Add Bookmark Here is a Firefox add-on that improves the Firefox bookmarking behavior big time. Firefox users who have bookmark folders displayed in the browser, for instance on the bookmark’s toolbar, have now access to a Bookmark Here link in every bookmark folder. This speeds up the bookmarking as they can simply click on the folder and then add bookmark here to add the bookmark to that folder. While it is possible to bookmark via drag and drop, it is not something that most users know about or do.

When you open the options of the add-on you will notice that it offers additional bookmarking related features and options.

You can modify the position of the add bookmark here and open all in tabs menu items in each bookmark folder (top, bottom, hidden), set the mouse clicking behavior and configure where bookmarks are added to a bookmarks folder (top or bottom).

The remaining menus list additional options. Available here are options to configure left-click, right-click and middle-click behavior when clicking on the bookmark star or a bookmarks folder, and to configure the edit bookmark dialog and bookmark menu.

The program expands the add bookmarks menu automatically so that all entries are accessible directly. This is a big improvement over Firefox’s default bookmark adding menu which displays less information directly when triggered by the user.

Firefox users who work with bookmarks regularly should take a closer look at Add Bookmark Here. The extension adds several features to the bookmarking options of the browser. Especially options to configure mouse clicks can be used to speed up the bookmarking.

A corrupt or accidentally deleted bookmarks file could have a serious impact on my work day. Most modern web browsers come with synchronization and backup options that can be used to restore data in the browser. The majority of those features need to be activated though before they can be used to restore data.

Firefox users who cannot access all or part of their bookmarks anymore can make use of the browser’s built-in restoration option to restore bookmarks in the browser. This feature is enabled by default. Here is how it is done.

Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-b to open the bookmarks manager. Locate the Import and Backup menu at the top and click it to display its menu options.

Move the mouse cursor over the Restore menu to display a list of bookmark backups that can be restored. Firefox by default backs up the bookmarks once per day (if the browser is used).

Click on a data to restore that bookmarks backup in the browser. Please note that Firefox will overwrite the existing bookmarks with the backup. Bookmarks that you have added in the meantime will not be available once the restoration has completed.

Firefox users can make use of the export bookmarks to HTML in the same menu to create a manual backup of their current bookmarks file. It is always a good idea to backup the file before restorations. This manual copy can then be restored by selecting the Import bookmarks from HTML option in the same menu.

Bookmarks can also also be backed up as JSON files instead by selecting the Backup option of the menu. These bookmark backups can then be restored via the Restore > Choose File option.

Firefox users can alternatively configure the synchronization option under Tools > Set Up Sync to synchronize the bookmarks with a cloud server.

Have you ever lost bookmarks in Firefox? What did you do to restore them?

Firefox bookmarks cannot be protected from prying eyes by default. Users with access can see the link titles and destinations of all bookmarks. Sometimes you may want to password protect and obscure links so that they cannot be opened or identified by third parties.

The Firefox add-on Link Password offers those options. The add-on adds two new options to the right-click bookmark’s context menu. This works both in the Bookmark’s Manager but also if bookmarks are displayed via a button in the Firefox user interface.

Encrypt this link password protects the link, with an option to randomize the link text as well to obscure the bookmark further and avoid identification of the link destination this way. When Encrypt this link is selected, a new window is displayed where a password needs to be entered. The Rename links box is optional.

The link will be replaced by a linkpassword url, the link title by a random page title. In this case, the link title was replaced by “Canada – Yahoo! Search Results”.

It can happen that a very strange looking link title will be selected. One of the links for instance was renamed to “Evighetens Filosofi – Visdomsord som passa dig… – Soker “Blue”, Sida 1″. It may make sense to select a custom link title manually instead, especially if you come up with a system that tells you – and no one else – where the link leads to.

When you open a password protected bookmark, you are asked to enter the password to decrypt the link and open the website.

This may be a bit inconvenient for bookmarks that you open a lot in Firefox, as you need to enter the password every time you open it in the browser. An option to enter the password once and store it for the browser session would be handy. I’d also like to see an option to protect all bookmarks with a single password automatically that you could enter to make all links available. This would make the extension more comfortable to work with.

Firefox users can install the Link Password extension directly from the official Mozilla Add-on repository.

Samfind Bookmarks Bar is an add-on that improves bookmark management in the browser. The Firefox extension merges bookmarks with search and social features. The bar can be placed freely in the browser which is unlike most toolbars that get added to the browser.

