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The Internet Mozilla Internet Explorer

Cross Platform Browser Bookmark Autosyncing? 57

Posted by Cliff from the proper-care-and-feeding-of-LAN-browsers dept.
Milo_Mindbender asks: "So, geek that I am, I have several computers at home and several at the office, these come in both Windows and Linux flavors. Most have a copy of Firefox but for various reasons some have Mozilla and Internet Explorer too. Naturally, I'm going crazy trying to keep all the bookmarks in sync. Has anyone seen anything that can do this AUTOMATICALLY? I'd really like to just be able to use the 'add bookmark' feature in any browser and have them all sync up every now an then (each launch or at least each day). Various searches return tons of hits on bookmark managers, far too many to try them all out...so has anyone found anything that works?"
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Cross Platform Browser Bookmark Autosyncing? More

Cross Platform Browser Bookmark Autosyncing?

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  • Easy... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zebs ( 105927 ) * on Saturday October 09, 2004 @02:33PM (#10480230) Homepage

    One option is a firefox extension called Bookmarksftp [mozdev.org] which basically uploads your bookmarks to a ftp server and downloads them as and when asked (or automattically). A version compatible with Firefox 0.10 is available here [plala.or.jp]

    To get the bookmarks in IE bookmarkstofav [plala.or.jp] will do, but theres no proper version for Firefox 0.10

    • Or possible better yet, a sftp version (I haven't tried either). http://cgi29.plala.or.jp/~mozzarel/addon/firefox0_ 10/bookmarksftp
    • Best thing I've found is Simpy [simpy.com]. It's not quite a bookmark synchronizer, but it does give you access to your bookmarks from any browser that supports cookies, and there are javascript bookmarklets that make bookmarking and searching for bookmarks a breeze.

  • Not only bookmarks (Score:3, Interesting)

    by samjam ( 256347 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @02:34PM (#10480236) Homepage Journal
    I also want to keep read-news in sync (gmane, etc)

    Also read-mail in sync. Thunderbird does IMAP badly, Outlook Express did a better job, and emails marked as read on one machine are then marked as read on another machine even if the messages have already been downloaded on the other computer. I use thunderbird exclusively now.

    Sam

    • there is a simple solution to all this, provided that you have enough bandwith:

      Use the same browser/email client all the time.
      the best way is over ssh, just ssh -X to the box and start mozilla there, sometimes you need to use the option --no-irix-session if you already have a mozilla running on your machine.

      this cannot work over modem or isdn of course. you need ethernet or a decent dsl connection to get it right.
      • Use NXClient by NoMachine. I use it over a 256kb/s link and it performs very acceptably.

        I use this for email (evolution) and newsgroups (KNode) as well as accessing OpenOffice.org spreadsheets on my "master" PC in the office. Works a treat.
    • I use Thunderbird 0.8 IMAP all the time without any issue. I have been using Thunderbird's IMAP exclusively since 0.4 without issue. How does TB "(do) IMAP badly"?

      • Re:Not only bookmarks (Score:3, Insightful)

        by samjam ( 256347 )
        OE lets you access fully and in every way the cached imap items.

        Thunderbird only lets you do this if you first elected to work offline; if not then the cached items are unavilable.

        OE uses the cached item when you move messages, thunferbird wants to download them again.

        If I have 2 IMAP PCs. noth OE, both having downloaded all messages, and I read a message on one of them it gets marked on the server as read, and then the other OE detects this and also marks them as read when it syncs.

        Basically, thunderb
        • Ok, I agree that having to re-download the messages is a definate downside. This is true.
          But I'm curious - assuming you have two TB clients looking at the same IMAP account, you're saying that messages that appear as 'read' on one client may not appear as 'read' on the other client? i.e. to mark a message as read, it must be LOCALLY read? I do not see this behavior in 0.8 - everything that I do on one maching is reflected on all other machines...perhaps you have stumbled upon a bug?
          regardless, thank y
          • You areright, I should report these as bugs and will do so.

            The message does get marked as readif I read it before it gets downloaded to the other PC. Ifit has already been downloaded but not read, then when it is read elsewhere it does not get marked as read on PCs that already have it.

            It is ironic that for an applicationthat insists on checking theoriginal folderforso much, it fails to notice this change,

            Sam
        • I made a mistake.

          in tests before I submit a bug report I found that latest TB DOES correctly update the read-message status from the remote IMAP folder.

          Sam
    • Thunderbird does IMAP badly
      Maybe I'm the one living under a rock, but I've been using Thunderbird since 0.2 on my local IMAP server and whenever I've had trouble, it's been my IMAP server at fault.

  • Use your server (Score:5, Insightful)

    by linuxwrangler ( 582055 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @02:36PM (#10480245)
    As a geek with several computers at home you surely have your own web server running somewhere. Do what I do...just create a page of your favorite links. I do that and set it as my home page on all the computers I use.

