News (January 2010)
All of the extensions on this site have been successfully tested on Firefox 3.6. If you find any compatibility issues please e-mail me with the full details of the problem.
If Firefox lists an extension as incompatible then please reinstall it using the links on this page.
Bookmark Backup
Version 0.4.11
Install
Install Bookmark Backup 0.4.11
Description
Bookmark Backup is a simple extension that helps to keep your bookmarks (and optionally other Firefox settings) safe. Each time Firefox is closed, a copy of your bookmarks file will be made to a backup location. If Firefox's bookmarks become corrupted or lost, find the most recent uncorrupted backup and copy it into your profile folder. By default the backups can be found in the Backups folder inside Firefox's profile folder, though this location can be changed in Bookmark Backup's Options dialog.
Additionally, thanks to code contributed by Nickolay Ponomarev, other files may also be backed up along with the bookmarks file. You can specify which files to backup in the Options dialog. Just check the box for each type of setting you want backed up, any other files can be listed in the following text box separated by a | character. Please refer to the MozillaZine Knowledge Base for details about what data is stored in each file.
Please remember, this extension should be used in addition to a regular profile backup not as a replacement.
Note: Firefox 1.5 (and later) makes its own backup of your bookmarks, therefore this extension is only useful if you want to backup other settings or to control where the backups are stored.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
1. Why is the backed up copy of bookmarks.html an old file?
Firefox 3 and later now store their bookmarks in a file called places.sqlite, the bookmarks.html file is no longer used. You can confirm this by checking the last modified date of the original bookmarks.html file in your profile.
2. I have lost my bookmarks, how do I restore the backup?
- Close Firefox.
- Find the Backups folder in your profile folder (or in your custom backup location, if configured).
- Go into the sub-folder from yesterday (don't use today's backup, it will be corrupted). Copy whichever files you wish to restore into your profile folder.
- Restart Firefox.
If you use Windows and don't know how to perform any of these steps please feel free to e-mail me and I'll try to walk you through them.
3. Does this extension work on Mac OS?
Maybe, some people say it does, other say it doesn't. I don't own a Mac so I can't confirm one way or the other.
4. Why is there a bookmarkbackups folder in my profile? How do I disable it?
The bookmarkbackups folder is created by Firefox itself (this feature was added in Firefox 1.5). The two sets of backups should not conflict, however if you wish to disable the built-in backup you can do so by setting browser.bookmarks.max_backups to 0 (this requires Firefox 2 or later).
5. Will you add support for, timestamped backups, more than 7 days of backups, less than 7 days of backups, scheduled backups, weekly instead of daily backups, or backing up files outside the profile?
At the moment I have no plans for any of those features.
6. Can I use wildcards in the other files box?
To a limited extent yes, you can backup a whole folder simply by typing it's name (e.g. Cache). You can backup a set of files with the same extension by typing *.extension (e.g. *.rdf), using the * operator in any other position will not work.
7. Can I use paths in the other files box?
Bookmark Backup supports primitive relative paths, use a forward slash (/) as the path separator. There's currently no way to backup files outside the profile folder.
Contributors
- Nickolay Ponomarev (Multiple file backup code)
- Thomas Bertels (Icon and French translation)
- Patrick Ruh (German translation, retired)
- Carlos of Proyecto Nave (Spanish translation)
- Willy Young (Traditional Chinese translation)
- Giovanni Francesco Solone of eXtenZilla.it (Italian translation)
- Orçun Apaydýn (Turkish translation)
- Petr Jirsa (Czech translation)
- Sampan Sittiwantana (Thai translation)
- Premier (Japanese translation)
- SlovakSoft (Slovak translation)
- bigbigbomb (Simplified Chinese translation)
- Toni Hermoso Pulido (Catalan translation)
- KAMI (Hungarian translation)
- Pedro Failla (Brazilian Portuguese translation)
- Junyeob Kim of Mozilla Update Korea (Korean translation)
- Team erweiterungen.de (German translation)
Release History
0.4.11
- Added support for the latest Firefox 4 nightlies (2010-07-02 and above).
0.4.10
- Updated the list of backed up files for current trunk builds (2008-08-18 and above).
0.4.9
- Added support for Firefox 3 final.
0.4.8
- Updated the list of backed up files for current trunk builds (2008-03-14 and above).
