Comment 139 for bug 237679

(In reply to comment #13)
Thanks for that comment, it was helpful to understand your personal perception of keywords and thus your problem with this bug. Marco, are you using keywords yourself? As a location bar keyboard shortcut for opening URLs with and without query parameters? Looking at comment #13, I guess not...

> This usage of keywords looks like misuse as tags, keywords adding natural UI
> is: right click a search field and choose "add a keyword for this search".
> Otherwise looks like you want a tag on your bookmark...
> And the awesomebar can find bookmarks quite efficiently typing partial
> content, thus removing the need for a short "nickname" for the bookmark that
> we had in FX2.

Absolutely NOT. You _cannot_ use a tag instead of a keyword as a keyboard shortcut to _reliably_ open a static URL with as few steps as possible. The functionality is very different, and in most cases, it simply won't work (since location bar autocomplete is based on frecency more than on keyword matches, and they're competing with your history matches). Even defining a _unique_ tag will _not_ ensure autocomplete match from location bar, so tags are pretty useless as a shortcut for specific urls (I can provide STR for a test case, if needed). Whereas the _keyword_ shortcut works 100% of the time, and guaranteed hassle-free: Ctrl+L, type keyword, press Enter - you're there. Works like a charme, without thinking, parsing, cursoring and everything, straight from your muscle memory. Always.

So keywords provide valuable functionality for highly efficient browsing; therefore, adding keywords to a bookmark should be easy. It's way too hard now (especially when creating a new bookmark; quote below from http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1431655):

-------------------------------------------------------------
Actual Behaviour (missing on comment #0):

> Right now, to assign a keyword, we have to do this:
>
> . select bookmark this page
> . ctrl+shift+B
> . search for the bookmark
> . select "more"
> . enter the keyword
> . close
>
> #-o [-( The insanity of it all!!! 8-[
-------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, it's insane. Therefore this bug. Access to all properties of a bookmark from it's most prominent representation (the star) should NOT need extensions.

A simple fix that can make virtually everyone happy has been proposed in bug 405795:
-> Add some sort of tiny [v] more button to expand the crippled "Edit this bookmark" dialogue (cf. mockup screenshots, attachment 391888, attachment 392075, attachment 392887)

The fact that we are deliberately hiding valuable functionality (keywords) to an extent that the average user will never find it, is also detrimental to Firefox adoption (cf. comment #0):
> ...but why, oh why are bookmark keywords so shunned! They're an awesome
> feature, but hardly anybody knows about them because you don't even
> see them unless you venture into bookmark manager.

From a Mozilla inside perspective, the article "How Cool are Custom Keywords" by Mozilla's Asa Dotzler looks pretty much supportive of this view (http://www.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/keywords.html). I know Asa from the Mozilla Europe Camp 2009 to which I was invited for my bmo contributions, and I'm sure he knows what he is talking about.

Finally (quoted from http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1431655):
> So, if someone can make this happen, you will definitely make me happy and
> you might also make millions of others just as happy.

Links:
- Keywords: http://www.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/keywords.html, http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches
- Tags: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Bookmark+tags
- Conceptual difference between keywords and tags: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=7896835&sid=66f7fa0d4a0ca16468afed8bd1169580#p7896835