The Michigan Telephone blog

Chrome Bookmark Manager Organize dropdown

Warning:  I drop the F-BOMB a couple of times.  On Google.  If that sort of language offends you, go ask your mommy to find you a child-safe site to read.

I hate Google.  I really do.  The remind me a lot of the “Soup Nazi” from Seinfeld, in that when they offer software or services they offer them the way THEY want to offer them and don’t seem to listen to input from users.  Sure, I use their services, in part because every time someone comes along and offers a good service, fucking Google buys it and then turns it into something different (or even shuts it down entirely), and is often totally unresponsive to user input.  They did it with Grand Central, and they did it with Gizmo5.  Google Chrome was an original with Google, but even so, they don’t seem to listen to their users, such as the many who want the option to have bookmarks open in a new tab when they left-click on them.  Sure, you can middle click on the mouse to open a bookmark in a new tab, but that’s not as natural a movement as a left click (you are clicking on a rolling wheel rather than a firm button with most newer mice) and besides, we’ve all been left-clicking on links for YEARS — why should we be forced to change because of FUCKING Google? (Yes, I really am a little angry about this!).

Yes, I know that no one is forced to use Chrome, but Firefox seems to have turned into a steaming pile of poo as far as loading sites is concerned.  Firefox USED to be a nice, snappy browser but they have done something in recent versions that has caused it to become SUPER slow and unresponsive.  Opera is a fantastic browser but doesn’t offer many extensions or add-ons, and I make considerable use of those.  Safari is not such a great browser and it also has little to offer in the way of add-ons.  IE?  I use OS X but even if I had a Windows box I wouldn’t touch IE with a ten foot pole.  What I REALLY want is my old, responsive Firefox back, but for several versions now I’ve been waiting in vain, so I moved on to the next most popular browser.  I just hate the fact that Google has anything to do with it, because ANY other company would probably be more responsive to user requests.

Anyway, it turns out that there’s apparently no way anyone has discovered to force Chrome to open bookmarks in new tabs when you left click on them, except for one:  You can edit the actual bookmark link.  To do that, just right click on a bookmark and then click on edit.  Now, what you need to do is modify the link as shown in this example.  Let’s say you have bookmarked this site:

http://michigantelephone.wordpress.com/

What you want to do is change it so it looks like this:

javascript:window.open(‘http://michigantelephone.wordpress.com/‘);

So, you are adding  javascript:window.open(‘  at the start and  ‘);  at the end of each link.

“But”, I hear you cry, “I have several hundred links and I don’t want to change them all by hand!”  Well, there is a way to do it that worked for me, though I don’t guarantee it will work for everyone (I have no idea what sort of funky bookmarks you may have).  The procedure is:

Click on Bookmarks, then Bookmark Manager.  When the Bookmark Manager page comes up, click on Organize.  You should see an option to “Export Bookmarks to HTML file…” and another to “Import Bookmarks from HTML file…”  So use those to first export the bookmarks, make the changes in a text editor, and then import them back into Chrome.  When you have exported the file, load it into any plain-text editor and use the Find and Replace functions to do the following two global replacements:

Find: <DT><A HREF=”
Replace: <DT><A HREF=”javascript:window.open(‘

Find: ” ADD_DATE=
Replace: ‘);” ADD_DATE=

Then, before you import the bookmarks back into Chrome, you should exit Chrome if it is running and go to its profile folder (on a Mac that’s usually /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default – if entering that in a terminal command put a backslash in “Application Support”: ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Default).  Look for a file called Bookmarks, and rename it to Bookmarks.old or something so Chrome can’t load it — then go back into Chrome and use the ”Import Bookmarks from HTML file…” option to load your modified bookmarks back in.  If something gets messed up you can go back and rename the original Bookmarks file back to having no extension (be SURE it has no extension… I found that after attempting to rename it, it had somehow got a .TXT extension attached to it and for some reason Finder didn’t show it!  I’ve already ranted about Finder so I’ll spare you that one again).

I know this is kind of a sucky solution that involves a lot more work than it should (and also forces you to remember to modify every new bookmark you add) but at least you won’t have to worry about accidentally losing the contents of a tab you’re working in because you opened a bookmark to check on something and forgot to open a new tab first.  Maybe one of those wonderful Chrome extension authors would be so kind as to write an extension that automatically adds the javascript tags to each freshly-created bookmark?  Or, just maybe, wonder of wonders, Google will actually listen to its users and make Chrome more configurable, so people can set their individual preferences for things like this.  I can dream, can’t I?

By the way, despite all my ranting above, I really must admit that Chrome is probably a better browser than Firefox.  I really hate saying that because I just hate the way Google is getting so big, like the monster that devoured the Internet (and now they are changing their privacy policy — what’s that all about?  It can’t be good for users).  The Firefox guys need to stop adding features for a while, and just make Firefox blazing fast again!