0.4.7
- Updated the list of backed up files for current trunk builds (2007-12-06 and above).
0.4.6
- Updated the list of backed up files for current trunk builds (2007-06-21 and above).
0.4.5
- Updated the list of backed up files for current trunk builds (2007-06-18 and above). Thanks Tony E.
0.4.4
- Updated the list of backed up files for current trunk builds (2007-05-22 and above).
0.4.3
- Updated the list of backed up files for Firefox 2.0.0.2 and current trunk builds (thanks Alan Baxter and Tony E).
0.4.2
- Added support for Firefox 2 final. Due to my lateness in getting the file to the translators not all locales are ready yet, if your locale is missing please check back later, I'll update the extension and this post as locales come in. The following locales are included at the time of writing (2006-12-01): ca, cs-CZ, de-DE, en-US, es-ES, fr-FR, hu-HU, it-IT, ja, ko-KR, sk, th-TH, zh-CN, zh-TW.
- Added a Korean (ko-KR) locale, contributed by Junyeob Kim of Mozilla Update Korea.
0.4.1
- Fixed a potential backup failure when the bookmarks file can't be found.
- Added a Brazilian Portuguese (pt-BR) locale, contributed by Pedro Failla.
0.4
- Partially rewritten to make the extension more reliable, additionally it now performs backups both at shutdown and every 2 hours. The backup interval can be tweaked by setting the bookmarkbackup.interval pref to a value in minutes, you can also enable/disable startup/shutdown backups with the bookmarkbackup.startupBackup and bookmarkbackup.shutdownBackup prefs.
- Added a logging mode to help track down backup problems. To enable it set the pref bookmarkbackup.loggingEnabled to true, this will create a file named
bookmarkbackup.login your profile folder. - Added an icon, contributed by Thomas Bertels.
- This extension no longer works on older versions of Firefox, you must be using Firefox 1.5 or above.
- Added a Catalan (ca-AD) locale, contributed by Toni Hermoso Pulido.
- Added a Hungarian (hu-HU) locale, contributed by KAMI.
0.3.3
- Changed the passwords checkbox in the Options dialog to also backup pre-Firebird 0.7 style password files (e.g. 1234567.s) since people with old profiles may still be using that style of file.
- Added an Italian (it-IT) locale, contributed by Giovanni Francesco Solone of eXtenZilla.it.
- Added a Turkish (tr-TR) locale, contributed by Orçun Apaydýn.
- Added a French (fr-FR) locale, contributed by Thomas Bertels.
- Added a Czech (cs-CZ) locale, contributed by Petr Jirsa.
- Added a Thai (th-TH) locale, contributed by Sampan Sittiwantana.
- Added a Japanese (ja-JP) locale, contributed by Premier.
- Added a Slovak (sk-SK) locale, contributed by SlovakSoft.
- Added a Simplified Chinese (zh-CN) locale, contributed by bigbigbomb.
0.3.2
- Fixed an issue with backing up whole folders (e.g. Cache) from the profile folder.
- Added a Traditional Chinese (zh-TW) locale, contributed by Willy Young.
0.3.1
- The most common settings now have a checkbox in the Options dialog to make it easier to specify the files to be backed up.
- Each day's backups are now copied into a sub-folder of the Backups folder, this keeps the files for each day together and resolves the problem of files getting the wrong extension.
- Added a German (de-DE) locale, contributed by Patrick Ruh.
- Added a Spanish (es-ES) locale, contributed by Carlos of Proyecto Nave.
- Removed the automatic
install.rdfupdate link due to bandwidth constraints, from now on you'll have to manually check for updates.
0.3
- Bookmark Backup can now optionally backup other files in your profile. Simply go to the Options dialog and enter a list of extra files to be backed up (separated with the
|character). Code contributed by Nickolay Ponomarev (thanks Nick).
0.2.1
- Fixed some previously unlocalisable strings.
0.2
- The backup location can now be specified in Bookmark Backup's Options window.
- Fixed the Linux permissions issue when creating the Backups directory.
0.1.2
- Now supports the backup of a bookmarks file that has been moved with browser.bookmarks.file.
0.1.1
- Bookmark backups are now stored in a sub-directory of the profile directory named
Backups.
0.1
- Initial Release.
