Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 10:19:38 -0600
To: Claris, Netscape
From: jaques.law@dlcwest.com (Kevin Jaques, B.A., LL.B., of the Jaques Law Office)
Subject: Difficulties getting bookmarks between Claris Home Page and Netscape
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I tried out Claris Home Page 1.0 to make a modest web site. One of the pages was a list of bookmarks I had gathered in my use of Netscape v.2.?. 

On the bright side, it was easy enough to get them into Claris Home Page, and quite convenient to organize and edit them. 

On the dark side, when I was done, I was unable to get the resulting page back into Netscape's bookmark file. The organization in Netscape was utterly unlike the organization on the web page. In fact, certain categories were missing. Further, many links lost their names and/or descriptions and/or URLs. I struggled unsuccessfully. 

I upgraded to Netscape 3.0 and the Home Page 2.0 beta. Both offered some improvement. I can't say for sure, but Netscape didn't appear to lose any, at least. Claris offered an option of whether to line wrap when editing source HTML. But, the same problems were apparent. 

I discovered some of the causes, although I am by no means finished solving the problem. 

a. Claris broke up the lines
b. Neither Claris nor Netscape bothers to end the <DD> or <DT>. It was vulnerable to the line breakage. That is why the names/descriptions/URLs were lost (according to where the line break occurred). Maybe that is the fault of the language. I don't know. c. Claris uses BLOCKQUOTE for indentation. Netscape seems to prefer DL. That is part of why the organization was ruined. d. Netscape can't understand that text is a heading if it contains an anchor, or any odd text, like ampersands or slashes or god knows what. Once it fails to recognize a heading, the whole organization from that point on is ruined. e. Netscape seems to insist on a <P> after a </DL> leading to an unsightly page in Claris. f. Claris wiped out "ADD_" from "ADD_DATE" and put spaces into "ADD_DATE" and "LAST_VISIT" such that Netscape couldn't understand them. g. Netscape's browser is not even consistent with its handling of the bookmarks. Organization satisfactory to the bookmarks is not coherent in the browser. I can understand that organization in the browser is not necessarily coherent in the bookmarks (and it isn't). 

I think it is mostly Claris' fault, but mostly Netscape's responsibility. Web pages will be created on many editors, some just by hand in a text editor. Netscape must be smart enough to import without losing structure, and certainly without losing URLs. 

I suggest that Netscape's import/export give users a choice of structure: BLOCKQUOTE, DL, or heading level, or automatic, which should analyze which choice would be best, and if confused, perhaps apply some sort of combination. 

Another beef about Netscape is that the bookmarks window permits a level of nesting beyond which what is available under the bookmarks menu. There will be items which are just unreachable. 

Incidentally, I explored the web sites on both Claris and Netscape and found no email address on either. What!? Claris had a deeply buried suggestions form, but it reported that FileMaker was down, so it didn't work (on 4 attempts). Instead, it brought me to an URL problem reporting page, which didn't work either. 

I hope for a reply and certainly for some consideration for improvement of the products. I will be publishing this letter on the web site of the MacIntosh User's Group of Regina Saskatchewan (of which I am the humble president), and will publish a reply if any as well.