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?

  1. Close Firefox.
  2. Find the Backups folder in your profile folder (or in your custom backup location, if configured).
  3. 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.
  4. 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

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.log in 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.rdf update 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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#381 felician Monday, 25th December 2006

Hello,
Christmas Day falls on December 25. It is preceded by Christmas Eve on December 24, and in some countries is followed by Boxing Day on December 26. Some Eastern Orthodox Churches celebrate Christmas on January 7, which corresponds to December 25 on the Julian calendar. December 25 as a birthdate for Jesus is merely traditional, and is not thought to be his actual date of birth.Bye

#382 joku Monday, 29th January 2007

This is maybe a stupid idea but could backupping bookmarks be optional? The size of my bookmarks.html is over 5 MB so 7 times that is 36 MB, which is quite much.

#383 Pike Tuesday, 30th January 2007

@joku

No, it's not a stupid idea but I'd rather not add it, simply because someone's bound to end up accidentally disabling backup of Bookmarks and then I'll get an angry e-mail when they lose them. :) Perhaps at some point I could add a hidden option though.

#384 joku-agreement Tuesday, 20th February 2007

@Pike

FF 2.0 bookmark backup system is anal-retentive. Not only is there a folder with cron-job backup rotations, but also, a .bak file that you CANNOT disable with ANY preference setting. For someone with a USB flash drive, that is a nightmare.

So yes please add this feature (disable backups) and wrap it with ten are-you-sure dialogs then. And tell Moz to get their act together, it's bad enough these bookmarks are still crappy Netscape format, instead of some rational thing like textile or even xhtml, and hidden in deeply nested profile folders. Out-of-control auto-backup is just one more problem.

#385 Alan Baxter Monday, 26th February 2007

@Pike

Could you add the following file to the next version of Bookmark Backups? I've already added it to my list of "other files".

From http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder
signons2.txt Firefox (starting in 1.5.0.10 & 2.0.0.2)

#386 Pike Sunday, 4th March 2007

@Alan

Thanks for letting me know, not sure how I missed that. :) I'll try to upload a new version with that change sometime this week.

Sorry for the delay in replying.

#387 Tony E Monday, 5th March 2007

@Pike

Some other changes that you have probably already noticed.
bookmarks_history.sqlite has been replaced by places.sqlite in the trunk builds.

I believe it will be useful to add search.sqlite to the searchEngines backup group as it contains additional information about the list of installed search engines.

You may want to consider a new backup group for safer browsing containing urlclassifier2.sqlite and kf.txt. blocklist.xml could possibly be added to this group as well.

#388 greenknight Tuesday, 6th March 2007

I just use *.sqlite, so I'm good for whatever .sqlite files are renamed to or added. But, looking in my Trunk profile, I found a prefs-1.js file. I don't know what that's about, but I added it to "Other Files".

#389 Tony E Tuesday, 6th March 2007

@greenknight
Files with names like prefs-n.js are created if for some reason Firefox was unable to save the file prefs.js file.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Preferences_not_saved

#390 Pike Tuesday, 6th March 2007

@Tony E

Thanks I did notice places.sqlite but then forgot to change BB, so I'm glad you reminded me. :)

You're right I'll add search.sqlite to the search engines group since I believe it stores engine order and enabled state.

I was under the impression that the safe browsing files just store generated/downloaded data from Google rather than user data that needs to be backed-up, is that wrong? And the same with blocklist.xml and Mozilla?

Thanks for the information/reminder.

p.s. Please feel free to drop a note here if you see any future changes. I'm a bit behind on Firefox at the moment, I'm still building/using 1.8.1 branch instead of Trunk. :)

#391 rio Thursday, 8th March 2007

This extension is not working. No bookmark and other file are backup using the default backup folder.

#392 Pike Thursday, 8th March 2007

@rio

Could you try enabling Bookmark Backup's logging mode by going to about:config and setting the bookmarkbackup.loggingEnabled pref to true. Then find the bookmarkbackup.log file in your profile folder and post it here (or e-mail it to me if you'd prefer).

#393 Pike Thursday, 8th March 2007

I've uploaded 0.4.3, thanks Alan and Tony.

#394 Justice Saturday, 31st March 2007

I installed bookmark backup but seeing anything in Firefox. How do I access it?

#395 Justice Saturday, 31st March 2007

I installed bookmark backup but not seeing anything in Firefox. How do I access it?

#396 Pike Monday, 2nd April 2007

@Justice

It works automatically, you can configure it in the usual way (Tools->Add-ons->Bookmark Backup->Options).

#397 gelfo Wednesday, 4th April 2007

Thanks !!!! finally i've find it! good

#398 Sara Friday, 13th April 2007

I'm using FF2 and I can't get the extention to back up my information

#399 Pike Sunday, 15th April 2007

@Sara

Could you go into about:config and set the bookmarkbackup.loggingEnabled pref to true then restart Firefox. It should produce a file in your profile called bookmarkbackup.log that gives more information about what the problem is.

#400 Modex Monday, 23rd April 2007

Can you upload extension to http://www.babelzilla.org/ ?
At this site your extension may localise to many others languages.

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