    If you want to get fancy set it up with a database backend for easy update.

    • Re:Use your server (Score:4, Informative)

      by Birdddman ( 597580 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @02:56PM (#10480376)
      You could also try this if you have your own server.... http://www.frech.ch/online-bookmarks/screenshots.p hp?style=shock There is a little javascript applet in you Navigation Toolbar and you can add new bookmarks with one click. Also, there is a way to add the webpage in your mozilla sidebar (a simple F9 and there are your bookmarks.)

      • Nifty, these online-bookmarks!

        I have always thought bookmarks should be independent from browsers. And download management as well. For the bookmarks I have tried the webserver solution, but I got fed up with always having to edit the bookmarks page.

        Now I use another solution, that works if you have enough screen space. It works with all the browsers on my box. I have a folder with subfolders where I put all the ookmarks, just dragging them from the address bar of the running browser. And when I want to g

    • Yes, using your own server is the best way to do it if the environment is diverse. I maintain a simple HTML page with all my favorite links and store it on a local server. HTML is easy to write, easy to understand, universally supported by older browsers and likely by all future browsers that will emerge in the future.

    • i just have a wiki; easy to update, accessible from everywhere... philo

  • This one is pretty nifty (Score:5, Informative)

    by Myrkur ( 621981 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @02:44PM (#10480305)
    http://www.spurl.com/ [spurl.com] Allows you to access your bookmarks anywhere.
    • Neither Furl nor Delicious nor Spurl really full-text index your bookmarks, and I find that to be a MAJOR minus in their service. Simpy, on the other hand, crawls and re-crawls pages you bookmarked, which lets you make full-text searches against your own and other users' indices, a la Google.

      Simpy: Simpy [simpy.com].
      Demo: demo account [simpy.com] (shared, be nice)

  • Spurl (Score:2, Informative)

    by Mawbid ( 3993 )
    If you don't mind somebody else storing your bookmarks, you could use Spurl [spurl.net]. You bookmark the current page using a bookmarklet, or you can bulk upload your bookmarks. You access them on the spurl site or from the sidebar.

  • Delicious? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by billybob ( 18401 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @02:53PM (#10480362)
    I'm going to assume you've either heard of http://del.icio.us and dont like it, or you've been living under a rock for the past few months. Delicious isnt everything youre looking for I'm sure but it is pretty neat. It's been around for almost a year but just in the past month it has gotten insanely popular.

    Now it doesnt sync your bookmarks with your browsers, instead it's an online place to store your bookmarks. What many people think is the best thing about it, including myself, is that you dont organize your bookmarks into folders. Instead you give them tags, and each bookmark can have more than one tag. A tag is basically just a category.

    So for example if you're a web develper such as myself and you find something on javascript that just tickles you pink, then you click your little bookmarklet to add a post to delicious (there are many third party tools available as well), then tag it as "web dev javascript" or however you want (that's what I'd do)

    At this point I only have about ~50 bookmarks so its not too handy yet but it will be. If I want to see all bookmarks on development, I can just type in "dev". If I want web development, I can type "web dev". If I want to see just javascript thigns, I can type "web dev javascript" or just "javascript". It's really cool because your bookmarks can fall under an unlimited number of categories, rather than the old structure of trying to figure out the one specific place you want to put this bookmark.

    The other good thing is obviously you can access it from any computer on the internet, and not just the ones you normally use. I have already found this aspect of it very useful.

    It's also a cool way to see what people are interested in that day. delicious/popular shows the top 20 or so links that have been added each day. If you want to see what other people have found that's interesting on javascript for example, you can just go to delicious/tag/javascript and it will show the last ~100 links that have been added to the site and tagged with "javascript". And each link it shows will also show how many other people have that same link bookmarked, so it's easy to find the popular things in any category.

    I recommend it if you haven't checked it out already. :)
    • i have already been thinking about this for a while

      there are lots of these services that make a stab at it for online a reader pointed out spurl but for the fact www.furl.net got there first and got taken over so a bunch of people are trying to get taken over as well (great exit plan...)

      frankly it's really easy to do this kind of service and with a bit of javascript to submit the url (all browsers can submit)

      the problem is that NONE of these services actually bring up the bookmark in your "Favorites" o
    • This sounds similar to how Gmail stores mail with tags instead of folders. I wonder how long until Google cotton on and offer a service that's compatible with the googlebar extensions available...
    • I think having all your bookmarks on some server is a bad idea. What if I'm offline and.. oh, now I get it.

  • Super easy - yahoo toolbar (Score:5, Informative)

    by stu72 ( 96650 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @02:53PM (#10480365)
    I've been using yahoo toolbar for the last few years and it's a life saver. I have used to access the same set of bookmarks on countless office & home computers, even when I moved across the country for the summer. Check it out.

    You just bookmark using the toolbar, instead of the native browser. You can import/export/organize/etc.

