Does everyone use del.icio.us a complete replacement of bookmarks? I just learned the hard way how important bookmarks are to me. I was super stoked when i saw the new del.icio.us bookmarks Firefox extension. I desperately wanted the ability to go through my del.icio.us bits in my browser and so i immediately installed it without reading any fine print. And then i realized that it traipsed all over all of my bookmarks, including all of the bookmarks in my bookmarks toolbar.

Now, i don’t know about you but i have crazy folders and bookmarklets in my bookmarks toolbar. I have a folder of blogs that i stalk but would never tell anyone about. I have a folder of private things that i can only access when i’m VPNed in – URLs that i would never make publicly available because it would be a violation of privacy. I have bookmarklet scripts for storing details of MySpace pages and a link to bugmenot to get me through most stupid login pages. I have shortcuts to procrastination pages. I have a folder of temporary URLs that i use during my current talk. I have bookmarks to pages that aren’t even on the web (like the blog of research notes that is kept on my laptop or the local wiki that i have). None of this wants to be public, none of this wants to be in del.icio.us, none of this makes sense in del.icio.us. And all of this went away when i installed the new toy.

Eeek. OK, so i had one of those complete heart attacks when i realized this – y’know, the ones that happen when you wake up and realize that the procmail script you wrote /dev/nulled your email instead of sent it to a nice safe place. Thank god it could be uninstalled and my regular bookmarks came back. But uninstalling it desparately made me want it back. I *want* to see my del.icio.us tags and bookmarks inside my browser but not on those terms.

So i’m curious… does anyone else use both bookmarks and del.icio.us for different reasons? If you only use del.icio.us, definitely check out the new toy. If not, you might be in for a big shock.