Comments
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Hmm, true. But other users may want to, but they may not know of the preference. So I think it would be a good thing to do when you have nothing else to do with the extension. Definitely not a high-priority thing, though.
hmm i backup everything but there is no option to,
inport it so whats the point in this extension ?
@Matt
I'm trying to follow the Firefox devs lead, they only add UI if they think the average person would need to alter it, for everything else they leave the stuff in about:config. So unless someone gives me a reason I don't plan on exposing that pref via UI.
@jus me
D'oh, you got me, the extension is pointless. :D (See FAQ1 and FAQ4 above.)
Hmm, that makes sense. Okay. :)
Hi,
This extension is great! it is really good.
I just had an BSOD (0x00000d0 or so). When I started firefox I noticed all my settings were returned to default, including extensions settings. Well I have bout 50 off them. So I was glad I had Bookmark Backup setup to backup all files possible. I was just easy finding them in my profile and after a quick copy everything is back to normal.
Thanks so much this saved me many, many work ! :D
Hey, what's new in 0.4 test build 4?
Just to say, though, it does look like it's working perfectly.
Hey, is there any way you could set up emailing of new comments? I want to watch for replies after I say something here, but I don't want to devote a whole tab to it.
@Matt
Nothing major, just a couple of bug fixes (the most important one was that in certain circumstances if BB failed to copy a file the whole backup process would stop, now it will just skip that file) and also a minor rewrite to make the code more correct in some places. I can't remember the exact details of the bug fixes since setting up version control is still on my todo list. :-)
As for e-mail notifications, that's also on my todo list, I already get an e-mail when someone posts so I just need to find the time to extend that to anyone who requests it.
@Everyone
If anyone is wondering why 0.4 is still in beta, it's because someone found a problem where upgrading from 0.3.3 to 0.4 could potentially break other extensions. As far as I can tell this is a bug in Fx 1.0 (the Fx 1.5 test builds work fine) therefore I'm not going to release BB 0.4 until Fx 1.5 is released.
Ah, okay, on all counts. :)
How often does it break other extensions? You might want to just release it and warn people that Bad Things may happen...
@Matt
It happens every time but only to extensions that provide components e.g. WeatherFox, Google Toolbar, etc. Frankly I don't trust people to read warnings and since I'd rather not face a bunch of angry e-mails, I'm playing it safe.
Heh, true. Well, okay.
From :
http://www.pikey.me.uk/mozilla/extensions/bookmarkbackup.xpi (0.3.3)
Error code -239
"Chrome registration failed" on mozilla suite
@Error
This extension (and all the others on this site) are Firefox only, sorry.
Hey, guess what? As of either yesterday or today, Deer Park automatically backs up bookmarks.html to a dated file in a new "bookmarkbackups" subdirectory of your profile (i.e. "bookmarks-2005-08-30.html"). Don't know if it eventually deletes old backups. It doesn't back up other stuff like your extension does, though.
Bug 305004, it looks like:
Oops. Doesn't appear it requires a name...
@Matt
Thanks, I already know about the new Deer Park feature (I'm cc'ed on that bug). Hopefully BB will no longer be necessary for most people once Deer Park is released, I'm not sure whether I'll discontinue it or what (I suppose some people might still want to use it to backup other files but there are probably better solutions).
p.s. I fixed the problem with comment posting not checking that a name had been entered (I think I broke that last week when I made some other changes), I also edited your second post to add your name.
Oh, indeed you are CCed on it. :P
Well, I hope you won't discontinue Bookmark Backup. Personally, I've only ever had my bookmarks destroyed once -- when I upgraded to Firefox 1.0. Since then, the only eaten stuff has been my history a few times in the last couple weeks, and the new backups don't include it (being that it's not vital, I suppose).
Honestly, I have at least a daily backup of my profile, so Bookmark Backup isn't really needed, but I still like having it around, and it does have more recent backups than the daily ones.
But, well, until Firefox by default does as much as Bookmark Backup does, I hope you won't discontinue it.
Ah. Thanks and thanks. :)
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@Matt
I couldn't think of any reason why the average user would need to change the backup interval so I left it hidden. Feel free to try and convince me otherwise, though as you've probably noticed I have a wide range of excuses available for getting out of doing any work, so good luck. :-)