    I think they limit you to 1000 but that hasn't been an issue for me yet.
    • sorry - I missed the "cross platform" bit above. I have no idea if yahoo toolbar works on anything but wintel. oops.
      • I have no idea if yahoo toolbar works on anything but wintel

        It actually doesn't. From the site [yahoo.com]:

        Yahoo! Toolbar requires:

        * Microsoft Windows operating system. (95, 98, ME, 2000, XP)
        * Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher. (Download Internet Explorer for Yahoo!)

        There is a link to a FireFox toolbar [firefoxtoolbar.com], but that only works on Windows as well.

    • I can't recommend it enough, although it's a IE toolbar only. To make it cross-platform, you can add a Bookmarks tab to your my.yahoo.com page that can be accessed from any browswer after login. You can add more URLs, but it's more cumbersome than using the toolbar.

  • how about just using a floppy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by josepha48 ( 13953 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @02:59PM (#10480389) Journal
    I know this is more of a 'manual' solution, but one option is just to put the bookmarks on a floppy and transfer them between computers.

    If that does not work, then there are several people who have mentioned using either yahoo's toolbar, or some other online tool that deals with that for you.

    I am supprised that there is no extension. Alternatively, if you have web space you could upload your bookmarks to you own web space on line then just use that as the master. Of course you'd ahv to find a way to protect your data.

  • Netscape 4.x Roaming Profiles (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Radical Rad ( 138892 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:02PM (#10480412) Homepage
    Netscape used to have something that would do this called Roaming Profile. It would sync with an LDAP server. That functionality is being recreated in Mozilla but it has been a low priority. Take a look at bug 17917 at bugzilla.mozilla.org and vote for it if you want to see it finished anytime soon.

  • xml standard?? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:03PM (#10480416) Homepage
    we really need some sort of standardized XML bookmark format for sharing between platforms and browsers. since most browsers don't extend their bookmarking functionality beyond a simple name/description/folders system, one simple format would be enough.

    In fact, data standardization could be good for a lot of things. vCard and vCalendar (now iCal) were both incredibly successful (vCal less so after MS dumped it).
  • Firefox is quite nice, though moving settings between two partitions -- say, Linux and Windows -- doesn't seem possible. Selecting file...import only shows the currently installed browsers. The bookmarks can be imported manually, though the other settings can't be.

    Any suggestions -- such as an Export option I might have overlooked -- would be appreciated. I'd like to make these transitions as simple and transparent as possible.

  • horde.org (Score:2, Informative)

    by tickticker ( 549972 )
    the Horde suite is implementing a bookmark management and consolitdation system called Trean.

    http://www.horde.org/trean/ [horde.org]

  • I use (Score:2)

    by samael ( 12612 )
    Bookmarks Synchroniser

    http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.ph p? id=14
  • You just gave me an idea.

    1) Write your bookmarks into an RSS feed. You should be able to use a nice web page to populate a db and dynamically generate RSS from it.

    2) Use Firefox 1.0PR, which has "live bookmarks."

    3) Add the RSS feed to your Mozilla bookmarks once per machine.

    Wham! Instant sync'ed bookmarks stored on your own webserver, dynamically generated each time you use them.

  • .Mac (Score:2)

    by beegle ( 9689 ) *
    People who use Macs from multiple locations can use iSync and Apple's .mac service to synchronize bookmarks across all of the macs.
  • quoted from the website:
    Linkagogo [linkagogo.com] now provides the server side support for the SyncIt [sourceforge.net] client. This means you don't need to install and configure your own web server for the BookmarkSync server component. With linkaGoGo you can immediately start synchronizing all your linkaGoGo favorites with PCs where you have SyncIt installed.

  • Sitebar (Score:2, Interesting)

    by najt ( 178981 )
    Try Sitebar [sitebar.org]. It runs on a PHP/MySQL server (public servers available) and there are plugins/extensions for major browsers.
  • http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=4174 2
  • The question is there a way to sync.

    Not how to use one copy of bookmarks on multiple browsers.

    I use mozilla on multiple computers. My linux laptop at home. My wife's XP laptop. My linux desktop at work. My Macintosh at work. All running mozilla. Forget other platforms for now.

    I want to be able to bookmark -> bookmark this page on any one of these and have it show up on all the other browsers from the Bookmarks tab. With my catagories, etc.

    I've used a perl script (bookmark merge?) to sync netsca
  • I use Yahoo bookmarks with a javascript link that automatically bookmarks the current page. I've added the following bookmark to my toobar in Firefox and IE:

    javascript:q=location.href;p=document.title;voi d (o pen('http://bookmarks.yahoo.com/config/edit_bookma rk?.url='+escape(location.href)+'&.name='+escape(d ocument.title)+'&.protocol=http%3a//&.folder=1&.sa ve=Save&.action=ab&.bmprop=1&.src=bookmarks&.done= '+escape(location.href), 'bookmarks', 'resizable=yes,scrollba

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