From discussions in n.p.m.ui, Mozillazine, and my last comment in bug 39332: It might be a good idea to abolish the `Personal Toolbar Folder' in Bookmarks, and turn the Personal Toolbar into a `Bookmarks Toolbar' which shows the first few bookmarks/folders (however many fit in the toolbar) from the bookmarks list. In effect, this would be equivalent to making the root bookmarks folder the same as the Personal Toolbar folder. This change would achieve the following. 1. It would make the origin (and means of customization) of the toolbar more obvious. 2. It would remove confusion about the purpose of the Personal Toolbar folder in the bookmarks list. 3. It would help prevent the problem that users need to insert commonly-used bookmarks twice -- once in the Personal Toolbar folder, and once in its `logical' position (e.g. in the same folder as other bookmarks on the same topic). 4. By implicitly encouraging users to put their most-used bookmarks and bookmark folders at the beginning of their bookmarks list, it would serve to improve users' bookmark organization, and therefore make their bookmark access quicker overall.

How is point 3 going to be accomplished if the first bookmarks on the list get displayed in the bookmark bar, but the topic group for the bookmark at the top of the list? Is the really confusion as suggested in point 2? I am not against the suggestion--just asking.

IMHO, you want to achieve two things: 1. Make it simple and intuitive for people who run it 'straight from the box'. 2. Allow people to configure it as they wish. To this end, what is wrong with keeping the N4.x concepts of: 1. Set as Toolbar Folder 2. Set as Bookmark Menu 3. Set as New Bookmarks Folder Maybe combine 2 & 3. If you set (default) these to the root then you have the simple 'bookmarks is personal toolbar' approach, but it also allows customisation if you desire something different. It seems to me there are two types of bookmarks: permanent and temporary. By permanent I mean (what I think is) the generally accepted concept of frequently revisited sites. But in a browsing session I may come across a some pages which I wish to look at later, but only once, and which will never make it on to my 'permanent' list. By forcing me to put these in the same place as my permanent bookmarks you are actually making it harder for me to manage them, as when I come to remove the temporary ones I have to check which ones they are. As far as the confusion issue goes, I am of the view that as long as the default setup is simple: 'if you don't understand it then don't fiddle with it'. I entirely appreciate that not everyone wants to spend time configuring things and would like to be able to install and run as is, but I don't feel that those of us who do should be forced to a lowest common denominator of functionality. Just my 2c worth.

Reassigning from bdonohoe to hangas

I use my personal toolbar for bookmarklets, and forcing those bookmarklets to also be at the top of my bookmarks menu would make it *more difficult* to organize my bookmarks into categories and have the list of categories fit on one screen. I like barney.b@iname.com's idea of letting the user specify which folder has the personal toolbar bookmarks, though.

Hmm, not sure I unerstand how this is more difficult. Presently, presumably, the first 6-8 (depending on your screen size) items in your personal toolbar folder fit in your personal toolbar. (be they themselves folders or single items). After this change, the first 6-8 items in your bookmarks would fit. Since new bookmarks default to the end of the list, what's the difference? Did I miss something... curious...?

At 800x600, the personal toolbar holds about 8 bookmarks, and the bookmarks menu shows about 23 bookmarks without scrolling. If the personal toolbar folder and the root bookmarks folder are the same, I can only have reasonably fast access to 23 items instead of 31, which would give me more excuses for not keeping my bookmarks organized well. Also, I use the personal toolbar and bookmarks menu for different purposes. Items on my personal toolbar are tools to do things with the current page (show http source) or to do things with information on the current page (open a new window with the links on the current page containing a specified word, open a calculator window). Items in my bookmarks folder are sites that I want to be able to find later (by searching or by using a hierarchy of menus) or sites that I want to remember to look at later.

Yes. I understand. Very reasonable. Hopefully a helpful suggestion though - you know you can put folders on the personal toolbar? Presumably the 8 bookmarks you'd lose could go in a folder in your personal toolbar, at the end, after the caclulator etc. Dunno. Might work for you, might not. Ultimately this decision is all about balance - I think there's a broad feeling that the current setup is confusing. If we can give novices a better experience and power users like ourselves can still get (nearly) equivalent functionality then I think simpler is better. One for Netscape's User Testing Lab ?

It seems to me that it would be easier for a user to figure out that the links at the top of the window correspond to the bookmarks in the "personal toolbar" folder than it would be to figure out that they can make the personal toolbar /not/ be the as the root bookmarks folder.

Chaning the qa contact on these bugs to me. MPT will be moving to the owner of this component shortly. I would like to thank him for all his hard work as he moves roles in mozilla.org...Yada, Yada, Yada...

updating to new owner. sorry for the spam.

I think this is a prime example of a great feature hiding behind complexity. It took my quite a while to realize that the "Personal Toolbar" was customizible and I *still* find myself pointing out this feature to experienced users of mozilla browser including 4.x users. Whatever hiarchy existed above or beside the "Personal Toolbar Folder" can still exsist in appropriately name folders within it.

adding self to cc list

Yes, its great feature. I use it more 3 years in Netscape Communicator 4.x. Its very, very sutable. look to the illustration

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Alrighty, then... .

jrgm: How about only renaming the PT to "Bookmarks Toolbar", or only making the default PT folder be the bookmarks root, or both of those two, _without_ removing the menu command to change the PT folder? Is that WONTFIX too?

If this bug is marked WONTFIX, a *reason* needs to given. If a reason doesn't turn up real soon, I'll reopen this. This is just the kind if incident that create code forks. Bugs should NEVER be closed without a reason.

the ability to set the bookmarks root as the personal toolbar folder is not what was wontfixed. the fact is that there is no bookmark root atm, the next bookmarks landing will create a root again, and if there's a folder, then it /can/ be the personal toolbar folder (ignoring a bug reported to phoenix which has the landing complaining that the IE folder can't be).

> the ability to set the bookmarks root as the personal toolbar folder > is not what was wontfixed. the fact is that there is no bookmark root atm Which is why you would mark it future or create a dependency on an existing bug for having a bookmark root - as was done just recently with bug 36339... If that is the ONLY reason for marking this WONTFIX it's not valid. I'll go ahead an reopen it myself. Any future WONTFIX needs to have a valid reason.

R.e. comment 6 - that's not sufficient. a) They are not necessarily mutually exclusive (we need not abolish the Personal Toolbar as per comment 0 but rather only have the opion of having it use bookmark root if so desired). b) This bug could be morphed to simply add a Bookmarks Toolbar which is (partly/mostly) the point of this bug and which would make everybody happy. c) The concept of the "Personal" toolbar could be expanded so that you could put whatever you wanted on it, avoiding confusion between functions. Of course, that falls into customization... In any case, there are ways of accomodating this bug and also getting around the argument against it in comment 6.

look, if you guys keep morphing the bugs then it will be impossible to keep a bug wontfix. this bug is polluted and useless (nobody). The summary someone else picked just doesn't match the original request. I'm resolving Comment 0 as WontFix based on Comment 6. If you want *ANYTHING* ELSE then file a new bug. I'll make sure it isn't resovled as a duplicate of this bug. Just leave this bug alone. DO NOT MORPH BUGS.

Opened bug 170994.

Making it possible to set the root of bookmarks as the personal toolbar folder is part of bug 36339. This bug is about making the personal toolbar folder *default* to the root of bookmarks, in order to aid discoverability.