It can be placed in its own toolbar, in the Firefox address bar, in the sidebar or above the status bar. But the customization options do not stop there. It is furthermore possible to add, remove or edit items that are displayed on the screen.

Firefox users who do not want to see links to social sites like Facebook, Twitter or Reddit can remove those from the toolbar easily.

The same is true for websites, topics and search items. The add-on groups bookmarks into topics such as search, news or videos. Each topic is basically a folder that contains one or multiple bookmarks. Options are available to add, edit and delete topics and websites easily. Sites can be added from the browser’s history and the bookmarks toolbar. There does not seem to be an option to display all bookmarks stored in the browser though which makes the selection process harder than it should be.

The toolbar colors are customizable, as are other layout properties. Probably the most interesting feature is the built-in search option which can be used to search one of the bookmarks exclusively. The search basically redirects to a Google site search.

Samfind Bookmarks Bar can place icons in the Firefox interface that can be used to quickly add the current web page to one of the available topics.

The add-on lacks subfolders, or sub-topics as they might be called, which makes it harder to fit lots of bookmarks in the folders.

Firefox users who want to try the extension can download it from the official Firefox add-on repository.

Selecting them and pressing delete was my first try to remove them. They did disappear from that listing but appeared later which indicated that the bookmark was not fully removed from the system. Shift deleting them did not work either.

I then tried to right-click which did not work at all. The only option to remove selected bookmarks directly from the Firefox address bar is the following:

• Load the bookmark so that the url of it appears in the address bar
• Click on the yellow star at the end of the bookmark form
• Click on the Remove Bookmark button that appears in the menu.

This procedure deletes the bookmark from Firefox by using the address bar to do so. I prefer this way over opening the bookmarks manager because it is integrated into the workflow. If I spot a bookmark that I no longer need I can delete it right there.

Does anyone know if there is a faster way to delete the bookmarks from the Firefox address bar?

Bookmarks can be deleted from the Firefox address bar by CTRL deleting them.

• Start writing a domain name or keyword
• Move the mouse over the bookmark that is not longer needed as soon as it appears
• Press CTRL and then Delete to delete the bookmark permanently

There is no workaround available for this with the exception of opening all bookmarks of a bookmarks folder at once (a middle-click on a bookmarks folder will do that). But that is not always what the Firefox user wants to do.

Selecting five bookmarks from a folder means that the user needs to open that folder five times to select one bookmark each time. Not very comfortable and the same applies to the address bar or browsing history.

Stay Open Menu is a Firefox add-on that changes this behavior in an ingenious way. It basically keeps the default behavior of the web browser when a website is selected with the left mouse button. The menus will still close after making the selection.

It will however keep the firefox menu open if the selection is made with the middle mouse button so that multiple entries of the menu can be selected without having to reopen the menu every time.

The same happens when pressing the CTRL key while clicking on entries in the menu. The latter option can be disabled. It is furthermore possible to configure the extension to automatically close menus after a time in milliseconds.

Open After Selection is a great add-on for the Firefox web browser that adds a long needed feature to the web browser. It makes it faster and less complicated to open multiple websites from a bookmarks folder and other menus in Firefox.

The add-on is available for download at the Mozilla Firefox add-on repository. It is compatible with all Firefox 3.x releases. (via Caschy)

The Incredible Bookmarks add-on for Firefox changes this. It is an all bases covered add-on that comes with several interesting features for users who would like to have more control over their bookmarks and the way they are displayed in the web browser.

The add-on will display a new bookmarks toolbar by default which can be hidden if it is not needed. The first notable difference to the default bookmarking behavior in Firefox becomes apparent immediately as it is possible to display all bookmark folders or only a specific one in a toolbar.

This can be used for a very unique experience as it is possible to create multiple toolbars that have been customized for specific work situations, say school and office, research or entertainment. The Firefox user can then switch between those different bookmark toolbars easily depending on the work at hand.

But that is not the only option to customize the bookmarks in the toolbar. It is furthermore possible to display bookmarks by search phrase, e.g. Google or Microsoft to only display bookmarks that contain these words in the title, url or as tags provided by the user.

The bookmarks that are displayed can be sorted in various ways including alphabetically, visit time or most visited. It is furthermore possible to highlight bookmarks or folders with colors to distinguish them visually from each other.

