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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#401 Greenknight Monday, 4th June 2007

Installed 0.4.4 in Release, Branch and Trunk builds, working flawlessly. So glad to see your site back, was beginning to wonder if it would ever be seen again.

#402 Pike Monday, 4th June 2007

Thanks Greenknight.

#403 Tony E Monday, 18th June 2007

A new file for the Trunk builds, cookies are now using mozStorage, the new file is cookies.sqlite

#404 Pike Tuesday, 19th June 2007

Thanks Tony, updated.

#405 Modex Wednesday, 20th June 2007

May be you upload extension to http://www.babelzilla.org/ for translating to other languages?

#406 Sasquatch Thursday, 21st June 2007

"Bookmark Backup 0.4.5 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Seamonkey."

This is with a "nightly" "trunk" build of "Seamonkey".

It would be great if this could be fixed. Thank you.

#407 Pike Tuesday, 26th June 2007

@Sasquatch

I don't intend to support anything but Firefox for this extension. However it should work in SM if you disable the version checking or add the following to the install.rdf:

<em:targetApplication>
<Description>
<em:id>{92650c4d-4b8e-4d2a-b7eb-24ecf4f6b63a}</em:id>
<em:minVersion>1.0</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>2.0.*</em:maxVersion>
</Description>
</em:targetApplication>

#408 Dilbert Monday, 24th September 2007

@ Pike
would it be possible to create a version of Bookmark Backup which is able to run on a stick with portable FireFox?
Reason is - JAP(Java Anon Proxy)team
http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html
- now JonDonym
http://www.jondos.de/en/
- is creating a portable version of JAP together with a special portable version of FF.
During helping testing this - I realised how hard I miss this extension.
If you see any way to do so - please contact Rolf Wendolsky
http://www.jondos.de/en/people

rolf.wendolsky[AT]gmx.de

- and no I'm not Rolf :)
I'm only an old(very old)user of bookmarkbackup and JAP :)

#409 ppeter Monday, 19th May 2008

sounds ver useful but i can't install it

#410 peter Monday, 19th May 2008

i managed to install it but i don't know what to do next - is ther a backup now button on which i can click?

#411 Pike Monday, 19th May 2008

@peter

It makes backups automatically, there is no way to directly control it. You can change settings in Tools->Add-ons->Extensions->Bookmark Backup->Options.

#412 peter Monday, 19th May 2008

sorry i'm so thick i thought its purpose was to supplement firefox's automatic bookmarks backup

#413 DeepFreeze3 Tuesday, 27th May 2008

Glad to see your site back up, Pike! Bookmark Backup is, for me, an essential backup extension, and I'm glad updates are avaliable again! Nothing else even compares! :-)

#414 Pike Thursday, 29th May 2008

@DeepFreeze3

Thanks :)

#415 paul Saturday, 31st May 2008

any news on FF3 compatibility

#416 paul Saturday, 31st May 2008

>any news on FF3 compatibility

sorry forget about that I just saw the file at the top of the page, for some reason "find update" in FF was not finding the new version.

#417 polestar Monday, 16th June 2008

I need to do is move my backups to another computer (by copying the file onto a flash drive and transporting it).

Will this extension make that possible?

If not, have you another suggestion as to how to do this?

#418 Pike Monday, 16th June 2008

@polestar

If you want to transfer your settings to another computer you don't need this extension. Just find your profile folder on your current computer (instructions here: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Profiles#How_to_find_your_profile) then copy the files to the profile on your new computer.

#419 Ruud Wednesday, 18th June 2008

Hi Pike,

Bookmark backup has been an essential tool for me for a long time, so I'm very glad you updated the compatability to FF3. Thanks for that.

I have a question. When restoring the places.sqlite file from the extension's backup folder to the profiles folder, FF doesn't seem to use this file, but instead it seems to create an new version based on bookmarks.json I guess(?).

Try this. Delete a bookmark from within FF and close FF. Delete places.sqlite from profiles and restore the backup version from the extensions backup folder. Restart FF and you will see a new places.sqlite with the deleted bookmark included. Am I doing something wrong or does FF somehow label the restored version as illegal and recreates its own???

#420 Pike Wednesday, 18th June 2008

@Ruud

I've tried this but I can't reproduce the problem, are you shutting down Firefox before moving the places file?

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