What are Favs?

UMarks contains a mechanism to highlight special links that the user may wish to treat differently, or have quick access to. The notion is analogous to a favourites or quick links virtual folder. The idea is to leave the links in their original location within a user’s hierarchy, and to flag them for special treatment by user agents. That is to say, a link flagged in this way doesn’t get added to a new folder called ‘Quick Links’, it stays where it belongs and is fished out by the software.

How it works

Every link includes an optional <fav> tag. This can contain a non-negative integer value and its assumed value is zero (0). If the integer value is greater than zero it is intended to be included in a virtual folder that collates all the links the user has highlighted in this way i.e. every link that has a <fav> value greater than zero.

The order of the links in the virtual folder is determined by the integer value itself, and the links are simply ordered from 1 onward.

<fav>0</fav> is redundant

The <fav> tag is optional, and if the value is zero it should simply be removed. It should be remembered that UMarks files are intended to be small and nimble to make them easy to shunt around the internet, mainly for backup and syncing purposes. A bookmarks collection with thousands of links will typically only have a handful that are highlighted using the <fav> tag. In other words, the use of <fav>0</fav> to denote something that isn’t a fav is wasteful and should be discouraged.

Containers and separators excluded

The <fav> tag is only found within links, it is not used with other elements. This is to keep things simple, and to make them easy to manage for the end user. The ‘Quick Links’ virtual folder is intended to only contain a handful of often-visited links, and is not really an alternative to a well-organized bookmark catalogue.