Incredible Bookmarks can in addition be used to check for duplicate bookmarks and dead links in the bookmarks. The add-on can be extremely helpful for users who want to access distinct groups of bookmarks depending on the work at hand. The add-on is available at the Mozilla Firefox website where it can be downloaded. It is compatible with all Firefox 3 versions including the latest betas of Firefox 3.6 and the pre releases of Firefox 3.7.

Check Places for Firefox adds the option to verify all bookmarks in the Firefox web browser. It can be used to check all bookmarks (with the option to exclude folders) or only specific folders that the Firefox user selects.

A click on the check bookmarks button will start the verification. The time it takes to verify the bookmarks depends on the amount of bookmarks and the Internet connection.

It took about a minute to check 489 bookmarks on a fast Internet connection. The add-on will display statistics on the report page including the time it took to verify the bookmarks and the number of bookmarks that got verified.

Errors are divided into the three categories failed pages, duplicates and empty folders. Failed pages are those with dns, page or other errors. These pages can be temporarily or permanently unavailable.

Each bookmark is listed in its own row. Selecting a bookmark will display additional information about the bookmark with the options to open, delete or exclude the bookmark.

The whole process – even if the pages with errors are verified manually – takes less than five minutes to complete.

Check Places is an add-on for the Firefox 3 web browser. It can be downloaded from the Mozilla Firefox website.

Firefox does not offer options to exclude specific websites from the search in the awesome bar. Some users might want to have the functionality to hide websites from being displayed in the awesome bar either because of users sharing a Firefox profile on the same computer system, hiding some urls from prying eyes that might walk by or to exclude websites that should not be found that way.

The Firefox add-on Not Awesome adds the option to exclude websites from the awesome bar’s search. It does so by filtering out websites that have been bookmarked and tagged with notawesome. Every bookmark with that tag will not be included during searches in the Firefox awesome bar.

The easiest way to add these tags is to open the Firefox bookmarks and edit the websites in there. Another option becomes available when adding new bookmarks.

The add-on adds a checkbox to hide the bookmark from awesome bar searches in the add bookmarks dialog. Not Awesome is an experimental Firefox add-on that is available at the official Mozilla Firefox website.

Update: The Firefox add-on has been discontinued. There is no similar extension available for the browser. The only option would be to remove the site from the bookmarks to avoid that it is displayed in the address bar. It is alternatively possible to block all bookmarks from showing up in the awesome bar.

The SortPlaces add-on adds many important sorting options plus the incredibly useful option to automatically sort new bookmarks according to the sorting parameters that the user defined in the add-on’s options.

The Firefox add-on distinguishes between menu, toolbar and unfiled bookmarks and offers different settings for each bookmarking category. Nine different sorting options are available in each category including sorting them by name, url, visit count, keyword or date added. The sorting order can be reversed in the same menu and it is possible to define the sort order for queries, folders, livemarks and bookmarks as well. By default queries appear above folders which appear above livemarks and bookmarks.

It is furthermore possible to enable automatic bookmark sorting and to include or exclude bookmarks or bookmark folders from the operation. It usually did not take longer than a second to sort through individual bookmark folders with dozens of bookmarks. A complete run on the other end did not seem to end at all. Maybe it is broken or maybe it is just taking very long. SortPlaces is nevertheless a great add-on for users who want to sort their bookmarks in a certain order that is not offered by default.

The bookmark folders and bookmarks were auto-collapsed and only a down arrow was shown at the right end of the toolbar that could be clicked on to access all the bookmarks that were placed in the Firefox toolbar.

The bookmarks would sometimes appear and shortly thereafter disappear again but were auto-collapsed for the majority of time. This changed once I discovered that it was an unfixed bug in the Firefox web browser that was causing the auto-collapsing. An add-on was published shortly thereafter that fixed the bug. After installing the add-on the bookmark folders would again appear on the toolbar and not auto-collapsed on the right side of it.

Users who experience a similar problem can install the add-on which will take care of the bug immediately. The bug fix is provided by the same developer who also created an add-on to disable the new tab tearing feature in Firefox that could accidentally create new browser windows.

The Bookmarks Archiver add-on has been created as a semi-automatic option to delete or archive bookmarks that have not been visited for a certain time. The default days are set to 90 but it is possible to change that figure according to the specific needs of the individual user.

