If it isn’t obvious from my sidebar(s), I am a big fan of social bookmarking, and del.icio.us in particular. The ability to aggregate and browse the shared mindscape of all del.icio.us users aside, I am particularly fond of having instant access to all of my bookmarks, regardless of where I may be or the operating system I am using.

In order to work across a LARGE variety of browsers and devices, del.icio.us has taken the low-fi route, delivering your saved content back to you in plain vanilla formatting, with a minimum of color to break up the modicum stylings of plain text. This has it’s advantages (the afformentioned cross OS/Browser/Device compatibility, as well as ease of navigation), but it does introduce a critical flaw - Namely, a lack of power features. No mass tag-editing, no “find-as-you-type” searching, no “-” operator, lackluster sorting capabilities, and of course, no tag browser.

And then came del.icio.us direc.tor:

del.icio.us direc.tor is a prototype for an alternative web-based rich UI for del.icio.us. It leverages the XML and XSL services of modern browsers to deliver a responsive interface for managing user accounts with a large number of records.

The main features are:

• In-browser handling of del.icio.us bookmarks (tested up to 12,000 records)
• Find-as-you-type searching of all your bookmarks, with basic search operators
• Sort by description, tags, or timestamp
• Ad-hoc tag browser

direc.tor comes packaged as a Javascript bookmarklet; You navigate to your del.icio.us page, select the bookmarket, and the direc.tor interface is loaded as an “overlay” of your del.icio.us content, giving you instant access to a whole new swath of features:

• In-browser handling of del.icio.us bookmarks (tested up to 12,000 records)
• Find-as-you-type searching of all your bookmarks, with basic search operators
• Sort by description, tags, or timestamp
• Ad-hoc tag browser

direc.tor also supports the following search operators:

t:	Search only in tag field Ex: t:humor
d:	Search only in description field Ex: d:politics
-	Exclude results containing search term Ex: -microsoft

But how does it all work?

The idea behind a client-side web service broker (or intermediary, as Jon Udell calls it) is simple: assist a client in interpreting or processing information from a service, but letting the client do all the work (just like what “strategic management consultants” do). Unlike other web services like Amazon Light or Googlism that execute all of the program logic on the server side, a client-side broker sends all of the logic over as Javascript and has the browser do the work.

Of course, there is more than enough technical detail over at the main site to keep all you übergeeks out there good and busy for the next eon, but I’ll leave it at that for now.

In my new post-direc.tor world, my del.icio.us bookmarks have become a lean, mean, linkin’ machine. Because of this, you can expect tighter inter-service integration around these parts in the very near future.