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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[quote]
...bookmarks are now stored in places.sqlite
[/quote]
I've seen this yesterday, luckily no probs with my bookmarks before...
Can i simply add this file to "other files" and it works when i copy it back?
Uuuups, just seen that places.sqlite it's in the backup-folder already... :p
I just accidentally deleted a comment from someone having issues with Firefox, sorry about that.
I suggest you go to this site to get help:
The following page might be helpful as well:
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Cannot+connect+after+upgrading+Firefox
Hi Pike
A new file to backup for Firefox 3.1, it will use search.json instead of search.sqlite
@TonyE
From reading the bug report it looks like that file is just a cache to make startup faster, the actual information is still stored in search.sqlite. Deleting search.json doesn't seem to result in any dataloss.
I'll make sure to double-check that though before 3.1 final is released.
Thanks for the heads-up.
I really, really appreciate this. I thought i've lost all my bookmarks, but i installed this program and followed your instructions and magically they are again in my Mozilla. Thanks so much. Mozilla is the best browser i've seen.
it is okey
I need to get into the firefox history that has been deleted. I am on a Mac. How do I do that?
@Linda
By default Bookmark Backup doesn't back up history in Firefox 2 so it won't have saved it unless you told it to. Assuming you did, then just follow the steps in Frequently Asked Questions #1 (near the top of this page), the file you're looking for is called "history.dat".
Can bookmark backups also be used to hide activities online? Especially when there are parent-children controls and - smart bookmarks involved?
@Wandalynn
No, I don't see any way that Bookmark Backup could be used to hide online usage.
Hi Pike,
I appreciate your extension. Could you please let thunderbird also be able to call this extension? Under thunderbird we have also files to backup.
Thank you!
why is firefox's bookmark made so hard to transfer(compare to I.E)and why is "import" button can only import from I.E? if the import function can import data between different versions of firefox, wouldn't be that a common sense?
@Lily
You can export to bookmarks.html in your old Firefox then import that file into your new Firefox (alternately you can copy the places.sqlite file from your old install to your new one). How does IE handle import/export?
Hi
Thanks for a very simple and excellent app that solves half my problem.
Many many people have been asking Mozilla devs to allow them to store their bookmarks on net / specified location and they are generally refusing (for mostly good reasons).
If you could add the possibility to also restore from backup when opening firefox it would solve this problem and would be seriously appreciated by these frustrated masses (including myself)
thanks
@Matt
Thanks for your comments. Unfortunately I'm not working on this extension at the moment (other than updating it for new versions of Firefox) but restore is top of my list if I start developing it again.
How can I, keep my personal favorites adrecess??
The program can't do this??
thanks
@problem
I don't really understand what you're asking?
This extension is purely for backup purposes, it doesn't have any other features so I'm guessing it won't be able to do whatever it is you're asking about. :(
Hi, when do you update bookmark backup ?? ;)
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Walter, Firefox 3 no longer uses bookmarks.html, bookmarks are now stored in places.sqlite