It would be really convenient if diigo toolbar updates for firefox included some update information, the same as almost every other extension.

I just updated to the new version, but i have no idea if anything changed. I don't know if it was a bug fix, or if next time i click "bookmark" i'll be confronted by a giant picture of a cat!

Clicking the "show information" button just says "there is no information included with this update" or somesuch.

But when a new version is available, I can't see any information on it. I can't see what has changed before I install it.

When you update extensions there is a "show information" button in the bottom right of the window, it tells you what you are about to change. Diigo doesn't provide this information.

lol. It is a bit annoying that the huge wikipedia ad is obscuring your view of the CuteKid page you bookmarked.

oh yeah. me too. weird...

So it's officially gone?? That's a bit of a shock, and a bit annoying... it was a very useful feature... and i had it all set up how i wanted.

I wonder what their reasoning is, as it can't really require a lot of maintenance, and hasn't needed any updating.

i guess it maybe makes sense to separate it out, so the focus of diigo is more clear, and developers can focus on that. But isn't maintaining TWO versions going to be even more tricky?

But i guess if i'm not going to use the search functionality then i can hide the toolbar entirely and just use the menu...

I'll check out fastyub and see how it goes...

I tend to use lists for BIG GROUPINGS of items all in the same area. I tag each item individually, but putting them into 4-5 big lists allows me to easily sort my "web design" stuff from my "entertainment" stuff. Plus lists have a few extra features like webslides, etc..

But they sure aren't necessary. I also tend to tag things with stuff like "web design", and sometimes tags are more useful (for searching, etc..).

I'd imagine that having lots of lists for dozens of projects might become a pain to manage, but if it's gonna be a big/long term project it might be a good idea. Try both, as yuppi suggests.
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PS/ Your're right, the help isn't really very informative on many topics. One of the problems is that diigo has so many features, it's kinda hard to get into. (though not everyone uses all the features.).

I think they would, as they have already put sticky notes on most of the pages.

As you said, i think one of the main problems is the DISCONNECT between the help and the functionality.
A better help section with more links, and more reasons why would be good.

But i think the main thing that's needed is more help ON THE PAGES THEMSELVES. Lots of pages have features, settings, textboxes, etc, but many of them have no real explanation of
(a) what exactly they do
(b) what they are for
(c) what entries are valid
(d) examples.

Diigo has so much functionality, but it's all spread around, and a lot of it has lots of obscure options and terms. Some nice ajax style help boxes would be great.

This version of diigo has improved things in some ways by merging some similar features. But diigo still has a lot of functionality with similar, and sometimes inconsistently named terms. (eg: highlights, sticky notes, annotations, descriptions, etc...).

I'm not sure the information exists, and i doubt you'll get an official answer. But I'll throw out my opinion.

If you're a flickr user, then I'd say tags = tags, and lists = albums.
Or if you think in terms of mp3s, I'd say tags is the metadata (genre, composer, year, etc..) and lists is the groupings. (albums / playlists).

So it seems to me that tags describe the bookmark. Lists are arbitrary collections of bookmarks.
So, for example:
Apple (Fruit, Round, Green, Healthy)
Orange (Fruit, Round, Orange, Healthy)
Icecream (Food, Desert, Sweet, Soft, Unhealthy).

List of favorite foods (Orange, Icecream).
List of things for party (Orange, Icecream, CDs, Dress, ...)

Of course, there's nothing at all stopping you tagging Apple, Orange and Icecream with "favorite things". So there's a huge amount of crossover between the two, and it's rather up to you how you choose to use them.

If you'd like to have a look, here's one of my tags:
http://www.diigo.com/user/Soulgrind/webdesign
and one of my lists:
http://www.diigo.com/list/soulgrind/site-development
as you can see, tags might be more useful for searching, combining, sorting, etc.
the list can't be combined/filtered quite like tags, but it can be "played" and shared a little better.

Lists also seem to allow you to add Sections and Notes, but i don't use those. It seems as if users might be able to share a list and add to it collaboratively, but i don't use that either. Both have an RSS feed, and are in practice pretty similar.

That's my impression of lists... ;-)

Diigo API group would be very nice. It might actually get some action going, and i doubt most of the community would be interested in the posts.. so it'd make sense to separate them out.

