[Feature Request]: URL links

[Kyren223]

Checklist

• [x] I am using an up-to-date version.
• [x] I have read the documentation.
• [x] I have searched existing issues.

Description

I am not currently using this but have looked through issues/documentation and this feature doesn't seem to exist

My idea is instead of just having files as sources that can be tagged, to also have website links like youtube videos, articles, or any other website.

As a developer, I usually have alot of links that I need to keep track of (for things like different projects or things to read/watch later, or things I have watched in the past and want to reference).

Solution

Add a way to also have URLs and not just files.

Another thing to add to this is using something like monolith to store websites locally in case the link is broken, the website is down or just for offline accessibility.

Alternatives

There are apps like linkwarden/wallabag/hoarder-app that do this kind of thing but they only have basic folder-based organization or basic tagging.

They are also not easy to setup and take alot of space, linkwarden can either be installed with docker (2.3GB for just the base installation without any data) and requires postgres instead of sqlite which contributes to the large docker image size but also makes it harder to setup without docker.

[CyanVoxel]

We've gotten requests for this before, specifically about bookmarks, but I also don't see a dedicated issue or discussion about it. The closest I know of is #588 (as a response to (#573) which is more of a technical request that would encompass this ability.

As #588 suggests, being able to tags non-file entities such as URLs is something we're keeping in mind for the future, however currently is a low priority. Although the more support we see for something like this, naturally the higher priority it becomes 😉

As for something like monolith, this actually looks very cool, though I wouldn't expect TagStudio to be able to render webpages anytime soon if ever unfortunately. But if there's a tool that allows for a quick thumbnail render of a single HTML page, then that might be a starting point for having some sort of visual presence along with the monolith html files.

[Kyren223]

Thanks, great to see this is a thing that is considered. Until it is implement I guess I will keep using linkwarden which is not ideal.

I wouldn't expect it to render HTML either, it could just open the default browser when clicking on the link, as for the thumbnail I am sure there is some python library to get a thumbnail of an html file.

You can also take a look at linkwarden (or the other alternatives, all of which are open source) to see how they did thumbnail rendering (linkwarden uses typescript though)

[Qronikarz]

Web links can also be stored in .url files and one of the programs CyanVoxel for sure knows does even have an article about it: https://www.tagspaces.org/usecases/bookmark-manager/

Bookmark managers with tag support (taken from TagsResearch repo): Firefox, nb, Hoarder, Grimoire, LinkWarden, Raindrop.io

Of course they don't have such advanced tagging capabilities as TagStudio, but there possibly are no tagging programs that do offer more than it. (maybe Hydrus only)