gHacks technology news » firefox bookmarks

Verify Firefox Bookmarks With Check Places

Martin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:05:49 +0000

The amount of bookmarks increases with time. Most users add bookmarks regularly from time to time but do not delete them if they are not needed anymore or if the websites ceased to exist. One of the main reasons for this is that most web browsers do not provide the tools to check bookmarks effectively. It feels strange that no web browser offers a tool to verify that the bookmarks are still pointing to a valid website and not a 404 error page.

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.

Tags: check bookmarks, check places, duplicate-bookmarks, firefox, firefox bookmarks, firefox-add on

Exclude Websites From Appearing In The Firefox Address Bar

Martin — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:01:46 +0000

The Firefox awesome bar, often also called location bar or address bar, tries to match letters entered by the Firefox user to bookmarks, tags and the Firefox web browsing history. Several settings can be changed so that the awesome bar will ignore some of the locations that it searches for matches.

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.

Tags: awesome bar, firefox, firefox awesome bar, firefox bookmarks, firefox-add on

Firefox Bookmark Sorting Extension SortPlaces

Martin — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:08:21 +0000

The firefox web browser does not offer many bookmark sorting options. The only option that is actually provided by right-clicking a folder is to sort the bookmarks by name. This is however not a permanent sort order as it gets disrupted as soon as new bookmarks are added to the folder. The sort order by name, which can be either descending or ascending, is probably not enough for many users who would like to have more control over how their bookmarks are displayed in the Internet browser.

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.

Tags: bookmarks, firefox, firefox bookmarks, firefox sort bookmarks, firefox-extension, sort bookmarks, sortplaces

Fix For Auto-Collapsing Bookmark Items In Firefox

Martin — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:05:01 +0000

I’m not sure when the problem started but it was after one of the last Firefox updates. I have placed several bookmark folders and bookmarks in the Firefox toolbar that contains the address bar and menu as well. This is actually the only toolbar that is displayed in my version of Firefox unless you count the tabbar as a toolbar as well. The bookmark folders were displayed on the right end of the toolbar before the problem started and started to disappear beyond that after the update.

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.

Tags: firefox, firefox bookmarks, firefox bug, firefox fix, web browser

Firefox Bookmarks Archiver

Martin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:36:29 +0000

Most Firefox users make use of the bookmarking feature of the web browser to store interesting or important websites so that they can be visited at a later time again. Many of them do add bookmarks regularly while only a few delete unneeded bookmarks regularly which has the effect that the bookmarks folder grow with time. It also means that bookmarks that are no longer needed are still stored in the bookmark’s database file.

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.

Tags: bookmarks, bookmarks archiver, firefox, firefox bookmarks, firefox-add on, mozilla-firefox

Save Firefox Bookmark Searches

Martin — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:38:30 +0000

If you open the menu to organize (some would call it manage) the Firefox bookmarks you are presented not only with an interface to sort, delete or add bookmarks but also with the possibility to search them. All you need to do is to enter a search term and perform a search in the bookmark’s interface. Firefox will return all bookmarks that match that search term either in the url or title (and probably additional information like tags or descriptions if they exist)

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.

Tags: bookmark search, firefox, firefox bookmarks, firefox tips, mozilla-firefox, save bookmark search, web browser

Bookmarking In Firefox Got A Tad Easier

Martin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:47:56 +0000

You have quite a few possibilities at hand if you want to bookmark a website in the Firefox web browser. You could click on the star icon in the address bar to add the page to the unsorted bookmarks folder. It is also possible to press CTRL D to bookmark a page, drag and drop the url from the address bar to a folder or toolbar or to use the bookmarks menu to bookmark it. The Add Bookmark Here add-on for the Firefox web browser makes bookmarking just a tad easier for most Firefox users.

Probably the most interesting option that is provided by the add-on is that it displays the bookmark menu when right-clicking on the star icon in the Firefox address bar giving users the option to avoid the unsorted bookmarks folder and place the website in a different 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)

Tags: add bookmark here, firefox, firefox bookmarks, firefox browser, firefox-add on, firefox-extension, web browser

How To Remove Favicons In Firefox Bookmarks

Martin — Mon, 11 May 2009 08:43:08 +0000

Favicons are those tiny little icons that are displayed in front of every bookmark and tab in the Mozilla Firefox web browser. They can be used to identify a website next to the website title that is also always shown. There are two main reasons why someone would want to remove favicons in the Firefox web browser. The first reason is size. Bookmarks with favicons can take up to 10 times as much space on the computer hard drive than those without. While a difference between 3 Megabytes and 300 Kilobytes does not look like much it can make a difference especially in very large bookmark collections. The second concern is privacy related as new favicons are requested by the web browser from the website itself.

