Synchronize Your Bookmarks Between Different ComputersPosted by Andy Atkinson on November 27, 2005 | Post type: Gain Keeping your bookmarks synchronized between different computers is difficult since operating systems represent data differently. While social bookmarking sites like digg and del.icio.us, or RSS readers like Google's Personalized Home and Bloglines let account holders store links and feeds to their favorite sites, I've found that I still want to use traditional bookmarks, but am frustrated when I move between my different computers and they are not there. With the Bookmarks Synchronizer Firefox extension and an FTP account, this problem goes away. If you don't have access to an FTP server, I'll show you how to set up a free account at Ripway that you can use with this extension. I've successfully used Bookmarks Synchronizer with the latest version of Firefox, on Windows and OS X. The extension can even be configured to upload bookmarks when you close Firefox, and download them when you open it--making it even more convenient. 1. Installing Bookmarks SynchronizerThe first thing you will have to do is visit the Mozilla extensions page and either search for "Bookmarks Synchronizer" or click this link. At the time of this writing I am running Firefox 1.0.7 for Windows and OS X, and at least one user has had a successful installation with 1.5RC. If you can't remember that URL, just open Firefox and click the Tools menu, then Extensions, then "Get More Extensions".
After you click the Install Now icon and restart Firefox, you will see Synchronize Bookmarks under the Bookmarks menu. If you have access to a WebDAV server, you can use that, but I'm guessing most people will use FTP. There is no native support for SFTP, which may present a problem if you have access to an FTP server that only operates over the secure port. If that is the case, or if you do not have an FTP account, I recommend setting up an account at Ripway. Synchronizing my bookmarks (uploading and downloading) was very fast, usually taking less than one second. The extension displays a small pop-up box that disappears when the operation is complete.
2. Synchronizing with an FTP accountI've got an FTP account, but it requires SFTP and this Firefox extension does not support secure FTP as of this writing. Thus I went hunting for free web hosting with FTP access. I found a lot of places that offer free photo storage, but limit which types of files you can upload, usually to GIF or JPG. Since this extension stores your bookmarks as an XML file, free photo storage won't work. Ripway lets you set up an account with FTP access quickly. The free version only gives you 30MB of storage, but the account is easy to set up and doesn't require real information or any annoying verification, so it's worth your time to set up an account even if you use it for nothing but bookmark synchronization.
If you create an account with Ripway, all you need to supply is ftphost.ripway.com for the host, your username and password. I recommend using the default file name and path to keep things simple. To make things easier, you can set up the extension to automatically download your bookmarks when Firefox starts, or upload your bookmarks when Firefox exits.
3. Saving Existing BookmarksWhen you synchronize your bookmarks, this extension will overwrite any existing bookmarks you had saved, unless you choose Merge data into existing bookmarks. If you want to save what you have, make sure you choose Export under Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks to save a copy of your bookmarks to a file, which you can later "Import." If you have bookmarks that you want to keep, you can follow this process:
Now you can download your bookmarks on the first machine. If you have several computers, repeat the steps above for each of them. If you choose the merge option listed above, you can ignore this list. To download this extension directly click here. Make sure to check out all of the Firefox extensions that are available, found at addons.mozilla.org/extensions. About the author(s) Andy started Pain in the Tech in 2005 as a way to share tips and tutorials with friends and family, and evangelize great products and services. By 2008, Pain in the Tech had 7 contributors, thousands of daily page views. Site ownership was transitioned to Matt Thommes in 2008. Comments
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