Tabilinks app

An extension for Google Chrome and compatible browsers that uses the new tab page for bookmarks and history, sorted into groups and workspaces. When installed in several browsers, they can sync with each other and back each other up.

Motivation:

• Unused space on the new tab page - most browsers put something on the new tab page that you don't even notice over the years - Opera was about the only one that got it right back in the day.
• Working across several devices - the frustration of looking for something you know you saved - but on a non-portable workstation that is currently 50 kilometres away.
• Connecting competing platforms - the previous point may sound like reinventing the wheel for a problem that has been solved many times over. Every browser lets you sign in to some account and sync bookmarks, history and other data. But that usually only works within a single brand's ecosystem.
  The goal of this extension is to get around that limit, so that bookmarks saved on, say, workstation no. 1 in Google Chrome are available on workstation no. 2 in Brave.
• Minimising or eliminating the need for accounts and for sharing data with big corporations - the less data for big tech companies, the better. More and more people are paying attention to this, and it seems to me that awareness of what these companies collect, and what they use the data for, is spreading.
  The goal is not to give up the technology and lose the convenience of some features, but to find an alternative path - much like an operating system that doesn't require a login to any cloud just to use hardware you own.
• Organisation and order in your catalogue of sites and apps - in my opinion, the built-in bookmark features in browsers don't reflect the fact that a person can play several roles on one computer at the same time.
  For example, you might have a main project or job with lots of bookmarks, then an occasional project where you only do consulting and the odd irregular intervention, and then your personal life. The logical solution would be to use browser profiles and switch to another one, but I see further difficulties with that:
• • using several browser brands, as mentioned in the third point
  • the complexity and duplication just move somewhere else - in this case, for example, installing the extensions and settings you are used to everywhere, all over again in every profile.
  • This is why I built switchable profiles into the extension.
• Specific features I couldn't find in competing products - the whole idea of building my own solution started when I couldn't find anything on the market that met my expectations.
  One example of such a feature is creating subgroups and opening all the links in a subgroup with a single click, or automatically capturing the links in a given subgroup into a tab group, configurable separately for each subgroup,
• Unacceptable prices and shady business practices - When I did manage to find an acceptable solution, it cost 8 dollars a month - more than this app will cost you for a whole year. What made me angriest, though, was the business model they used to push you into buying the PRO version.
  Tabilinks.app communicates the terms and limits of the free version and the benefits of the paid version clearly and transparently, and by my estimate 90 to 95 % of users will never even hit the limits of the free version.

Technical design of the app:

• Chrome extension
• Angular frontend - a website where users mainly handle everything related to their account and subscription, and can manage their devices. It also serves as the public face of the product and as a knowledge base for tips, tricks and guides.
• Spring Boot backend - a stateless backend that handles syncing between the individual extension instances and also serves the frontend. Integrations:
• • payment gateway
  • mailer
  • websocket
  • postgres database
  • postgres NOTIFY
• Flyway migrations - a separate repository, a docker image with Flyway

The extension: