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21 Dec 2004
XBEL - a bookmark standard
I came across XBEL, a XML standard for exchanging bookmark files. I did not yet see many applications that support. However for my MacOS-X platform there are some conversion programs, for instance from Safari to XBL.
The standard is what I call a List-standard, as it can contain multiple Items, in this case Bookmarks. By the way RSS and OPML is also a List-standard. The standard allows for some internal organisation as it allows for folders (similar to OPML). Each Bookmark-Item bookmark contains two fields: title and desc. The URL is added as an attribute (href) to the bookmark-tag.
I guess this is a good first go. Now people have to support it. Or are there any competitors to this standard. I think some extra fields are required, such as tags, such as is used by del.icio.us and also a language field would be useful. Anyway it is a lot better than putting the bookmarks in an OPML as some namespace has been introduced.