It'd be nice to have an updated API.
I was trying to make a firefox extension that inserted diigo results into google search pages, and integrated them nicely... but i ran into too many problems with the lack of an API key, and the inability to do complex searches.

I got it working for myself, by hardcoding the username and login into the extension... but i couldn't work out a way to release if for other users without having to annoy them with login popups every time they use google.

Also, the API limits of 1 search per 2-3 seconds were rather limiting if trying to get a useful combination of results. A limit of say 20 calls per minute would be more useful than one call per 3 seconds.

It's a shame... i had it working nice.
(also, i notice that compared to many other web2.0(?) services, there are very few diigo apps, extensions or mashups out there... which is a shame).

Is it worth making a Diigo API group so that people can talk about development and help each other out?
If so, should it be an official diigo group started by them, or can one of us start it?
(i don't really use diigo groups, except the general community one, so i don't know how they work.)

I've been using diigo for ages for bookmarks, but i've just set up a blog so i wanted to try out the Post to blog and Auto-blog functions.

Unfortunately the results don't seem all that useable. One problem is the (unfortunately common) one that the pages don't really have much help or guidance included in them. If it wasn't for other user's sticky notes i'd have never figured out how to set up a wordpress blog, and never known what half the boxes were for.

But on a wider note, it'd be nice to have some more options:
(a) Setting up the auto blog I can choose to include annotations or not, but if i select a lot of posts in my Diigo Library and choose "post to blog" then i seem to be unable to exclude the annotations... and a dozen huge annotations don't make a nice blog post.

(b) It'd be nice if there was an option/way to turn diigo tags into blog tags.
(c) and if there was an option to choose categories.
(d) and if there was an option to include tags in the post, or not.
(e) and if there was an option to include "list of links TO ANNOTATED PAGES"... so all the annotations don't get embedded in the blog.. but can be seen if they click the link to visit the page.

(f) It'd be nice to be able to set up default text for the Auto Blog Post if i want, so i don't have to edit it each time to add "here are some things i found interesting this week:".

All around, it seems like a great diigo feature that i wasn't even aware of. (there seem to be lots of those). But it seems mostly unusable right now.

yeah. me too. hadn't used them for the last few days so i hadn't noticed.

I haven't been bookmarking much recently, so when i went on a bookmarking spree today i was shocked to see the "Used last time" suggestions for tags.

This is officially AWESOME. I just spent an hour or two reading up on HTML doctypes (zzz!) and so every page i wanted to bookmark was on the same topic. Bookmarking them all suddenly became super easy!

You guys rock!

bump. just to make sure the diigo staff noticed it. cos it got buried pretty quick.
Gotta say, the "last used tags" are REALLY handy... i'm using them for 80% of the pages i bookmark.

First, I like the v4 update so far. However:

(1) On my toolbar I only see [Sidebar] [Diigo] [quick] [bookmark] [read later]
So the toolbar is 80% empty.
Clicking the options and enabling Search, Highlight, Send, Add a filter, etc... doesn't cause them to appear on the toolbar, just in a dropdown menu ">>"
And as the search box won't appear in the drop down menu I can't get to it at all.

(2) I don't usually use the sidebar search (i usually use the one in the toolbar, but...) but right now it isn't giving me any results for plain text searches. Tag searches in the sidebar work, but not plaintext ones.

(1) is IMPORTANT as it makes the toolbar rather hard to use. (2) isn't so important for me, but i thought i'd point it out.

Generally - good work. though i'm a little disappointed a few of the great/simple suggestions from the forum didn't make the cut.

ok. new updated version SEEMS to have fixed it. Fingers crossed.

still no results in plain text searches. but i never use the sidebar, only the toolbar.

The good:
- the new design is nice and clean and modern.
- things seem to have been consolidated a lot
- forums seem much improved.
- like the "d" logo more than the "ii" friends.
- search ranking seems a little improved.
- snapshots sounds like a good idea, though i haven't tried it yet.
- the "diigo & google" search is much improved (helped by the improved search ranking). However It'd still be more useful to integrate diigo results into a "real" google results page.

The Questions:
- Has/Will the API be updated?
(namely: API keys to allow access without logins, more advanced searches, time limits that are more flexible)

The Wanted:
- Just a simple "use same tags as last bookmark" button would improve diigo by 10000%
- Adding notes. Sometimes I don't want to bookmark something, i just want to write something I've just thought of - with no page attached.
- make the privacy more clear than a tiny checkbox which i always forget about.
- better tag suggestions.

