When discussing websites one of the first distinctions to make is, what is a website as opposed to a web App, there are so many that can easily appear to be both.

For the purpose of this blog I am sticking with the basic definition that a website is made of static pages and a web app is dynamic site. To break that down here are some examples of both:

Web Apps

Websites

Dynamic site or dynamic elements

To confuse things further a website can have dynamic elements. For example the blog has a comments section, this is interactive causing the page to change – if somebody leaves a comment. In most cases though I think though you can usually instinctively tell if something is a web app or a website.

As you can imagine over time the amount of web apps has increased while the websites seem to have decreased. However, that is when you look at the big names. Depending upon your area of interest the internet is awash with websites that can prove to be hidden gems. I have especially found this to be the case on the subject of Genealogy.

Standalone Applications

One of the bigger differences between Applications and Websites has been that Applications can be standalone. Think about on your phone or the Apps on your computer. However, with modern browser technologies you can now enable websites to become standalone Applications too. Search engines are awash with people asking how to convert their website into an application. In reality often all they really wanted to do was, what you can already do. Hit share and send to the desktop or home screen, enabling people to get back to the site quickly.

Browsers

It is impossible to talk about websites without discussing browsers. There is a good chance that if you are on a desktop you are likely to be using one of the following:

Chrome inevitably was placed at the top of the list considering that Chrome/Chromium has a 70% share of the market. I have used all of the browsers mentioned above. My current browser of choice is Arc from the Browser Company, it is a Chromium based browser currently just for Mac but they are creating a Window’s version too. Since it’s conception I have loved what the are doing and how responsive they are to their users. On my mobile devices I use Orion which is also only available on Apple devices at the moment.

Cutting edge browsers

Because my browsers of choice are so new, when using the desktop I sometimes find a website that doesn’t play completely well with Arc. Because of this I use Velja as my default browser, although it isn’t a browser at all but a simple tool which lets you choose which browser to use to open links when not in a browser already. In my case I mainly use it when following links from my Obsidian Second Brain. Certain domains automatically go to a browser of choice and if nothing is set Arc is at the top of the list for quick access.

The question of Bookmarks

Alongside browsers the other unavoidable topic of websites is bookmarks. They are to a degree a work in progress still for me and how I access them depends if they are a recent creation or were saved years ago. So let me explain to you how I am now working with bookmarks in case it gives you any ideas.

A huge collection

I imagine if you are anything like me you probably have a huge collection of bookmarks created in browsers and various extensions over the years. I have a huge vault of them. But when I installed my recent browsers they didn’t automatically come too. The time had arrived from some discernment. Where I now save bookmarks depends on what they are for and where I will use them.

Bookmarking Tools

I actually have different tools/places to save bookmarks depending upon my purpose for saving the. Here is a breakdown of the types of bookmarks I keep, what for and where I keep them.

Browser Bookmarks

In my Arc Browser I can create separate profiles. This is similar to the profiles in other browsers, they allow you to use different logins. I have a profile for me, then one for each blog website, if I decide to use a specific social media website with a blog I know if I am using it’s profile I will be logged into the correct instance. As well as Profiles Arc let’s you create spaces.

Browser Spaces

To go along with the separate space for each profile I also, using my personal profile have spaces for Knowledge, Crafting, World of Warcraft, Genealogy and Personal (Health & beauty etc). Each of these spaces has a small amount of bookmarks, in general about 5/6. These are websites/applications that I am almost definitely going to visit when in that Space.

Arc works with bookmarks differently. Each space has three sections. The ones at the top (up to 9) are shared across all Spaces that share that profile, so this is for things like the Password Manager and the Raindrop Page. The next area is pinned bookmarks, so they stay put, this is where the 5/6 I talked about go. Then the final section is the daily bookmarks, all of those things that you open then and there but don’t need to keep around, unless you pin them they disappear overnight.

Raindrop Bookmarks

Each Profiles space has a Raindrop Collection allocated, Raindrop is great for collecting bookmarks. As well as the collections, you can tag bookmarks, link check for dead ones and even share collections. As I am currently doing on the Apps and Tech pages of this blog. Things go into Raindrop if I am likely to revisit them or want to remember them but there is nothing I need to do with them at present.

Braintool

Braintool is a bookmark manager, well more than that it is a knowledge manager. If you use Chrome it is perfect. Because I use Arc for the majority of my web work it does not reach it’s peak ability. That is, when used in Chrome it can sit to the side of your browser window and interact with your tabs from there. In Arc it has to be used within a tab and this is not as intuitive. When I am working on WikiTree I find Chrome to be the better browser so now I partner Braintool with Chrome for my Genealogy research exclusively.

So I can have a collection of bookmarks for a specific family group and whenever I break off the particular people’s profiles and the related census or baptism record pages can be all saved together with notes on my progress and a todo label. This is a dream system.

Obsidian Bookmarks

The final place I put bookmarks is directly into Obsidian. There are several ways I do that.

What don’t I bookmark?

There is one specific category that I do not bookmark at that is anything to read later. They get sent to Omnivore my read it alter application. The beauty of Omnivore is that it can save either the highlights or the whole article into Obsidian for me if the articles contain anything I want to save into my knowledge bank.

Until next time,
Susan