Firefox bookmark synchronization
Several add-ons have been made for the purpose of synchronizing bookmarks by FTP, however, most of them simply do not work.
Note: for many reasons, solutions to place your bookmarks on third-party websites will not even be considered here. As a few examples, privacy, security, and yet more and more sites to login to, limitation to bookmarks only, etc are all reasons to sync to your own FTP server.
Unless you are willing to trust your data to a third party website, you are currently out of luck. The only trick I can suggest is to use a backup of your main browser's bookmarks, restore from backup on another browser, and place any new bookmarks into a /sync directory in your Bookmark Manager (to keep track of new bookmarks that you have made on another browser). However, there is no foolproof or easy method to reimport those bookmarks into your primary browser.
The add-ons below work.
- SyncPlaces (slower than the one below). Note if it complains about path, check to see that compression settings match on both sending and receiving add-ons
but not without significant limitations.
- Transfer is slow
- If set to automatically download and upload at startup and shutdown, the process takes at least several seconds.
- Bookmarks are left on the computer that downloaded them from the server. If you do not manually delete them, they will remain visible (if that computer is not yours).
- Absolutely all bookmarks (and not changes only) are transferred each time.
What happens invariably is that after some frustration the above solution is simply turned off.
The add-ons below either claim to take care of the problems above, or are another add-ons. However, none of the add-ons from the list below work for many reasons.
My suggestions: backup bookmarks before testing anything. Install Firefox on a USB memory stick. Install PlaceSync. Manually sync in the beginning of your work, and at the end (fe if you work on someone's computer off the memory stick, you will manually download bookmarks from server in the beginning, and manually upload at the end, and then pull out memory stick).
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Author Name: Tommy_B Date posted: Jul 25, 2010
Comment: I always get real excited when I hear about a new free webDAV resource out there as there aren't too many so I was gunning to check out mydrive.ch... everything looked really kosher, like they weren't gonna go out of business in a couple weeks. They are based in Switzerland. They have a very detailed website for the mydrive property and their parent company, Softronics Communications.
But then I got to this part of the privacy policy:
"The User agrees that Softronics is allowed to regularly control all data and information to ensure a lawfully use of the products and services provided by Softronics."
Of course, the old saying is true, you can't look an ol gift horse in the mouth - you can't really take issue or make demands of a service you don't pay for.
That proclamation, however, is so broad and empowering, it pretty much dispels even the slightest notion of privacy data stored on their servers will have not to mention instills a sense of wonder as to question whether your data's integrity will remain intact. If others aside from ones self have access and "control" of your data, that question will always remain.
Still - I signed up for an account and will just store a bunch of noncritical, redundant back up stuff on it. ;)
Author Name: juzzie Date posted: Jul 25, 2010
Comment: Yep - SyncPlaces does work. Configure it as Mark says above using webdav server and it will synchronize the bookmarks. I bet you that it should work the same way with your own http or ftp server (if you've got NAS storage on your home network, i.e Buffalo NAS, that features ftp and http server).
If for some reason nothing works for you, the last resort is to sync bookmarks using .... Internet Explorer. Yep, that's right. Here is what you can do. Export your bookmarks from FF in HTML file. Open IE and import those bookmarks to IE. That will place all your firefox bookmarks into Favorites folder on your PC. You can do the same with the rest of the PC's you've got. Then you rename Favorites on each PC to Favorites1 & Favorites2 and etc. Then you grab some free or commercial File & Folder Synchronization software and synchronize those Favorites folders. As a result, you will get a folder that will contain all the bookmarks from all PC's and also you can delete duplicates (using the same File & Folder sync software). Then you export IE Favorites to HTML and import it to FF. Kinda of long way to go - but pretty straight forward and no 3-rd party web sites to be involved. Examples of File and folder sync soft: Foldermatch, ViceVersa Pro, Beyond Compare v3.1.4 and etc.
Author Name: mark Date posted: Jul 25, 2010
Comment: FINALLY - success.
I have wanted a working sync extension for, well - forever, and found this site-> which pointed me to Syncplaces.
WOOF - nightmare time !
I've used most of this day messing with it, tried EVERY method in it's docs and NOTHING worked....until...until:
I stumbled upon free webdav @ http://www.mydrive.ch .
OMG.
2 minutes to make a free account...2 more minutes to validate and make 2 folders.
5 minutes to experiment with Syncplaces and find how to make it work - and it DID too.
Server-> use HTTPS; URL->webdav.mydrive.ch .
I used 1 folder for bookmarks JSON file and another for passwords and it went fine.
NOW I can honestly recommend this add-on, thank MKRD for the great pointers, and hope others can avoid wasting their time as I have today.
Time now to do something else !
Author Name: MKRD.info Date posted: Jul 25, 2010
Comment: Same problems here. Most of these solutions are abandoned or do not really work. I have spent the time to go thru absolutely all sync add-ons and test every single one. It is shameful that there is not a single dead-simple and "just works" solution out there.
If there are any add-on developers reading this page, please contact me if you want to work on something.
Author Name: mark Date posted: Jul 25, 2010
Comment: I have been fighting with stupid/useless Weave; hate what they did to Xmarks and wanted privacy for my info besides.
Finding your site/info helped me to be finally done searching !
Syncplaces is the clear & obvious choice for me, and before finding your site I did not even know it existed.
Thanks for the info and your great site !
Author Name: comnt#01 Date posted: Jul 25, 2010
Comment: I was tested the Xmarks extension, and it can't sync bookmarks by local ftp. Yes, this possibility are in settings of Xmarks, but it don't work. So, there are only on-line way to sync with Xmarks (by their servers).
May be the issue was fixed, but I don't tested it again from the time when FireFox 3.0 was released...
. 