New feature: Auto-tagging when a bookmark is moved to the Catalog

If you turn on this feature Tab and Category names will be automatically added as tags when a bookmark is moved from the Dashboard to the Catalog.

This will make finding bookmarks easier after you move them to the Catalog with the purpose of archiving them.

By default this feature is turned off. To turn "Auto-tag when moving to Catalog" on follow the steps below:

(1) Launch Bookmark Ninja in your browser.

(2) Select "Settings" in the main menu of Bookmark Ninja.

(3) Under "Global settings" check the checkbox next to "Auto-tag when moving to Catalog".

If "Auto-tag when moving to Catalog" is turned on, the Tab and Category names will be automatically added to the bookmarks as tags in the following cases:

(A) On the Dashboard you right mouse click on a bookmark and select "Move to Catalog".

(B) On the My Bookmarks page you click on the menu icon next to a bookmark (which is on the Dashboard) and select "Move to Catalog''.

(C) On the My Bookmarks page you select multiple bookmarks then click on "Move to Catalog".

(D) On the "Add to Ninja" dialog box if "Detect already bookmarked pages" is turned on, it finds an already added bookmark, you click on "Edit" and change "Add to" from Dashboard to Catalog.

When the Tab and Category names are added as tags the commas are removed and the names are converted to lowercase.

The server high CPU usage issue has been resolved

After reviewing the server logs it turned out that the problem was related to some changes in a third party software component used by Bookmark Ninja, it was not a DoS or DDoS attack. 

After implementing a workaround for the issue the CPU usage went back to normal. Since then, in the last 24 hours, we haven't detected any abnormal high CPU usage.

Thank you for your patience!

Important!!!

In the last 24 hours I saw extreme processor overload several times in the server monitoring tools. It can be either due to a DDoS attack or some software issue caused by the latest update of one of the server components. I'm working on investigating and fixing the issue, thank you for your patience!

Have you experienced any performance issues or strange behaviour in the last 24 hours? I appreciate any feedback, it can help investigate the issue. 

Thank you!

Introducing the new UI component library

The UI component library in Bookmark Ninja was 6 years old, so it was time to update it to a newer version. The update of the UI component library was a big work that took several months to complete. It affects both the desktop and mobile UI. Updating the library for the mobile UI was the more complicated task, it required rewriting about 80% of the mobile UI code. The work that had to be done on the desktop UI was less, it affected about 10% of the code.

What are the benefits of having an updated UI component library?

It was necessary to update the UI component library in order to keep up with the improvements of the browsers and to minimize the possible incompatibilities.

Also the new UI library includes a lot of improvements and bug fixes that will provide a better user experience:

• The rendering of the UI components is faster.
• Now additional UI components are available that we can use in the future developments of Bookmark Ninja.
• The new UI component library provides a solution for the "blank page flash at page load" Chrome issue.
• During integrating the new UI component library all the known UI related bugs have been fixed.

What does the new UI look like?

The UI in the desktop browsers looks like the old one, there aren't noticeable differences, the big change is under the hood.

In mobile browsers the UI got a nicer, cleaner look. The mobile UI components have been updated in order to be more consistent with the desktop UI while the mobile specific screen layouts were kept:

Are there any functional changes?

Yes, there is one. Until now you could invoke the bookmark context menu on the Dashboard in mobile browsers with "tap and hold". From now on you have to tap on the new menu icons (3 blue, horizontal lines) next to the bookmarks. The "tap and hold" functionality has been removed.

In desktop browsers this functionality hasn't changed, you can still invoke the context menu of the bookmarks on the Dashboard with a right mouse click on the bookmarks.

Bug fixes in today's update

Bug fix #1
In mobile browsers when you used the Find Category tool on the Dashboard, the searched category was marked with a red frame but if the category was not in the view, the window didn't scroll to the category automatically.

Bug fix #2
The context menu of bookmarks that were close to the bottom of the Dashboard window were not positioned correctly. The lower part of the context menu was not visible, you had to scroll down to get the whole context menu in view.

Bug fix #3
The mouse hover regions of the bookmark links on the shared tabs were misaligned. The cursor didn't change to the hand icon and the link didn't change to underlined when you moved the mouse cursor over the lower part of the bookmark titles.

Bug fix #4

The favicons of some websites were not displayed properly on the shared tabs. This issue had already been fixed on the Dashboard previously, now it is fixed on the shared tabs, too.

The update of the UI component library

The work of updating the UI component library started in December last year. You can read about the details (why this update is necessary, what will change, what will the new UI look like etc.) in this blog post.

By now it turned out that I underestimated the amount of work that has to be done to update the mobile UI so the end of February 2022 deadline couldn't be kept. Also while working on updating the UI component library other higher priority tasks keep popping up like fixing the broken favicons due to changes in the Google service or making security improvements.

Based on the current estimates the new UI component library will be available in Q2 2022. I would rather not specify an exact target date because of the complexity of the work and because of the ongoing adjustments that are required by changes in the 3rd party services.

Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.

Security improvements

Today's update contains several security improvements.

As a result of the improvements the maximum length of the password has been limited to 128 characters. It's not common but if your current password is longer than 128 characters then you won't be able to login and you will need to reset your password. To reset your password please click on "Forgot Password?" on the login page and follow the instructions there.

If you used passwords longer than 128 characters for password protected shared tabs then please change those passwords, too.

Fix for the missing favicons on the Dashboard

Customers reported that suddenly the favicons of quite a few websites got disappeared on the Dashboard and the default globe icons were displayed instead. Bookmark Ninja uses a Google service to obtain the favicons of the website. After investigating the issue it turned out that Google has made some changes in the API of the service. We have made the necessary adjustments in the code, the favicons are back in today's update.