Filed under: Software, Cool tools, Internet Tools
Delibar - the missing link of social bookmarking?

I love the concept of social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and Shadows. When we found Safarilicious I immediately used it to upload all 1050 of my bookmarks to del.icio.us, and I use it to help organize bookmarks for all sorts of projects I'm working on with friends.
My one complaint about these services is that, aside from Flock "getting it" and actually building support for del.icio.us (and Shadows) right into their browser, social bookmarking feels very one-way in its interactivity: there hasn't been any way to access them as easily as your favorite browser's bookmarks menu (and no, Cocoalicious doesn't quite get there). Further, the problem is compounded if you're like me and you either want or have to work in more than one browser.
Fortunately, I just found the utility that solves these problems and brings all your socializing bookmarks back home to your desktop: Delibar. Fitting into the "do one thing, and do it well" category that we at TUAW love so much, Delibar (as you can see) is a free menubar app that serves as a "universal bookmarks menu" for all your del.icio.us bookmarks, sorted into folders by the tags you've assigned. This, my friends, is exactly what I've been looking for.
To the del.icio.us crew, if you're listening: you need to help this guy out in one way or another. If I may be so bold: you guys should have offered something like this the day that you flipped the switch on your services. To the developer of Delibar: thank you! Finally, to you TUAW readers: I highly recommend you check out this most useful of utilities, and I urge you to donate if you wind up finding it even half as useful as I have.

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
William said 11:34AM on 2-25-2006
Very cool. I love del.icio.us.
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Hans Peter Brondmo said 12:29PM on 2-25-2006
This looks really neat. Tighter integration between desktop and "the cloud" is clearly where things need to go.
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Brad said 1:09PM on 2-25-2006
How exactly is this useful? Are you telling me that out of your hundreds (or thousands) of tags, you can find a bookmark quickly? Pu-lease. I love del.icio.us and use it throughout the day, but the drop-down menu just doesn't cut it. keep your frequented bookmarks in your browser, sync them between browsers if you use more than one and just use the del.icio.us site to browse through your tags when you need to find something.
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Evan said 1:33PM on 2-25-2006
A similar tool has been available for Firefox users for some time, it's called Foxylicious and does the same thing that Delibar does, just inside of Firefox. Also, most wonderful of all, is the Del.icio.us plug-in for Quicksilver which allows you to access all your bookmarks without even touching that damn mighty mouse.
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David Chartier said 2:50PM on 2-25-2006
I probably should have explained this better in the post, but part of the reason I like Delibar so much is that it is completely browser independent. It doesn't matter if you're using Firefox and Flxylicious or Safari or Opera or OmniWeb; your marks will open in whatever default browser you're using.
Now Brad, as far as usability, I find this incredibly useful, and that might be because I don't littler my bookmarks with a lot of tags like I think many delicious users do. I treat them just like I organize bookmarks in a browser, adding no more than one, maybe two tags at most to each one, so my Delibar menu winds up being nearly as organized as my bookmarks menus in any of my browsers.
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David said 3:37PM on 2-25-2006
Quicksilver calls up del.icio.us bookmarks just fine for me.
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amyhr said 3:43PM on 2-25-2006
Okay, now I like it. For the longest time, I was running 0.6.1, and it was really annoying cuz it only listed one site per folder. I just downloaded 0.7b and that error has been corrected. Definitely more useful, now if I could figure out how to move it further to the right on the task bar so Safari's menu's don't keep hiding it...
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benchosei said 3:59PM on 2-25-2006
Agree with David. The del.icio.us plugin for quicksilver takes you to your bookmarks with few keystrokes. Much better than navigating through the folders provided by delibar.
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Joe B. said 4:02PM on 2-25-2006
I'm also a big fan of delimport (http://ianhenderson.org/delimport.html) which adds all your del.icio.us bookmarks to the Spotlight database. It's makes searching your tags much easier.
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greycat said 6:17AM on 2-26-2006
When installing the program on my Mac Mini I get a 10660 error. Any idea what that is and what i can do about it?
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Rajiv Perera said 7:53AM on 2-26-2006
Thank you -- this is wonderful.
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Frederic Robert said 10:14AM on 2-26-2006
Del.ico.us + QuickSilver + QS Delicious plugin is the best solution for me on a Mac:
- invoke from any application.
- bookmarks are opened in the default browser.
- search through titles and tags as you type.
- automatic or manual updating of your bookmarks.
http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/
It's just like searching a database, it's quick and I don't see what can beat this setup... certainly not delibar!
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David Lam said 9:00PM on 2-26-2006
Nice software, but one big problem is that it seems to be not supporting unicode. I saw some strange character for the tags with Chinese and Japanese characters
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Justin said 10:13AM on 2-27-2006
I like delibar, as well as delimport, but the thing that I needed was a fast, light posting client. So I wrote one. I just coincidentally released the first public beta last night, so if you're interested, check it out:
http://codesorcery.net
For me, I find myself archiving more than retrieving, but maybe that's just me.
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