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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#81 matt Friday, 25th February 2005

my fault... somehow it wasn't installing for me before. no problems now though. sry for the lame ass post.

#82 Pike Sunday, 27th February 2005

@matt

I'm glad you got it sorted out.

#83 raananb Sunday, 27th February 2005

I thought Bookmark Backup could keep a copy of my TB address book along with FF files. I specified abook.mab (with its full path, "c:\Documents and settings\....\abook.mab") in the field provided in the options window, but it does not work.

Any reason why?

#84 Pike Sunday, 27th February 2005

@raananb

The field in Options doesn't support paths (other than very primitive relative paths).

#85 penury Friday, 4th March 2005

where do i find the source, might be nice to adapt it to tb to backup my mail

#86 Pike Friday, 4th March 2005

@penury

Just unzip the .XPI and then the inner .JAR, the extension is interpreted JavaScript. To get it working in TB you should only need to add a targetApplication arc in install.rdf and an overlay in contents.rdf (the content one).

#87 Rich Friday, 11th March 2005

Hey, Just wondering if there is anyway to create a "desktop" icon shortcut to a certain website, so I can set my keyboard shortcut buttons to mozilla instead of IE...

#88 angeleyes Friday, 11th March 2005

This extension is a must have. Losing your bookmarks gets really old really fast. It has happened to me several times, but one time is too much.

#89 Pike Monday, 14th March 2005

@Rich

You can drag the icon that appears to the left of the address (the one that looks like a piece of paper by default) to the desktop, that will create a shortcut to the current page.

#90 Bob I. Thursday, 17th March 2005

I've just installed bookmark backup & am quite pleased with it. I have a question though regarding the Options. I checked
the passwords box, and set it to go into My Doc,which it does.
The problem is the passwords. I've observed that it goes into
a subfolder called signons. When this file is opened the passwords not visible. If I should do a dumb thing & need to
use this extension. ow would I get the passwords back?

#91 Pike Thursday, 17th March 2005

@Bob

I've never heard of it doing that before. You're saying it creates a folder called signons which is empty is that correct? I'm not really sure how that could happen to tell you the truth.

Normally it should copy two files, one called signons.txt and the other called key3.db, you can then copy these back to your profile (http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/edit#profile) to restore them.

Maybe you've found a bug, please give me as much detail as you can about which version of Firefox you're using, which version of Bookmark Backup, what other extensions you have installed and what file structure the backup creates.

#92 Bob I. Friday, 18th March 2005

Pike:
No its not a bug in your extension, the bug was me. I hit the wrong item in My Doc. After I got up today I took another look,& right next to the folder made by BB is one I keep empty. So in this case no BB bugs,just end user bugs.

#93 Bob I. Friday, 18th March 2005

I do have another question though. Since BB puts in a folder for a given day,say Thursday,where would this file be moved to
& would it need renaming?
An example of what I mean:
1)I do something & I crash my FF, try safe mode,no go
2)I then open my profile delete it, just to make sure
3)Goto My Doc click the folder that I have my backup profile on(named MZBP) name it back to Mozilla click "move this file" set it to move to "Application Data" click move & my FF usually is back online.
My back up profile is from3/7/05
The Thursday BB file has bookmarks added since 3/7 as well as some added the day I installed it 3/17/05.
Would I need to rename the BB file fom Thursday to something else(like MZBP to Mozilla)& where would I move it?

#94 Bob I. Friday, 18th March 2005

Pike I simulated a FF crash & found out how to use BB, I should have read intro at the start. I can be so dumb!
Thank you so muuch for this extension. It's a must have!

#95 Cracka Sunday, 20th March 2005

hello, thanks for contributing the bookmark backup extension.

if i may, i would like to suggest the ability to set a number of days to pass before a backup. say i'd like to have the backup taken every 7 days, or something in that general direction.

thanks,
cracka

#96 Pike Sunday, 20th March 2005

@Bob

I'm glad you got it sorted :-)

@Cracka

I don't have any plans to add a feature like that, but don't forget this is an open source extension so you can add the feature yourself if you like.

#97 Jerry Thursday, 31st March 2005

Great extension. Thank you for the work you've done on it.

#98 custom location vote Friday, 1st April 2005

I like the idea but I would really like ability to copy bookmark file into my own directory (that get's picked up by automatic backup and synchronization scripts).

Thanks,
Peter

#99 Pike Sunday, 3rd April 2005

@Peter/custom location vote

You can change the backup location by selecting Bookmark Backup in Tools->Extensions and clicking the Options button.

#100 Jerry Tuesday, 12th April 2005

Thank you for the great work on Bookmark Backup Version 0.3.3I had a problem with Firefox not working on my profile and I was able to restore from the backup folder.

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