The add-on will show a prompt when the first bookmark expires that allows the user to archive or delete the bookmark. Archived bookmarks will be moved into the Archived folder that is created by the add-on automatically. It is furthermore possible to make the add-on perform the archiving or deletion automatically from then on. A click on cancel will leave the bookmark unchanged.

The add-on will automatically run on Firefox shutdown.

Bookmarks Archiver currently has a few limitations that prevent the add-on from working properly in some cases. The History function in Firefox needs to be enabled for the add-on to work at all. Visits to bookmarks will not be recognized by the add-on if the user is surfing in private mode. Finally only bookmarks that are stored in the root folder or in level 1 folders can be archived and bookmarks that are created in the Organize Bookmarks menu need to be visited once before they are being tracked by the add-on.

One interesting option that is provided by Firefox is the option to save a search in the Firefox bookmarks. This will create a new dynamic folder in the Firefox bookmark’s menu that will contain all the bookmarks matching the entered search term.

What’s probably even more interesting is the fact that it will automatically display new bookmarks that have been added after performing the search in Firefox if they match the search term. This way it is possible to create a dynamic bookmark folder that will always contain all matching bookmarks of the entered search term. The dynamic folder can be moved into a Firefox toolbar for quick access or to any other location that can display Firefox bookmarks folders.

The core option that the add-on provides is a menu that is displayed when user’s right-click on the bookmark star icon in the Firefox address bar (at the right side). A left-click on the icon adds the active page to the browser’s bookmarks. The right-click menu gives the user direct options to store the bookmark in a particular bookmark folder. The star option in contrast places bookmarks automatically in the unsorted bookmarks folder.

The bookmarks menu is expanded and offers way more comfort than the default one.

The expanded bookmarks menu will be displayed all the time. The add-on will also add a Add Bookmark Here option to all bookmark folders which is especially useful for those located in on of the Firefox toolbars as it means that it is possible to add bookmarks to a specific bookmark folder with just two clicks. It is possible to hide some of the features of the add-on in the options. It is for example possible to remove the Add Bookmark here menu from the bookmark folders or to place it at the bottom instead of the top.

Add Bookmark Here is an interesting add-on for users who bookmark regularly. (Thanks Roman for the tip)

The following article outlines a two-step process to remove existing Firefox favicons and block new ones from being created. It is recommended to backup all files that are mentioned in this article prior to making the necessary changes.

1. Firefox settings

The first step is to change settings in the about:config dialog of the Firefox web browser. Simply enter [about:config] in the Firefox address bar and filter the list for the term [browser.chrome]. Change the following three parameters to the following values:

• browser.chrome.favicons – False
• browser.chrome.image_icons.max_size – 0
• browser.chrome.site_icon – False

This step does not get rid of already existing bookmark favicons.

2. Removing existing favicons

Press [Ctrl Shift B], select Import and Backup from the toolbar and pick Export HTML. This will save a copy of the bookmarks as a html file to the local desktop. Open that html file in the web browser and run the following bookmarklet to remove all Firefox favicons from it.

You can drag and drop the bookmarklet to the favorites or copy and paste it into the Firefox address bar to execute it.

Save the page again by pressing [Ctrl S]. Save it under the same name. Now close the Firefox web browser. We need to remove the old bookmark files from the Firefox profile folder. Here is the location of the Firefox profile folder on various operating systems:

Linux: ~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/
Mac OS: ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/
Windows 98 / ME: C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\
Windows Vista / XP: %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\

Locate the active Firefox profile. Remember to backup places.sqlite. Now delete places.sqlite and all .json files in the bookmarkbackups subfolder. Restart Firefox. You will notice that all bookmarks are gone. Use [Ctrl Shift B] again to load the library. Select Import and Backup again. This time pick Import HTML and load the previously edited html file.

The bookmarks will be loaded into Firefox. You might need to arrange them again but all favicons should be gone for good.

Bookmarking those in Firefox would mean to click on each tab to bookmark the websites. A better way is to automatically bookmark pages in Firefox and this is where the Auto Bookmark All Tabs extension for Firefox comes into play.

The extension has been designed to automatically bookmark all open tabs on exit or during a session (either by pressing a button or the shortcut [Ctrl Shift A]) which is very handy for researchers and basically anyone who works with boatloads of tabs that have to be saved as bookmarks at one point. The Firefox bookmarks extension comes with a few options that are worth looking at after installation:

• Auto bookmark Firefox tabs when Firefox exits
• Add new bookmark folder automatically that displays date and time of saving
• Bookmark to unsorted bookmarks.
• Select a specific folder for storing those bookmarks in Firefox.

