StumbleUpon and Firefox 3 – Auto-Bookmark on Thumb Up or Tag

... veröffentlicht: 2008-07-01

StumbleUpon With the release of Firefox 3 our favorite distraction bar, or better known as “StumbleUpon Bar”, got a few new features some of us may like others may not want to use.

I don’t want to cover all of the new features.
I only cover one which I don’t use and I believe there are many people who don’t want to use either. I’m talking about the “save as local bookmark if thumbed up or if tagged”.

Maybe you noticed it already:

You stumble a site, you like it and you give your thumb up – Pew, and it is bookmarked.
You want to tag a site – Pew, and it is bookmarked.

I wish StumbleUpon wouldn’t set this feature to auto enabled, or at least they could ask us if we want to use this feature before enabling it. I’m not sure if they mentioned it somewhere and I’m a bit too lazy too Google for it.

Anyway, time to get rid of this feature:

  1. Open the StumbleUpon ToolBar Options
  2. Select the tab “Search & Tagging”
  3. Look for “Bookmark upon Rate or Tag”
  4. Uncheck the box next to “Save favorites to a Firefox bookmark folder”
  5. Click “ok”

And we are done. I don’t remember if I had to delete the auto-added bookmarks on my own, so just have a look if they have been removed. If not, I guess you know how to delete bookmarks.

What do you think about this feature?
Do you have it enabled or disabled?

P.S.: I’d appreciate it if someone can tell me if he or she had to delete the bookmarks after disabling the feature.

Tags: ,
Kommentare: 24

24 zu “StumbleUpon and Firefox 3 – Auto-Bookmark on Thumb Up or Tag”

redwall_hp

posted July 2nd, 2008 at 12:42 am

Bookmarks->Organize Bookmarks. Double-click “Bookmarks Menu.” Right-click the “Stumbleupon” folder and choose delete.

P.S. I’m going to put a link to this post in the Saturday BlogBuzz post on Webmaster-Source.

Marco

posted July 2nd, 2008 at 6:19 pm

*chuckles* I know how to delete bookmarks, I just don’t remember if I had to delete the bookmarks StumbleUpon added to Firefox.

Thanks in advance for the link :)

Slevi

posted July 2nd, 2008 at 11:43 pm

Don’t stumble pages too much, but disabled it up front. In voice of comicbook guy in the simpsons: “Worst feature ever!”.

Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach

posted July 23rd, 2008 at 1:46 am

I have yet to upgrade (I’m waiting for all the bugs to be worked out) but thanks for the headsup about it.

Enjoy, Barbara

Neil

posted July 29th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

Deleting the bookmarks doesn’t do much, either, since StumbleUpon also “tags” the sites you rate, and you *CAN’T DELETE THE TAGS*. So now sites I’ve given the thumbs down to are appearing in my address bar, even after I’ve cleared my history and deleted the bookmarks SU added. Even uninstalling StumbelUpon doesn’t help! This is a spectacularly bad feature.

drsound

posted August 4th, 2008 at 4:02 pm

The bookmarks do not delete automatically, you still have to go in. Thanks for the article, I was just thinking a couple of minutes ago that I needed to change this!

Brian

posted August 5th, 2008 at 12:26 am

I don’t like this feature and I disabled it immediately.  Why on earth would we want this feature anyways? If I need to find a site I liked, I can a) bookmark it myself or b) find it in my list of stumbles.

Marco

posted August 5th, 2008 at 12:18 pm

@drsound: Ah, so I did have to delete them on my own, thanks for the info. Good to see that my article helped another stumbleupon user :)

@Brian: Exactly my opinion. I don’t know why the devs added this “feature” or at least why it is enabled on default. Maybe there are people who like this feature, but if they want it, they can enable it.