Is this the right place to ask about the API?

I don't really know what i'm doing, but i'm trying to make a greasemonkey script that gets some results from diigo. I've got it working, but each time i restart my browser, the next time i use that script i have to enter my username and password... which doesn't make it very user friendly.

The only way i can find to bypass this is to log in my username and password automatically... but that doesn't seem very secure, and means i can't share the greasemonkey script.
(eg: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/49158/greasemonkey-script-to-auto-login-using-http-authentication )

Is there a way to get the api to recognise that i'm already logged in to diigo? Visiting the site or using the toolbar doesn't require me to log in all the time as it remembers me.. is there any way to tap into that? or a way to get an API key or something?

as far as i can tell its gonna be tricky. using HTTP-auth seems to require that the user log in each session.
Diigo itself uses cookies to allow you to stay logged in, but i can't find any way for greasemonkey scripts to make use of that. Its tricky as it does seem to make the API rather hard to make use of. Maybe the dvs can give me some hints.

From userscripts.org:
"Note that Yumyum uses the del.icio.us web API, which requires you to log in again, with HTTP-Authentication. When you open your del.icio.us page for the first time after starting your browser, you will be prompted for your user name and password. This dialog is not controlled by the Yumyum script.

Beware that yumyum may get confused if you are using more than one del.icio.us account - actions will always be performed on the account you first loged into to, you have to completely close the browser to reset it. This is due to the fact the del.icio.us web API uses HTTP-Authentication, which a) cannot be reset (no "logout" option), and also yumyum has no access to the authentication data, and cannot check with which ID you are logged into the API. I hope I'll find a way around this some day. "

This seems to be the same problem i'm having. I'll keep working on it.

Further questions, if any devs are reading this...

1 - what are the API limits?

I've been testing my script and i'm sometimes running into errors where i go over the API limit. I guess this is number of queries per second or something?

Ideally, to get the results i want, i need to run 2-3 separate queries. Is that gonna go over the limit?

2 - is there a way to do an OR search for tags? eg: "book" or "books"
I'm trying to get around the singular/plural tags problem by searching for both.. but it won't work because it's an AND query.

Is there an RSS feed for unread bookmarks?

I'm sure there used to be, as i was subscribed to it a long time back, but i can't remember how i found it.
It'd be useful so i can access them from my rss reader when i'm on the road.

Thanks

Is there any chance of getting the search engine sorted out to be more useful?
I asked a few months back, but it's still fairly useless at the moment.

For example, searching for "books" returns 77 results, almost all of which have NOTHING to do with books, but happen to have adverts for books on the web page.
However it doesn't return some of the pages i tagged as "book" or "books".

Doing a tag search is a little better, but it doesn't differentiate between singular or plural nouns.. so searching for "books" returns only the one result i tagged "books" and not the 3 i tagged "book"

Plus, the tag search isn't the one used in the toolbar or the diigo+google search.

WIthout a useful search it sometimes feels like i'm wasting time adding all these pages and tags...

they do seem to have gone very quiet recently, which was worrying when it happened on spurl...

:-(

Not had this problem, but the searches are definitely not sorted in any kind of logical order.

Sean Brady wrote:
> It would be nice if Diigo had someone in the forums responding daily and acting as a liaison back to the developers.

I thought that was Maggie? I've seen her posting on lifehacker a bit recently, but there hasn't been anyone around here. They used to be very fast at responding to every post here. (maybe too much).

@robert:
I've tried doing tag searches for a few of my tags and the number of results reported seems to match up with the number of tagged pages. I've only tried a few though.

on delicious ;-)

well, thats a half serious reply i guess, but (having had a bad experience with Spurl a few years ago myself) I definitely made sure to set up the diigo mirroring... infact it was one of the main reasons I picked diigo. Not having all my eggs in one basket, so to speak...

> Google,
> Why did you have to abandon us notebook users?
> Everything always seemed to work as advertised, it was bulletproof, and I never needed any help.
>

Really? I hated google notebook. It had the most user unfriendly UI i've ever encountered.
It was a great idea, but i don't quite know why they decided to make it unusable.

