Del.icio.us Firefox plugin

I have long been a user of the del.icio.us Firefox plugin. Though I probably don’t use it as much as I’d like to I still find it handy for quickly bookmarking webpages that I’d perhaps like to revisit later or at home.

The development of the Firefox plugin has been steady with an update/bug fix of some form every month, the recent August 22nd update was the longest period between updates. I have encountered very few problems using the plugin and it makes adding bookmarks to your del.icio.us account so much easier than using the old browser buttons.

The recent update adds the ability to switch on (or off) the ability for the del.icio.us bookmarks sidebar to auto-hide when it loses focus. Initially I thought this as being a great added feature until I realised that auto-hide doesn’t really hide but closes the sidebar. It would have been better that instead of closing it collapsed, similar to closing a panel in your favourite development IDE where clicking on something like an arrow restores the panel to its former size.

I have also noticed that in adding the auto-hide ability they have removed the ‘undocked’ appearance of the del.icio.us panel that you once got when clicking on the del.icio.us icon in the toolbar, and where you could click to open it as a sidebar. This won’t deter me from using the Firefox plugin, just some observations made whilst using it.

A further ‘feature’ that I have just discovered is the ability to make already bookmarked webpages not shared through the sidebar. Open the sidebar, right-click on a bookmarked item->Properties and you are displayed the same dialogue as when you bookmark a new item. Here you can choose through a checkbox whether or not it is shared. Currently you cannot do this through the web interface at del.icio.us, which I anticipate to have an extensive graphical overhaul in the not too distant future.