Now all I have to do is figure out how to persuade addons.extensions.update.m.o. to do what I want.

 
 
Comment by Anonymous #
2005-11-02 23:15:54

It looks like version 0.3 doesn’t work… I’ve right clicked links all over the place, and no option to Live bookmark anything (including your RSS feed link above)

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2005-11-02 23:31:44

Well, that’s odd and unfortunate. Do you think you could spare me a tiny bit more information? Since I’m not quite foolish enough to have just thrown it out without testing at all, if this was a Bugzilla bug I’d be resolving you WORKSFORME for lack of steps to reproduce and build information. What build are you using, did you install 0.3 fresh or did you update from 0.2, does the extension manager agree that you are using 0.3 and that it’s installed rather than pending, if you updated does installing over the top, or uninstalling and then installing make it work?

 
 
Comment by Peter van der Woude #
2005-11-04 01:53:02

I didn’t find a feed:// url but the normal ones WFM with LBT0.3
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051103 Firefox/1.5 ID:2005110321

thanks Phil

@Anonymous If you use MenuEditor the link in the contextmenu may be misplaced (to somewhere at the bottom)

 
Comment by Oichi Ru #
2005-12-31 07:51:37

Installed Beta 0.3 in 1.5 and it works fine. Thank you

 
2006-01-06 00:21:51

[...] phil ringnalda » Right-click Add Live Bookmark (tags: firefox rss) [...]

 
Comment by maht #
2006-01-14 17:48:55

just when i thought I found what I needed i ran into version trouble

doesn’t work with 1.5

 
Comment by Jonathan #
2006-04-24 07:55:35

An excellent extension. I don’t know why there isn’t something like this by default, instead of it being hidden away in the Bookmarks Manager.

Just one thing though, shouldn’t there be an ellipsis after ”Add Live Bookmark”, seeing as it leads to a dialogue?

 
Comment by Scott #
2006-06-14 01:13:47

You extension writers have got to do something about this. I shouldn’t be getting an incompatible message because your extension is only valid for Firefox versions up to 1.5.03…

1.5.04 is the latest, and of course it won’t install…..

 
Comment by David #
2006-07-01 13:13:07

I’d love to have this, but it won’t install in Firefox 1.5.0.4. Any chance you’re posting a new version?

 
Comment by Andy #
2006-07-10 15:02:43

Is there anyway of converting a normal bookmark (e.g. from my ’Sage Feeds’ folder) to a live bookmark?

If not could you make an extension to do this from the context menu of a bookmark in the bookmark manager?

 
Comment by Grant #
2006-10-11 09:29:02

Some one had to, it may as well be me Could we ppleeeezzzz have it for 2.0. Love your work.

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2006-10-11 21:16:44

Hmm. Possibly, but only if you can persuade me that you have a reason to want it in 2.0. Why would you want to have extra clutter on the context menu for every single link, when you can have the same effect by just choosing to skip the preview page and always use livemarks, and then just click the link?

 
 
Comment by Grant #
2006-10-17 09:56:29

Well, you’ve shown me a new way to get introduced to functionality I’d not yet explored . You are probably correct, and I’ll get back to you if I have reason. Thanks for everything!

 
Comment by GizMo #
2006-10-30 22:54:26

Waiting version support for Firefox 2.0. Please Please Please

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2006-10-30 23:06:06

Apparently you’ve confused ”persuade me that you have a reason” with ”repeat yourself.” The two are not interchangeable.

 
 
Comment by DavidNYC #
2006-11-22 15:07:59

My only reason is that I just like having that option. I’m not sure I can meet the standard you’ve set up – ie, give you a reason that you yourself would find satisfactory. Obviously, since we are asking that you do something for free to benefit people you likely don’t know, I can’t complain if you set requirements that I can’t meet – hell, it’s generous of you to even entertain the option in the first place. But it is what it is.

Have a good Thanksgiving.

 
Comment by JohnD #
2007-05-31 08:52:07

using the MR Tech local install extension you are able to use the livebookmarkthis extension by over-riding the max version variable. I am able to livebookmark links fine after this, and the addons and firefox engine are stable. The livebookmarkthis extension could be easily re-released with the maxversion variable raised, and then someone would need to simply maintain the extension by re-raising the variable, but it seems to be a lot of bother. The LiveBookMarkThis extension is still great, as many lame websites just don’t link to rss feeds in the proper manner and firefox doesn’t always pick up that you are clicking rss and just ends up displaying XML. Thanks for the extension.

 
Name (required)
E-mail (required - never shown publicly)
URI
Your Comment (smaller size | larger size)
You may use <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <del datetime="" cite=""> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <i> <ins datetime="" cite=""> <kbd> <li> <ol> <p> <pre> <q cite=""> <samp> <strong> <sub> <sup> <ul> in your comment.