Update – The auto bookmark extension is no longer available. Bookmark Current Tab Set is an alternative that is compatible with recent Firefox versions. It offers a similar functionality.

Check Places is the first Firefox 3 extension that can check all Firefox 3 bookmarks for duplications and invalid references aka dead pages. The experimental add-on can be downloaded right from the Mozilla website after logging in as a user. The new Check Places entry will be added by the Firefox add-on to the bookmarks menu. A click on that link will open a new window that the user can use to configure the scan behavior.

It is possible to scan all bookmarks or only selected folders. Exclusions can be made so that some bookmarks or folders will not be scanned in the process. The scan itself can check if the pages that the bookmarks point to exist and if it is stored more than once in the bookmarks.

The scan does not take long, a few minutes for a few hundreds bookmarks. The results are displayed in a tabbed interface detailing the bookmarks that have returned a page not found error and those that have been recognized as duplicates.

Each Firefox bookmark can be opened and checked individually. The extension will list the return status of the page, e.g. 404 page not found or 500 Internal server error to aid the user in his decision. A simple timeout for example usually means that the page could be back up later while a 404 usually hints at a more severe problem.

Selected bookmarks or all can be deleted in the end to clean the Firefox bookmarks from duplicates and invalid entries. Check Places is a great Firefox 3 extension, must have for every Firefox user that has more than a handful of bookmarks and indispensable for users with hundreds and more.

A page is usually displayed from the top on which is problematic on very long pages. Maybe the relevant information are stored somewhere in the middle instead of the beginning. It could also be that you were not able to work yourself through all of the page and bookmarked the page to continue reading at a later time. You would need to scroll and search for the place where you stopped in both scenarios.

Page Bookmarks aid Firefox users by providing the means to save a bookmark that does not only remember the url of the page but also the position of the scroll bar on the page. All functions are available through the right-click context menu. Whenever you want to save the position simply right-click that page and select the Page Bookmarks entry from the menu. The extension does not only save the position of the website but also the zoom level which is great for users who regularly zoom in and out of websites.

One of the current limitations is that you cannot open the paged bookmarks unless you are on the same page. That’s a serious problem which is somewhat reduced by the Bookmark’s Manager that lists all the stored page bookmarks. This manager can be used to open the bookmark at the exact location.

The software developer could add value to the extension by providing the means to open bookmarks easier from any page. The add-on is an experimental add-on which means that you have to log into the Mozilla website before you are able to download and install it.

The best way to start the analysis of the problem was to create a backup of the Firefox 3 bookmarks to be on the save side. A quick search on the Internet suggested to delete the files places.sqlite and places.sqlite-journal which contained the bookmark information. Deleting them would force Firefox to rebuild the bookmarks from the last backup. The best option is to simply move them from the profile folder into another folder for safety purposes.

Firefox did recreated both files but it did not solve the problem. It was still not possible to delete bookmarks permanently. Next option was to remove both the files and the bookmark backups so that Firefox could not recreate the bookmarks and would have to start with a new blank bookmarks file.

This includes deleting or moving the folder bookmarkbackups and the bookmarks.xxx files in the Firefox profile folder.

A restart of Firefox revealed that all bookmarks were finally gone. It was also possible to delete and move the default bookmarks in Firefox. The last step was to import the bookmarks from the backup that was created at the beginning and move them into their correct places again.

A test to delete and move those imported bookmarks was positive and solved the issue of being not able to delete Firefox 3 bookmarks.

That’s where Bookmark Trash comes into play. It adds A Bookmark Trash folder to the root folder of the Firefox Bookmark’s folder. Every bookmark that gets deleted by the user after installing the Firefox add-on will be moved to the Bookmark Trash automatically instead of being deleted right away.

The user can therefor access those deleted bookmarks in the Bookmark Trash to recover them. The alternative would be to empty the trash regularly to remove the deleted bookmarks permanently from the system.

The extension is in experimental stage which means that users need to log into the Mozilla homepage to be able to download and install the add-on.

Update: Bookmark Trash has been pulled from the add-on repository. an alternative is Bookmark Recycler