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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thanks so much.
i knows I'm slow,but it may be useful to give an example in your release notes-- that, for example, the wed in bookmarks.html.wed is for wednesday.
Also, in tribute to past bookmarks lost, why did they disappear? Especially in Netscape 4 through 6.
@spot
The mon, tues, wed, etc file extensions are no longer used in the latest versions of Bookmark Backup (though the files may still be around on your hard drive since they are not automatically removed when upgrading).
I have no idea why bookmarks disappear, the situation definitely seems improved in current releases though.
How difficult would it be to add an option to select all files in the 'Cache' folder as a backup item?
hi Pike!
thnx 4 your gr8 work. this is veeeeeery usefull tool.
Thank you! As an admitted idiot I somehow lost my bookmarks a couple days after my son downloaded firefox for me. Hopefully this will keep that from happening again.
@RenegadeX
It wouldn't be too hard, but you can add the cache folder yourself by going to "Tools->Extensions->Bookmark Backup->Options" and typing "Cache" (minus the quotes) in the "Other files" input.
This tool is a great step forward for someone who's system is continually crashing (I may to be getting closer to the source which may have been a virtual memory problem). However I have just noticed that the custom location and other file information has to be reset after a system crash - is there a Bookmark Backup preferences file that can also be backed up?
Great extension but I'm confused about restoring lost bookmarks. I had to reinstall firefox, went to restore backups to my profile but which file do I copy? I grabbed all of them, restarted firefox but my bookmarks are not there. What am I doing wrong.
Thanks. This is something that was needed.
@Rod
The Bookmark Backup preferences are saved in prefs.js. You can add this file to your backup list by going to "Tools->Extensions->Bookmark Backup->Options" and ticking the "Preferences" checkbox.
@Spider
If you look in your profile folder (http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/edit#profile) you should find a sub-folder called Backups, copy the file called bookmarks.html from *the day before* the crash to your main profile folder.
been using bookmarks backup since august 04... just install 0.32 .... I did noticed that <name>.s and <name).w files are not being copied unless you add them to other ....
Problem just had a OS crash and had to reinstall xp ... and after reinstalling firefox ... good thing I had a a backup harddrive that had them on them ...
SO, whould you consider adding a "ALL" choice or listing these two files as checkbox options in the next release ...
On a different subject ... any plans to add a backup profile extension for thunderbird??
later, Richard
Won't be checking back but if you want to email a response
Richard Martin email: rtmjr@pobox.com
Thanks for making this. Out of curiosity, why is it not on update.mozilla.org?
@Richard
Bookmark Backup 0.3.3 should fix the issue with *.s files that you describe (they are now saved when you check the passwords box in options), thanks for the bug report.
@alxndr
This extension is not on UMO (or should I call it AMO now) because it uses a maxversion of 1.9+ and thus wouldn't be accepted for inclusion.
Hi Pike & others,
Like "Bookmark Backup" a lot!.
My question:
------------
Is there an "Extensions installed Backup" extension or tool?.
Reaason:
Have many Firefox 1.0 extensions installed.
But..if I have to re-install Firefox, I would have to remember the name of each extension and would have to re-install each extension manuallly...What a pain.
Is there an easy way to save the currently installed Extensions in a Backup - and make it easy to restore...?
Thanks!
@Ray
I'm not aware of an extension like that I'm afraid (it doesn't mean there isn't one, I can hardly keep up with all the extensions these days). The closest is InfoLister which will save a list of all extensions you have installed including a link to their homepages:
Re: #61, #58
The window doesn't have any extensions to choose. It is blank. Have I done something wrong? Where is this list of extensions that should include Bookmark Backup?
@Riccardo
The list of installed extensions is in Tools->Extensions, if it's blank then either you don't have Bookmark Backup installed or your profile is corrupt.
please update this extentsion for v1.0.1
thanks a ton for a VERY helpful plugin.
@matt
Can you please be a little bit more specific about what issues you're having with Bookmark Backup in Firefox 1.0.1, thanks.
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@Riccardo
Did you select Bookmark Backup from the list of extensions first? Once you've done that the Options button should become available.
@Brian
Yes close Firefox first then copy that backups over the original files.
@marek
You could always right-click the "Install Bookmark Backup" link and select "Save Link As...". Then find the downloaded file, it should be called bookmarkbackup.xpi, and drag it onto a Firefox window.