Your program is GREAT overall, and probably my favorite portable bookmark collector that I've tried so far. Let me put it this way: right now, I'd prefer a MS Word .DOC of categorized hyperlinks to most bookmark managers I've tried.
Yours seems logical, friendly, powerful, functional... and it's even portable. All those combined = greatness!
However, that doesn't mean I don't have some suggestions.
Ok, maybe several... so grab your favorite soft drink and 'sit for a spell'!
Most importantly, it doesn't seem to be at ALL friendly to portable browsers. Don't know how it's working for other people, but I've been trying to point the "Bookmarks sources" to my Portable FireFox, and it doesn't seem to work. It also doesn't "remember" my change once I close and re-start the program. That's a problem, for sure (assuming it does the same to others).
(A few times it also 'forgot' that I changed the "Open bookmarks with" to FireFox (installed), but that's been working recently. I can't explain what changed, though?)
So far, it seems like you've made a great manager, made it portable, then left out a few VERY helpful portability features. Maybe even a necessary one for some would-be users.
There are (at least) three places where FireFox is mentioned/used: Import; Export; Open bookmarks with...
I HIGHLY suggest adding a blank for Portable FireFox (or portable browsers in general) under your "Bookmarks sources" area, and making it easier (i.e. via your GUI, not just editing .ini) to set a relative path for it. Even if it's just the capability to past the path in as text, that'd be better than nothing. Actually, I'd really suggest text editing & text paste-ability for ALL of the "Bookmarks sources" fields. This would probably require a different way than you're doing it right now, though...
Then maybe you could query if there's something in the "portable browser" blank and give that as an option for "Open bookmarks with".
Summary thus far: allow portable browser use for both import/export, and Open with. But not at the expense of also using machine-installed FireFox, though. (I, for one, use both. Actually, I even use more than one version/location of Portable FireFox, and you can take that sort of thing into consideration if you want, but I'm probably unusual there.) I assume you've also taken portability into account with this program's registration?
Amusing "bug"? Open "options" and change the Hotkey to anything. Now try immediately changing it back to Ctrl+Alt+S (or whatever it used to be). You can't do it - and you can't cancel the change either. You have to exit Options, come back into it, and reset the hotkey to whatever it used to be. A "Cancel" button, at least, would be helpful, and the option to immediately change it back might be somewhat nice.
Another weird thing, when I change the "Open bookmarks with" to FireFox, the .ini says:
OpenWithBrowser=C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\\Firefox.exe
Notice the "\\" there; slightly odd. I actually didn't try opening a bookmark (I've got some really WEIRD computer issues that make me scared of what would happen if I tried...), but I assume that'd be a problem!
One of my first thoughts was "tags" (like in GMail) would be nice. I guess that can be simulated via the comments, for now. But it might be nice as a separate field eventually. Another thing I thought of to simulate tags was intentional bookmark duplication under multiple folders. But then it'd be nice to have an option to ignore intentional duplicates when searching duplicates, and...that all might get messy, quickly.
Speaking of duplicating bookmarks, the drag-and-drop moving/organizing of bookmarks is nice. I had wondered if holding Ctrl down while moving would copy instead, like in Windows Explorer. The mouse icon would seem to indicate that it does, but functionally it does not. It still just moves like normal. It'd be nice if holding down Ctrl while 'moving' DID copy.
I REALLY appreciate the ability to do hierarchical folders. I wonder if you might consider hierarchical links, too? Sometimes I like to keep track of parent/child links; I don't know if that appeals to other people also.
Right-clicking in an empty white space right now does nothing. I'd suggest maybe making it equivalent to right-clicking on the top-level "Bookmarks" folder.
Possibly keep track of what browser the bookmark came from (maybe even what COMPUTER! Oooh...) and allow for sorting or searching by that field?
I like how you automatically import the page title into Description (OR one's customized bookmark name, if importing from pre-existing bookmarks). Here's just an idea that I'm not even entirely sure whether I'd like or not, but anyway - If it's a bookmark with a customized name, keep that in description, but offer an option to retrieve the page title and put it into the Comment field.
Earlier I mentioned that I have a whole lot of Word .docs of links (and even .txt files). Don't know if you'd want to consider batch importing urls/page titles from plain-text at some point?
I see that I can import one at a time, url only, but if I have a title on the previous or next line and drag it in as well, LC tries to include that as PART of the url - which obviously wouldn't work.
Also, if I drag a plain-text url onto a subfolder (a folder within Bookmarks), it doesn't seem to go into that subfolder, but just the general Bookmarks folder (bug?). *pseudo-edit* I just figured out what you and Garbanzo were talking about. I agree that selection on an inactive window is counter-intuitive. It'd be nice if whatever LC folder you drag a url to was the temporary "default" where that url would be filed, and then you could still change it, if necessary, before 'Adding' the url.
My last suggestion would be to consider a progress/status bar for link verification? It took longer than I expected at the start with no indication of what it was doing...(until green lights started coming on, at which point it went pretty quickly).
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I also agree with just about all of Garbanzo's suggestions. I think the only one I disagree with is about Copy. My vote is to keep it as-is. I'd rather have the Description and Link in one go, and I can probably bear with cleaning out the extra stuff. Plus, the way it is now lets one cut/copy and paste complete entries within LC, which would break if it were one field at a time. Maybe some sort of separate option for copying Description, Link, Comments (!), other fields, or multiple fields as plain-text would be nice. *sigh - pseudo-edit #2* Okay, the current format prevents me from dragging a Link back into a browser to open it. I'm a little disappointed about that.
(Garbanzo, when you copy, it's as a table, so it doesn't make as much sense as plain-text.)
I also did not have any trouble with LC's default hotkey.
Wow...that was really, really long. Sorry 'bout that. Hope all this has been (or will be) helpful to you, AnalogXP. I realize that some of these suggestions may not 'see the light of day' for a while, if ever, and some of it may just be practically impossible to implement. I'm not a programmer, so I don't really understand [the work behind] what I'm asking for.
Also, if you implement too much, then it might even lose some of its current simplicity appeal. *sigh* Sad that it always seems to be a trade-off between functionality and simplicity
If you've got any questions about my "portable-ese" terms or anything else, let us know and I (or possibly someone else who's here more than I) will do our best to answer.
Again, let me commend you for a bookmark manager that's ALREADY GREAT, and will probably only get better from here!