404 Bookmarks is a brand new browser add-on for the Firefox web browser that helps you identify and remove dead bookmarks from the browser.
Most modern browsers support bookmarks, and it is easy enough to add them to the browser. In Firefox, all you do is click on the star icon to add it to the browser.
If you do that regularly, you end up with a growing list of bookmarks in the browser. Not really a size problem, as Firefox handles large bookmarks lists well.
The main issue however is that sites or pages may be removed from the Internet. Bookmarks that point to these sites are dead, or in worst case point to a new site that has nothing to do with the old.
Firefox, like any other browser, offers no tools to check bookmarks regularly to make sure they point to active sites.
I used to use AM-Deadlink for the checking, but the program is just a shadow of its former self now.
404 Bookmarks
404 Bookmarks is an excellent add-on for Firefox that adds the functionality to the browser. The add-on adds an icon to Firefox’s main toolbar. A click on the icon checks all bookmark locations, and returns any with problematic return codes.
While 404 not found is probably the most common error, other errors such as HTTP error 410 (gone) are also recognized by the browser extension.
Each expired bookmark is listed with its name, link, return code, and a remove action. It is recommended to check the bookmarks manually before you remove them, unless you are certain that you don’t require it anymore anyway.
This is done with a click on the link to open it in a new tab in Firefox. Remove does exactly what it says, it removes the bookmark from Firefox so that it is not available anymore afterwards.
The scanning of bookmarks is quite fast. The extension scanned the thousand or so bookmarks of Firefox in record time, and displayed first results right from the get go. This allows you to start checking and removing bookmarks while the scan is still ongoing in the background.
The actual verification process is bit of a nuisance, as the 404 Bookmarks interface is an overlay that sits on top whichever sites you open in Firefox. This is probably less of a problem if you use a wide screen monitor and Firefox in full screen, but if you don’t, you may notice that sites load behind the overlay which makes checking less intuitive than it could be.
The second issue with the overlay is that it goes away when you click somewhere else. An option to make it sticky for a period of time, or display the information in a tab instead would make the operation a lot smoother.
The removal on the other hand is excellent, and works instantly and just as expected.
Closing Words
404 Bookmarks is a promising new add-on for the Firefox browser that helps you verify bookmarks, and remove dead bookmarks in Firefox. I think a tabbed display would work better for this kind of application though. (via Techdows)
Chrome users can check out Bookmark Sentry or Bookmark Checker instead.