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.

Tags: bookmarks, favicons, firefox, firefox bookmarks, firefox favicons, mozilla, web browser

Firefox Auto Bookmark

Martin — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 10:26:22 +0000

The usual way of creating bookmarks in Firefox is to either click on the white star in the address bar or pressing [Ctrl D] to open the page bookmarked dialog. Inexperienced users might also use the bookmarks menu in the main toolbar instead to bookmark the current page in Firefox. There are however situations where this technique becomes highly time consuming. Think of research conducted on the Internet with dozens of open websites in tabs in the web browser.

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.

Tags: bookmarks, firefox, firefox bookmarks, firefox-add on, firefox-extension

Check Firefox Bookmarks

Martin — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:01:17 +0000

Up until recently there was not a single add-on available for the Mozilla Firefox 3 web browser that would check the bookmarks for invalid or duplicate entries. Several add-ons existed that were able to perform the checks in Firefox 2. The reason for the missing add-ons was a change in the storage location for Firefox bookmarks that was introduced in Firefox 3 that rendered all existing add-ons incompatible.

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.

Tags: bookmark, bookmarks, check bookmarks, check places, duplicate-bookmarks, firefox, firefox 3 bookmarks, firefox bookmarks, firefox-add on, firefox-extension

Page Bookmarks

Martin — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:56:40 +0000

Bookmarks are references to websites that are stored on a computer system. They are usually stored in a web browser to make it easier to open a website at a later time again. They also aid the user by storing the relevant information like the url so that those do not have to be remembered by the user.

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.

Tags: favorites, firefox, firefox 3, firefox bookmarks, firefox tips, firefox-add on, firefox-extension, mozilla, page bookmarks

Fix: Cannot Delete Firefox 3 Bookmarks

Martin — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:34:18 +0000

Something strange happened today. Deleting a Firefox bookmark in the bookmarks toolbar or in the bookmarks folder removed that entry from Firefox. It did however reappear after a restart of the browser which was puzzling and annoying as it was not possible to remove old bookmarks from the computer system.

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.

Tags: cannot delete bookmarks, firefox, firefox 3, firefox 3 bookmarks, firefox bookmarks, firefox tips, mozilla-firefox

Add Trash To Firefox Bookmarks

Martin — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 08:22:19 +0000

Deleting bookmarks in Firefox will remove them permanently from the web browser. There is no going back which might sometimes end in chaos and desperation. Some users might feel more secure with some sort of backup to recover accidentally deleted 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.

Tags: bookmarks trash, firefox backup, firefox bookmarks, firefox bookmarks trash, firefox tips, firefox trash, firefox-add on

Firefox Temporary Bookmarks

Martin — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:15:14 +0000

Temporary Bookmarks are bookmarks that expire after a certain amount of time automatically. While most users prefer their bookmarks to last indefinitely some might want to be able to add temporary bookmarks to the system without having to worry about manually uninstalling them after a certain period of time.

One prime example would be to bookmark an offer on a website that expires after a set amount of time. It would not make much sense to keep the bookmark afterwards unless a new offer would be put on the same page. Might also be interesting for research.

TARK is a Firefox add-on that can make the bookmarks temporarily available. It does so by providing access to a new toolbar button – or several buttons – that make it possible to mark bookmarks. Bookmarks can be set to be available for up to four weeks using the Firefox add-on. Keep in mind that this is an option, it is still perfectly possible to add bookmarks the usual way which ensures that they will never expire.

Setup requires to drag and drop one or multiple toolbar buttons of the add-on into a Firefox toolbar. This is done by right-clicking a toolbar and selecting the customize option. Each Tark setting is available as one button but there is also a button with a drop down menu that combines them all.

The options of the add-on contain interesting settings. The add-on can be set to reset the expiration counter whenever the bookmarked page is accessed. The very same option provide access to new, unexpired and expired bookmarks which means that it is possible to recover expired web pages.

