Bookmark Manager AM-Deadlink discontinued and crippled

Whenever I hit d in Firefox's address bar I get a suggestion to open the Download Squad website. The site has not been around for a long time but I never found the time to delete it from the bookmarks.

AM-Deadlink is a third-party bookmark manager that I used in the past for that purpose. The first review of the program dates back to 2006 here on ComTek4u and I have used it since (irregularly) for that purpose.

What I like most about it is that it supports multiple browsers which meant that I could check them all using a single program.

Browser extensions like Check Places for Firefox or Bookmark Sentry for Chrome offer similar functionality but they are restricted to a single browser. Plus, it seemed that they were not really around for a long time either after which they stopped functioning or were pulled by their authors.

The most recent AM-Deadlink update to version 4.7 is at the same time the final version of the program as it has been discontinued by Aignes Software GMBH.

The following reason is given on the official program website:

As bookmark management in browsers got more complex over the years, it's no longer recommended to use external tools to delete bookmarks.

Along with the announcement comes a major change in functionality as it is no longer possible to change or delete bookmarks using the program.

The functionality to delete or change bookmarks was removed from the program. While it is somewhat understandable that direct manipulation of browser bookmarks was removed from the program, it is not clear why the functionality was removed for local HTML files and lists as well.

That leaves bookmark checking which is still supported by the program. It is theoretically still possible to use the program for that and delete or change bookmarks directly in the browser or file instead. While that is not as comfortable as using one program for that purpose, it works nearly as well if you have a large enough monitor to display the AM-Deadlink window and the browser's bookmarks manager or a local editor next to each other.

If you rely on the changing and deleting functionality, you may want to download the old AM-Deadlink 4.6 version instead as it ships with it.

Most third-party download sites have not updated their sites yet with the new version. You find AM-Deadlink 4.6 on Major Geeks for example. The program is offered as an installer that can install the software on the system or extract program contents to a directory instead for use as a portable version.