Feature Requests

Defenestration
08/24/2004 04:12 am
Hi Oleg,

I`m on the look out for a bookmark manager and thought I`d give Links Organizer a try.

I quite like it, but it`s missing three key features for me:

1) The ability to password protect all the links. This might require a bit of a re-design because I would prefer to be able to create multiple "Bookmarks" projects, which can be password protected.

2) The ability to select multiple links and then open multiple links (specifically URL`s) in one go (eg. by right-clicking and selecting "Browse URL`s").

3) The ability to specify the path of other browsers (eg. Firefox, Avant Browser etc.) and let them be used to browse links in, instead of limiting the user to the internal browser, IE and Netscape.
Defenestration
08/24/2004 04:16 am
Sorry about the double post but when I submitted it I received the following error (see below) and re-posted. Also, when you ask to be notified of new messages in the topic, you are notified of your own posts which is a bit pointless. Can you change it so you are not notified of your own posts when subscribed to threads.

Message Saved!

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error `80040e14`

[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]INSERT statement conflicted with COLUMN FOREIGN KEY constraint `FK__forum_sub__paren__30592A6F`. The conflict occurred in database `meta`, table `forum`, column `id`.

/mp/mpSupport_User_Forums_Add.asp, line 304
Oleg Chernavin
08/24/2004 01:13 pm
Thank you for the bug report - we will work to fix it.

I will also work on your suggestions. Regarding password protection - you will be able to see these links only in Links Organizer - browsers will be unable to access these links. Is it fine?

Best regards,
Oleg Chernavin
MP Staff
Defenestration
08/24/2004 10:49 pm
> I will also work on your suggestions. Regarding password protection - you will be able to see these
> links only in Links Organizer - browsers will be unable to access these links. Is it fine?

Yes this is how it should work. If you need access to the password protected links, you have to open LO and enter the password before the bookmarks project is decrypted.

I would recommend using the 256-bit AES Rijndael algroithm for encryption. You could also maybe give the user the choice of which algorithm to use. Another good algorithm is the Twofish algorithm.

Both these algorithms have stood up to review by expert cryptographers who say they are very secure.
Oleg Chernavin
08/25/2004 04:30 am
I usually prefer RC4 algorithm - 128 bit key should be quite safe still.

Oleg.
Oleg Chernavin
08/25/2004 10:21 am
I just added the FireFox browser support. Also, why do you need several protected Bookmarks? I think that one section in the left tree is enough or other areas with different passwords may be necessary?

http://www.metaproducts.com/download/betas/lo122.zip

Oleg.
Defenestration
08/25/2004 10:39 am
While RC4 would be pretty safe, it has been known to have some weaknesses if you don`t discard the first 256 bytes or more of an RC4 cipher stream. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RC4_(cipher)

Check out http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?s=3f8181257447480daa358fa415223f3f&t=40800

for a discussion on the best algorithms.
Oleg Chernavin
08/27/2004 10:54 am
Thank you for the RC4 tip! But you haven`t answered my question - why do you need several separate protected bookmarks files?

Oleg.
Defenestration
08/27/2004 12:30 pm
When distributing bookmarks, I might only want to distribute certain links and not all of the rest. I often like to keep different bookmarks in different files depending on what types of links they are. Then I can simply distribute a single file knowing it only contains certain links.

It`s just the way I like to organize things hence my preference for being able to load up LO and then load different bookmark files. It should still be possible to create a folder structure in each bookmark file (ie. still have the Folder Tree). There should also be an option for auto-loading the last used bookmarks file and selecting the last used folder when LO is started. Obviously it should be possible to password protect/encrypt the database too.

I suppose this may not be the way you want to go for LO, but as a bookmark (URL`s in particular) manager this is the way I`d like to see it working.
Oleg Chernavin
08/29/2004 03:03 pm
OK. I think, I am getting the idea. What if we do the following.

LO will be able to password-protect a certain bookmark (MS IE link, etc.) If you want to browse it, the bookmark will point to the running LO (with an internal Web server). The server in LO will ask you to enter the password and then you will go directly to the link. But you will have to keep LO running. Maybe a standalone tiny server application is possible to implement.

Another way is to have another section in LO - protected bookmarks. You will be able to move or add the bookmarks you want. If you select the Protected Bookmarks in LO`s tree, you will be asked for a password and only then you will be able to browse them.

Which way you prefer?

Oleg.
Defenestration
08/30/2004 04:03 am
> Another way is to have another section in LO - protected bookmarks. You will be able to move or
> add the bookmarks you want. If you select the Protected Bookmarks in LO`s tree, you will be
> asked for a password and only then you will be able to browse them.
>

I prefer this method. Would it also be possible to have an additional Import/Export option "Encrypted" so bookmarks can be exported in encrypted form. I know you could export in one of the text based formats and then encrypt it, but it would be nice if it could be done from within LO in one step.

Oleg Chernavin
08/30/2004 09:22 am
I will keep all encoded bookmarks in a single file, which can be easily transferred to another system.

Oleg.