Tags: bookmarks, firefox bookmarks, firefox tips, firefox-add on, firefox-extensions, mozilla-firefox, tark, Temporary Bookmarks

Sort Firefox Bookmarks

Martin — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 12:27:43 +0000

The option to sort bookmarks in Firefox is tucked away in the Bookmarking Manager. While the sorting options should be sufficient for most users the lack of distinguishing between different kind of bookmarks and the temporariness of the selected options make it barely usable.

Sort Places is an experimentally Firefox add-on that provides better and faster sorting options for Firefox bookmarks. The add-on adds a Sort entry to the bookmarks menu and can also be added as an icon to a Firefox toolbar.

It sorts all bookmarks by default but can be modified to sort only selected folders. The options that make it superior to the default Firefox sorting function are the following:

Exclude Toolbars from sorting
Define Sort Order by assigning values to queries, folders, bookmarks and livemarks
Sort Places uses separators to define groups that will be sorted individually

Sort Places will remember the settings that the user entered while sorting bookmarks but it will not automatically sort newly added or moved bookmarks. It would be an ideal bookmark sorting add-on if the author could somehow implement that feature. As of now it is easier to access than the default way of sorting bookmarks in Firefox and provides much needed filters that define how the bookmarks are sorted.

Tags: bookmarks, firefox, firefox bookmarks, firefox tips, firefox-add on, firefox-extensions, sort bookmarks

Sync Firefox Bookmarks Without Third Party Help

Martin — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 09:44:12 +0000

Accessing the Internet on two different computers regularly makes many users crave for data synchronization solutions to be able to access the same bookmarks, email accounts or other data on all computers. Several extensions are available for the Firefox browser that allow bookmark synchronization: Mozilla Weave and Foxmarks to name two.

Both services use remote servers to host and synchronize the data. Some users have expressed privacy concerns that their bookmarks are stored on remote servers. There is virtually no way of telling if someone else accessed the bookmarks. A solution for those users would be a way to synchronize the Firefox bookmarks without third party help. The only requirement for this is an always on location on the Internet that can host the bookmarks.

SyncPlaces is a Firefox extension that can synchronize Firefox bookmarks between multiple computers without third party help. It requires WebDav or an ftp server for data storage.

A backup of the current local bookmarks is always created before starting the data synchronization and it is possible to revert back to the old data set if the synchronization failed.

The Firefox user has to configure access to the online data storage before being able to save and synchronize data in that location. Available protocols are http, https and ftp. Several options are available like encrypting or compressing bookmarks and how the bookmarks should be synchronized / merged.

Users of the Firefox extension can also backup or restore bookmarks manually and sort bookmarks in various ways.

The biggest benefit of SyncPlaces is that it puts the user back in control if he has ftp or WebDav access. It is therefor a welcome addition to third party data synchronization services. The add-on is currently listed as experimental and can only be installed if the user logs into the Mozilla website.

Tags: bookmarks, firefox, firefox bookmarks, firefox tips, mozilla-firefox, sync bookmarks, sync places

Create Firefox Smart Bookmarks

Martin — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:40:04 +0000

Firefox 3 changed the bookmarking system from using html files to using sqlite databases. One benefit of using databases is the possibility to run custom queries. Three of the so called smart bookmarks are already available after installing Firefox3: Most Visited, Recently Bookmarked and Recent Tags all make use of database queries to provide the user with dynamic results.

So what’s possible with this technique besides the three default dynamic bookmark folders? Users could display all bookmarks that are tagged with a specific tag, display the latest ten pages that they visited on a specific domain or to list the least visited bookmarks. Many additional possibilities exist and it is just a matter of defining the database query correctly to achieve them.

The basics first. Database queries are added as normal bookmarks and placed in the location field instead of the usual url. The name can be selected freely. Database queries use the place:query syntax. Let’s take a look at an example:

The above query is “place:queryType=0&sort=8&maxResults=10″ uses the filters queryType, sort and maxResults.

queryType=0 will return an URI for each result
sort=8 will sort the bookmarks by visit count
maxResults=10 limits the results to ten bookmarks.

