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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I installed this extension, but found out that the text is all in German. How can I change it back to English so I can read it? I am sure it is very simple, but it is something I am missing.
Thanks for your help in advance!
Mark
Doesn't work on Mac OS X: path to save backup to becomes gibberish if browsed to. And does not function if path is entered in manually either. Please fix this.
@kneeslasher
As I said in comment 3 I don't have access to a Mac so can't fix the problem. I've added a warning about possible Mac problems to the page.
If someone on Mac can find a fix for these problems please send it to me and I'll include it.
An enhancement I would like to suggest is a rolling history of backups. I have used this extension, but if I have a crash, lose bookmarks, don't noticed it, and then open and close firefox twice, I have just backed up over the backup.
OK, I just installed this critter, told it to save my bookmarks, prefs, and cookies to a folder, closed Firefox, and nothing appeared in that folder. OR SO I THOUGHT. LOL I didn't notice that a new subfolder was created by this extension.... It created a subfolder named after the current day of the week (in my case "Thursday") and then put the backups down in there. So I assume it now rotates the backups so you can roll back up to one week? If so, that is AWESOME and much thanks.
Yeah.... Ok... so I read the version history, and it does rotate the backups based on the day.
SO EVERYONE, BE SURE TO GET VERSION 0.3.1 OR LATER!!!!!
@Glanzer
Bookmark Backup has always rotated backups, the difference in 0.3.1 is that it does it by putting the backups in a separate folder for each day, in previous versions it would add a file extension instead (e.g. bookmarks.html.mon, bookmarks.html.tue, etc.).
You don't get it. You will still lose bookmarks without a recent backup.
1. Close Firefox, good backup created
2. Later Firefox crashes and loses bookmarks
3. You don't notice it lost bookmarks
4. Start and stop Firefox
5. Extension backs up empty bookmark file
Am I wrong? I can't figure out why I still lose bookmarks, even with this system.
Maybe I should be more specific to what I mean. I am fine with the folders for days. What I would have prefered is a backup folder that contains timestamped files and a setting that says how many to keep. That way you could go back a couple. Either that, or make it smart enough to detect when bookmarks have been destroyed and not to back them up.
@horvath
6. You restore the backup file from the previous day.
If you'd like timestamped files etc. please feel free to modify the source yourself, for my purposes that's overkill.
OK, I see your point. I have been battling with BSOD reboots from Firefox, and it gets frustrating having to recreate things you just did. I do a lot of bookmark manipulation. Lots of temporary ones for files I am working on (I treat them like file manager shortcuts). Your extension is very useful and I appreciate your work on it. I would have pulled out quite a bit more hair than I have without it. I hope I don't sound too critical. Extensions like yours is what makes FF truly a great open source project. Thank you.
I would to thank the people who made this Extension, since in IE I had to backup manually, but now in FireFox it does a backup automaticly. Thank you very much.
It would be nice feature to be able to set it to a Time Daily, or Weekly etc instead of just closing the Browser.
I have downloaded and installed your excellent Firefox bookmark backup extension, version 0.3.1, after I mysteriously lost all of my bookmarks one day.
Unfortunately, the folders into which the extension backs everything up are all in German, and the language of the extension dialog box is also in German. Even though I am fluent in German, I wonder if the extension is available in English, and what I should do to get it.
Should I uninstall and reinstall the extension, or should I do something else?
If your 0.3.1 version of Bookmark Backup ready to use with Firefox 1.0? TIA.
I like Abrasha above mysteriously lost all of my bookmarks today. Is there a bug in the program or a mysterious virus running around that is attacking the Bookmark section of Foxfire?
@Strider
Yes.
@GFLGeorge
There have been several bugs in Firefox which cause lost bookmarks, most of them have been squashed in the latest versions but it seems there are still some very rare ones around.
I am excited about having this extension. After rebooting, I went to Tools/Extensions, but <Options> was greyed out. Only <Update> button is available to me. Is this the way it's supposed to be?
I do not have a "backup" subfolder under "profile," but can I just move the saved files (such as history.dat) into the original "profile" folder to restore it? Thanks.
hi
when i click on "install" Bookmark Backup nothing hjappens
can u help
firefox 1.0
thanks marek
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@Scott_Mpls
This might be a silly question but are you absolutely sure you have Firefox 0.9 (or above) and not an earlier version or the Mozilla suite? The Firefox 0.9 profile should be in:
C:\Documents and Settings\(UserName)\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.xxx (where xxx = a three character salt)
If you are certain you've got the right version, try searching your hard drive for bookmarks.html and see if any other instances are found. It might help also if you goto "Help->About Mozilla Firefox" and copy the user agent string at the bottom and paste it into your next comment.