Delicious - A Firefox Bookmarks Replacement?

The other day, I decided to ditch the delicious account that I had had since 2005 and replace it with a brand new one on the revamped delicious.com. Why? Because the new Delicious toolbar integrates perfectly with Firefox 3, making it a credible replacement for your Firefox bookmarks.

To get started, open an account at Delicious.com. Download and install the Firefox add-on. This gives you easy access to your delicious page, your network page (more on that later), your inbox and a handy, searchable sidebar.

You can import your existing Firefox bookmarks and tag them, though I chose to start afresh, so that I could be in full control of organizing my bookmarks. Use tags that are general enough to be useful, yet specific enough to allow you to find something (for example, if I search for ‘wordpress’ and ‘themes’ I should find all the Wordpress themes that I have tagged. Tagging a new page is as simple as clicking the tag button in your Firefox toolbar and adding the tags you want.

Let’s not forget the social side. On Delicious, you can link up with all your buddies from other social sites, send links of interest to them, be alerted to the items they have bookmarked and more. I haven’t used the network much yet, but it looks promising.

For those of us who write for several blogs, the old subscription feature is still there. This allows you to keep tabs on what people are highlighting in different areas. I’ve set one up for freelancing and will set another up for travel.

The sidebar, for me, is one of the best features of the Delicious add-on, and it’s the reason why I’m considering clicking the box in options which lets me hide the Firefox bookmarks. Sure, Firefox 3 has overhauled its bookmarks, but if I use delicious I can make sure my online and offline bookmarks are always in sync.

Tags: add-ons, delicious, firefox