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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How to disable the internal bookmark backup of Firefox 1.5, when we use yoyr extension?
@Sergio
I'm not sure there is a way, at least until the following bug is fixed:
Congratulations on getting the new release out, good to see.
To those who don't see the point to backing up bookmarks with BB, now that Firefox automatically backs them up: The Fx backups are in the profile folder, not a very safe location. There's no option to put them anywhere else, either. With this extension you can put the backups anywhere. I've already seen one post on the help forum from a user who lost both their bookmarks and the built-in backups.
Now to my question: to get automatic updates, do I need to uninstall Test Build 7 and install the release version?
@greenknight
There's currently no way to get automatic updates of BB.
Ok, then I take it there's no reason to replace Test Build 7 with the release version, is there?
@greenknight
The only difference between tb7 and 0.4 final is that I removed the bit that said "Test Build 7" and I added some locales that came in late.
Pike could you add a install link for the older 1.0.x version of Bookmark Backup on your link at the Extension Mirror Site
and on this site.
Lots of folks are still using Firefox 1.0.x version and 0.33 is what they are looking for.
see my comments here ....
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=1252725#1252725
thanks, Richard
email: rtmjr@pobox.com
Due to a "technical hitch" I've lost about a months worth of comments, sorry about that. Please repost if there was anything important that's gone.
["Repost" by Pike]
If you would like to help test Bookmark Backup please install 0.42a2 found here:
http://www.pikey.me.uk/mozilla/test/bb_042a2.xpi
Specifically, on first run your prefs are migrated to the new system so please check that the correct checkboxes are still checked. Also generally, trying to break the options box would be useful.
[Repost by Pike]
In my non-Places build, bookmarks aren't on the list of things to back up... History is, but not bookmarks.
We'll see if it will back up everything successfully soon.
It did migrate my settings fine, though. Except that it left 'searchplugins/' in the list of other files when a checkbox had been added for it.
["Repost" by Pike]
@Matt
There has never been a bookmarks checkbox in BB.
[Repost by Pike, thanks Matt]
Oh, really?
...
Wow. I never noticed that. Hehe.
I think there should be a disabled Bookmarks box. Then again, I never did notice it in the past... But why not allow it to be disabled? I don't know why anyone wouldn't (except maybe the built-in Firefox bookmark backer-upper), but why not?
I think there should be a combined "Bookmarks and History" box if the user is using a Places build. That would take more work to implement, though. I wouldn't know, but I expect you could check for something Places-specific (maybe a Places function or the bookmarksBarShowPlaces toolbarbutton in the main window?) to show that checkbox instead of what's currently done...
[Repost by Pike, thanks Matt]
@Matt
My thinking was that an extension called Bookmark Backup should always backup your bookmarks, I didn't want someone to click "None" and not realise that their bookmarks weren't safe.
p.s. Was that double-post (I removed it) caused by a bug in my comments system?
[Repost by Pike, thanks Matt]
That makes sense. I think a greyed-out and checked Bookmarks box might be a good idea, though, for the people who notice Bookmarks aren't listed.
I think the double-post was caused by Firefox crashing and then the Crash Recovery extension submitting the POST data again when I started it back up. So, you might be able to prevent it somehow, but it wasn't your comment system's fault.
[Repost by Pike, thanks Matt]
The 'Comment Added' page doesn't redirect back to the comments page, does it? A meta refresh would've probably prevented that double-post, because that page wouldn't have been open when Firefox crashed.
[Repost by Pike]
Hi,
you have translated Bookmark Backup in several languages but you have forgoten to translate the description : "Creates a backup of your bookmarks each day."
Can you transform the "description" in a variable to have for exemple in French :
"Pour Créer une sauvegarde de vos Marques-pages tous les jours."
Best Regards ;)
[Repost by Pike]
Eep. What was the technical glitch?
I was able to get a copy of a few of the comments from my cache: http://h1.ripway.com/Peng/stuff2/sb-20060317082648/
@menet
Sorry, people keep telling me about that hack and I keep forgetting to look into it. I don't want to use it until I'm sure it's totally reliable.
@Matt
I accidentally removed the database while uninstalling an old private phpBB board that the spammers had found and taken over. And while I had a backup of the extension listings, I screwed up on the comments front, so I had to revert back to a February backup.
p.s. Thanks for finding those comments.
Oh. Oops. Maybe you should make more frequent backups of it. :P
Sorry I wasn't able to recover more comments.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you. The first link u gave me did it. So simple but a step I hadn't tryed yet. I'm so releived. My old bookmarks are restored!
And Thanks 4 the fast response
meadowmuffin
*FIGHT THE POWER*
"To be nobody but myself-in a world which is
doing its best, night & day, to make you
everybody else-means to fight the hardest
battle which any human being can fight,
& never stop fighting"
ee cummings (1894-1962)