Hey, Joel's back!! ;-)

I was thinking about how to make it easier to quickly tag bookmarks, and this is what i came up with:

http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o208/soulgrind_bucket/random/diigoadd.jpg

First of all it'd be useful to have a "as last bookmark" button for when you are tagging a load of pages one after the other that are all similar.

Next it'd be good to get recommendations not just based on the page, but based on your search queries* (if they are in the page) and the tags you use most often.

*if i've searched for "free activities tokyo" then its probably a good way to tag it, as i'll probably search for it that way again. But we need to check if those words are in the page, as tabbed browsing might mean the search is for another tab.

Also, if i'm adding it to a list (or group) then suggesting tags from that list/group would make sense. There should be a checkbox to automatically add all the tags for the list/group. This checkbox should remember it's setting.

Finally, move the "private" checkbox down by the "save" button, and then there's a small chance i might actually remember to use it correctly from time to time.

I just had an AWESOME idea.

If we could get tag suggestions from lists, then you could right click on the "quick bookmark" button and select a list from a menu. Then automatically add all the default tags for that list.

80% of the pages i bookmark fall into 3 or 4 main categories, which are also lists. So in one second I could quickly file a bookmark away, without having to enter any information. then later I could go back and add the information. this would be awesome. (honest ;-) )

--

Actually, about the UI. How about only one button, which works like the firefox star. Eg:
Click once: quick bookmark.
double click: open bookmark dialog.
right click: quick file to list.

Plus the mark as unread button of course. (which could also have a right click lists list).

Tagging individual highlights is an interesting idea, though i think it could get pretty complex. Back to that in a sec..

With tags being auto inserted from lists (which would be an option of course) we would indeed get a lot of repetition of tags. For me that'd be a good thing. Right now if i tag a tutorial on web design i end up trying really hard to use all the relevant tags, but depending on the page i often use different ones.
Page A: web design tutorial learning programming
Page B: webdesign tutorials learn programme

If i had a "web design lessons" list which included all the BASE tags that'd apply to ALL items in the list then they'd get standardisted, have several alternatives, save me time, etc.. I guess these would be the really BIG tags in your tag cloud.
You could still easily add tags to individual bookmarks as now.
It'd speed up normal bookmarking, and it'd really improve QuickBookmarking.

Tagging individual highlights would be really nice, though i do worry about how it could be done effectively. One alternative might be that you go through and highlight the document as usual. But if you click on the bookmark button, any tags from within highlights are suggested... and boosted to the top of the suggestion pile.
(so a user who highlight certain parts of the page would get certain suggestions, and one who highlight other parts would get other suggestions).

1) This would be a nice feature, but i do worry it might make everything very complex. Can't really think how to implement it without adding lots of options to the search area.
(I guess you could default to the search finding strict tag matches, but pop up any partial matches as suggestions to widen the search).

2) If this what diigo does now, or more of a widening of the search?
I guess that'd need an extra "or" button in the list of tag suggestions, next to the "+" button.

All searches are not equal in Diigo. Some searches are tag searches, and some are full text searches.
The UI is a little confusing at times about what you are searching. :-(

A: If you have the diigo SIDEbar open then you have three little links above the searchbox. The first is a tag search (with autocomplete) and the last is a full text search (without autocomplete).

B: If you are searching from the toolbar then its the full text search, without autocomplete.
(though the search is customisable, so you might be able to set up a tag search).

C: If you are searching from the diigo site then on the "My Bookmarks" page its a tag search (with autocomplete) . If you use the search engine in the top corner then its a full text search (without autocomplete).

(if you use the full text search then its not smart, it doesn't order the results in a sensible way, and doesn't notice if your search directly matches a tag. I'd stick with tag searches where possible).

---

For adding bookmarks, typing in tags into the text box SHOULD bring up autocomplete lists for existing tags. It does for me and it works fine.

The recommended tags? They are sometimes really useful, and sometimes terrible. I have no idea where they come from...

Hope that helps...

It sure seems to for me. if i search for a common word then i get lots of results, which aren't included in the tags, title or description. So i guess it must be searching the cached versions.

I don't know if it generates the cached copies immediately though, there might be some delay after adding a bookmark.

As far as i remember, the justification for it was that it allowed people to turn off the toolbar (if they wanted to save space) and just use this menu, and right click.

I don't use either menu that often, so i have no particular opinion on the issue, but i think thats the reason its there...

does this mean we'll get to add NOTES to diigo?? Because that'd be really useful...