Field missing from Firefox bookmarks “Library” window
How can I access the Description text field that disappeared from the Firefox bookmarks “Library” window in some relatively recent release (a year or so ago maybe)?
Highlighting any bookmark in the “Library” window currently displays only a “Name”, “Location”, “Tags” & “Keyword” field in the bottom of the window's RH pane but it used to also display a larger, 5th text field called Description (or something similar). Likewise, highlighting any bookmark folder in the “Library” window currently only displays a “Name” field but it used to also display a Description field.
This bookmark Description field was invaluable in storing text notes on what a given bookmark was useful for and, equally importantly, what it wasn't useful for (i.e. when to use a different bookmark). If one has hundreds of bookmarks, this type of information cannot adequately be captured in just the “Name” & “Tags” fields.
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The Description stopped being displayed in Firefox 62 (Sept. 5, 2018).
I don't recall exactly when the description data was actually deleted from the file.
I can't imagine it will return at this point. Sorry.
In Firefox 62, you can create an HTML or JSON bookmarks backup in the Bookmarks Manager (Library) to have a bookmarks backup that includes the descriptions. In Firefox 63 support for the descriptions has been fully removed (#1402890).
This seems to me that this a bug not a feature (unless I'm the only one in the universe that used this Description field). I say bug because this is the second time this has happened. The first time the Description field disappeared, it was gone for months (maybe 6) & then it reappeared & worked fine for a year or more before this most recent disappearance**.
- This happened on a work computer in a big company where the end user doesn't control the Browser version so, for all I know, my Company's IT Dept may have reverted to an earlier Browser version due to unrelated bugs until a more acceptable version came out or perhaps the deletion was an actual bug & Mozilla fixed it the first time.
Is there a way to find out if this was an intentional feature removal or an accident that nobody really whined about?
I am aware of the HTML bookmarks backup feature. In the way back, the Firefox Bookmarks “Library” window's “Search Bookmarks” field used to search the text in the Description field also but quit doing that years & years before Description field actually disappeared. My workaround was to export my bookmarks to a HTML file (as mentioned by cor-el) and then convert that file to PDF. This PDF file looked like a text file containing all bookmarks/folders with their descriptions where all the bookmark Names were links to the bookmark URLs (i.e. all text in the Names & Description fields were fully searchable again & clicking on any link in the PDF would open that URL using the default Browser on whatever computer).
It was intentionally removed. Many people expressed great unhappiness because they actually used the field themselves -- it wasn't just what Firefox captured at the time the bookmark was saved from the site's <meta name="description" content="Spam search engines here." /> tag.
It was very kind of Mozilla go out of their way to destroy unique User data without warning. Almost none of my bookmarks still had the original Description content that came with the bookmark when it was created (i.e. the site supplied Description text).
What is the official process for requesting a change/enhancement to Firefox or in this case complaining about an ill-considered change (from the User's perspective)?
How does Mozilla know know the difference between pissing off one User & mass quantities of Users or it is only when Users jump ship to another Browser such as Internet Exploiter or Google Chrome?
Thank you jscher2000 & cor-el for your time & insight.
This description field was part of the annotations and support for annotations has been removed as these were stored in a separate table. There is a description field in the moz-places table that is not exposed in the UI and can't be modified either.
- 1460577 - [meta] Remove support for bookmark annotations