Heather

posted August 8th, 2008 at 11:06 pm

I absolutely hate this feature. I am seriously considering going back to firefox 2. Even though I disabled the auto-bookmarking, it still tagged a few pages that I don’t even remember stumbling, and I cannot get rid of them!! I don’t want these things popping up every time I type in a website. Is there any way to get rid of the tags?

Marco

posted August 9th, 2008 at 2:57 am

Heater,you could uninstall the toolbar ;)

Well, as far as I know, the tags aren’t saved once you disabled it. You may have to find those tags and delete them on your own if possible…

StumbleUpon

posted August 31st, 2008 at 6:02 am

Thanks for the informative post.. and thanks for adding our comment to the blog. I am subscribing to your feed so I don\’t miss the next post!

Social Bookmarking 2.0

posted September 20th, 2008 at 7:49 am

I agree with your post. Which is not something I will usually do! :) I enjoy reading a post that will make one think. Also, thanks for allowing me to comment!

sir jorge

posted October 30th, 2008 at 2:19 pm

i can’t delete the stupid tags now, i hate stumbleupon.

Marco

posted October 30th, 2008 at 2:29 pm

you can delete the tags, you may need a few mins to get it done though…

  1. open “Organize Bookmarks”
  2. select “Tags”
  3. double click the tag you want to get rid off
  4. modify the tags for each listed bookmark, removing the tag you don’t want

that’s it

sir jorge

posted February 14th, 2009 at 1:26 am

i tried marco’s technique, it doesn’t work for me.

john

posted March 15th, 2009 at 5:43 pm

I agree, this is a very unfortunate feature…that is, the inability to delete tagged items.

I’ve only come up with two simple workarounds.  The first, which didn’t work for me, is to go to organize bookmarks -> backup/restore bookmarks -> backup.  This will create a file that you can open in a text editor, and low and behold..here are those pesky tagged items that you can’t get rid of.  In theory you should be able to delete them here then import the file again.  This did not work for me because my browser is suffering from some kind of bug… I’m not able to import any backup files, reguardless of whether or not I’ve edited the file.

The second option is to install the Hide Unvisited (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7429) add-on, which stops sites that you haven’t visited since the last history clear from popping up in the address bar.  This worked fine for my purposes.

This is yet another StumbleUpon feature (bug) in a long list.  If it wasn’t such a great little piece of software to begin with I would have left for Digg long ago.

Beamer

posted April 24th, 2009 at 2:26 am

I’m going to go try this fix right now!  Thank you!  I have a blog where I review sites I’ve Stumbled on.  I book mark them as I’m Stumbling so I can go back and write them up.  But if I Thumb them first, they get mixed in with all my other stumble bookmarks.  So I just started giving them a regular book mark so they’ll appear at the bottom of the list so I can find them.  But then I forget to give them a thumbs up!  And then I feel soooo guilty!  If this works, you have saved me!

Erica DeWolf

posted April 24th, 2009 at 5:54 am

Thank you! I noticed the Stumbleupon actions in my bookmarks menu, but didn’t realized they were being saved to my browser- I disabled. Thanks again!

Marco

posted May 4th, 2009 at 5:34 pm

@john: I managed to get rid of the stumbleupon bookmark tags by just editing each bookmark’s tag. Make sure all bookmarks with the tag you want to get rid of are modified accordingly and you should be fine :)

@Beamer + Erica: You are welcome :)

Anukul

posted May 13th, 2009 at 3:30 pm

Thanks so much!
I have been wondering why my Stumbles get saved as Firefox bookmarks. Now I have disabled that.

Thanks again.
Cheers!

Marco

posted May 13th, 2009 at 5:49 pm

You’re welcome :)

Neamar

posted June 14th, 2009 at 7:58 pm

I do enjoy this feature ! In combination with Xmarks, it’s really useful to find information about past websites.

Marco

posted June 15th, 2009 at 2:38 am

I never said it is a bad feature. I only stated that I considered a bad move that it is auto-enabled upon installing the toolbar. At least it should ask if you want to use the feature or not. :)

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