AM-DeadLink 5.0 adds support for Edge and Brave, text documents, but also removes some useful options
AM-DeadLink has been resurrected, and version 5.0 of the program is now available for download. In case you missed it, about five years ago the developer, Aignes Software GMBH, discontinued the application citing complexity issues related to bookmark management in modern browsers.
The program made a brief comeback in 2019, with version 4.8 which added support for Vivaldi. Well, the good news is the popular bookmark manager seems to be back with a new major version.
The interface has been cleaned up a bit, especially the toolbar. It no longer has shortcuts for finding duplicates and the internal browser. The latter has been completely removed from the program, this has been confirmed in the release notes as well, though it doesn't say why they removed it. I'm guessing it was probably a security-related decision. So, when you select a bookmark and double-click on it, AM-DeadLink will send the command to your default browser to open the URL.
The Search menu has been superseded by the Tools menu, and has the Find, Find Next, Find Duplicates options. The Bookmark Manager menu item, is a shortcut that copies the location of the selected browser's bookmark management page, e.g. Firefox's bookmarks library can be accessed from chrome://browser/content/places/places.xhtml.
The Bookmarks menu has been renamed to Check, which though sounds a little odd, as it has the same options. The biggest improvement seems to be the support for modern browsers, AM-DeadLink now supports Microsoft Edge and Brave Browser, you may select these from the drop-down menu in the top left corner.
Version 5 of the program also introduces support for text documents, so if you have a bunch of URLs saved in a TXT file, you can use the program to check if those links still work. AM-DeadLink will display a warning when a bookmark that contains a HTTP URL redirects to a HTTPS version. This message appears in the status column, and the wording reads "redirected, OK" when the link worked, and if it didn't it says "redirected, WORD", where word can be "error, file not found, bad request, access forbidden", etc.
The bad news is that AM-Deadlink 5.0. still doesn't let you delete bookmarks. It does have a delete option, but when you try to use it while a TEXT/HTMLCSV file is loaded, the program says it can't delete the contents. If you have a browser's bookmark folder selected, AM-DeadLink displays some instructions that tell you how to access the bookmark in your browser, and use the built-in tool to modify/delete the contents.
Coming back to changes in the interface, the "always on top" is no longer available in the latest version of the bookmark managing program. And while we are on the topic of omissions, you can no longer toggle the Gridlines in the UI. The options to customize the "checking" behavior such as the number of connections, timeout settings, and the number of check attempts, have also been removed. The "bookmark files" tab where you could select the browser's folder, is no longer available in the newest iteration of the application.
AM-DeadLink 5.0 (and 4.8) can be installed as a portable application. The latest version seems to be a mixed bag, while a couple of the changes are good, the number of features that have been removed seems a little bizarre. Some of those were useful options, well you can stick to v4.8 if you like those.
Not portable. I will not run on my bare system.
I tested it in Sandboxie. There is an option to install portable during setup. HOWEVER, I don’t recall an option to choose a file path. It installs to Program Files (x86). Cut from there and paste elsewhere and it will work.
A search with Everything reveals no stray folders created elsewhere when portable installation is selected. I did not monitor Registry for changes during installation as a portable program.
Linkman Pro helps more for me although I do have an older version of AM. The developer claims it isn’t supremely safe to use the older versions. The only problem with Linkman is the 30 day trial for full usage; that’s enough time to really clean out a mess of old, dead bookmarks.
Bookmark Dupes, 404, etc.
Bookmarks Organizer, a FF add-on, works relatively well.
Sort of a lot of these bookmark helpers now.
In the old days when a site disappeared it really disappeared, the browser would show a page not found error and it was easy for bookmark managers to identify them. Those days are gone though and programs like this don’t work so well anymore. When pages go down today they almost always just redirect to another page or show a custom “page not found” page for the site. There’s just no way a program like this can tell if a bookmark is still valid or if it’s just showing a 404 page, as long as some type of page loads it thinks it is fine even though it might be showing a page full of porn instead of the apple pie recipe you had bookmarked.
Link?
Sorry for that, here it is, I’ll update the article asap: https://www.aignes.com/deadlink.htm
Link?
Is the website to download from : https://www.aignes.com/deadlink.htm ?
Or majorgeeks?
This one is correct, the link has been added to the article, sorry that we missed it.
Where is the portable version? There seems to be no option to install it as portable (tested in sandbox).
Thanks Ashwin. It was a very handy tool that I gave up and removed when it stopped deleting. Now my bookmarks are blowing out again and it is hard to be sure there are no duplicates so I may give it a run.
You may like to add a landing page (https://www.aignes.com/deadlink.htm).
I am still using v4.2 and will NEVER update it. It still allows to delete bad bookmarks.
That option was removed in v4.6 on.