The guys at the Mozillazine forum did a good job of listing the relevant queries and it would be redundant to simply copy and paste their work here. Just head over to the forum and take a look at the queries. If you want to have a specific query and cannot get it to work let us know in the comments and we try to build it for you.

Tags: firefox 3, firefox 3 bookmarks, firefox bookmarks, firefox database, firefox sqlite, firefox tips, places, smart bookmarks

Firefox Bookmarks: Reset Special Folders

Martin — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:27:11 +0000

Firefox 3 introduced several special folders for Firefox bookmarks management, among them the Unsorted Bookmarks, Most Visited, Recently Bookmarked and Recent Tags folders. Unsorted Bookmarks is being used to store new bookmarks that have been added to Firefox by clicking on the star in the Firefox address bar. In case you have done that and could not find the bookmarks afterwards; That’s where you have to look. It is only visible in the Bookmarks Manager.

The Most Visited bookmarks folder is placed in the Firefox bookmark’s toolbar displaying the most visited items that can be found in the Firefox history. The Recently Bookmarked folder contains all the recent bookmarks that have been added to Firefox while the Recent Tags folder does the same for tags that the user added.

All but the Unsorted Bookmarks folder can be deleted easily by right-clicking the entry and selecting delete from the menu. Once they are deleted there is no obvious way to get the folders back.

There is however an easy way to reset the special folders so that they appear again in Firefox 3 after a restart. To do that the user needs to enter about:config in the Firefox address bar and filter for the name browser.places.smartBookmarksVersion in there.

Only that entry should appear now. A right-click on that entry and the selection of Reset will reset the folders and activate them again after a restart of the Firefox browser.

Tags: firefox 3, firefox bookmarks, firefox bookmarks folder, firefox tips, most visited, recent tags, recently bookmarked, unsorted bookmarks

Fast Firefox 3 Unsorted Bookmarks Access

Martin — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:54:09 +0000

Firefox 3 introduced a new feature called unsorted bookmarks. If you look at the Firefox 3 location bar you see a white star in the right end of the bar. Clicking on that star turns the color to yellow and adds the page to the unsorted bookmarks in Firefox.

The problem with this process is that the unsorted bookmarks folder is deeply hidden in the Firefox bookmarks folder. Long time reader Transcontinental send me a nice link that makes it possible to add the Unsorted Bookmarks folder to a location that is easier accessible.

Some might say that you could simply move the Unsorted Bookmarks folder from the bookmarks manager to the Bookmarks Toolbar. That however will only move the existing bookmarks with it but it will not add new bookmarks that are added by clicking on the white star.

The way to add the Unsorted Bookmarks folder so that it is automatically updating the folder when new bookmarks are added to that folder is explained below.

To do that create a new bookmark in the location that you want to have the Unsorted Bookmarks folder in. Give it the name you want and add the line “place:folder=UNFILED_BOOKMARKS” (without the “”) in the location field.

Clicking on that folder will always display all Unsorted Bookmarks from then on and update automatically whenever a new bookmarks is added.

Tags: firefox, firefox 3, firefox 3 tips, firefox bookmarks, firefox tips, mozilla-firefox

How to compact your firefox bookmarks tab

Martin — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 05:29:46 +0000

The length of the bookmarks tab in firefox has been bothering me for a while. It is equal to the length of the largest entry which could mean that it could quickly clutter your interface when you have some sort of subfolder system that I use. One method to overcome this would be to strip every bookmark so that it would never use more than 20 chars, everything else would be cut off. I did that for some time but discovered a way that makes everything so much easier.

You need to access the userchrome.css file of your firefox installation, for windows xp it is located in C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\chrome – take a look at the official firefox support page if you want to located this file on different systems. If you never edited this file you will find a file called userChrome-example.css instead of userChrome.css. Rename this file by removing -example and you are ready to edit it.

Open userChrome.css in a text editor, scroll to the bottom and add the following line:

menu.bookmark-item,menuitem.bookmark-item {max-width:20em !important;}

Your bookmarks will now have a maximum width of 20em no matter how large the entry actually is, if it is larger it will be cut off with ..

You may need to play around with the 20 a little bit, some prefer even smaller values, some want to see more. If you reduce the value you will see less chars but have more space while a larger number displays more text of the bookmark.

Tags: firefox, firefox bookmarks, firefox tips, mozilla

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