http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:03:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 http://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/01/check-for-dead-bookmarks-in-firefox-3/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/01/check-for-dead-bookmarks-in-firefox-3/#comments Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:10:04 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=5166 Many applications that were able to check the boomarks in previous versions of Firefox are no longer working with the latest Firefox 3 because of the changes that have been made to the way those bookmarks are stored. Firefox 2 and previous versions did store the bookmarks in a file called bookmarks.html while Firefox 3 stores them in a database file called places.sqlite in the Firefox profile folder.

There is however an easy way to check all bookmarks of Firefox 3. The software AM Deadlink can still be used to check the bookmarks with a slightly more complex procedure. Bookmarks can still be exported as bookmarks.html in Firefox 3 and then loaded into AM Deadlink. The other difference is that the bookmarks have to be imported again into Firefox without ending up with duplicate bookmarks.

Bookmarks can be exported in Firefox 3 by pressing CTRL SHIFT B, clicking on the Import and Backup link on top of the Firefox bookmark manager and selecting Export HTML.

This file can then be loaded into AM Deadlinks and checked for dead bookmarks. The dead bookmarks can be removed and the file saved again so that the new bookmarks.html file contains only valid links.

If you would import that file into Firefox 3 again you would end up with lots of duplicate bookmarks. You need to delete the old bookmarks in Firefox 3 before importing the checked bookmarks. I strongly suggest to backup the places.sqlite file before you start removing any bookmarks though for safety reasons.

Tags: firefox, firefox 3, firefox 3 bookmarks, firefox tips, places.sqlite

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/01/check-for-dead-bookmarks-in-firefox-3/feed/ 3 http://www.ghacks.net/2008/06/13/how-to-move-the-bookmarks-in-firefox-3/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/06/13/how-to-move-the-bookmarks-in-firefox-3/#comments Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:23:00 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=4977 Firefox 3 changed the way bookmarks are stored on the computer. Before they were simply saved in a bookmarks.html file in the user’s profile folder and it was easy to add the browser.bookmarks.file parameter in about:config to change the location manually. The new Firefox introduces a database driven design and bookmarks are now stored in the places.sqlite file in the profile folder.

The problem that arises is that the parameter that worked in Firefox 2 to change the location of the bookmarks does not work in Firefox 3 anymore. Currently there is only one solution to move the bookmarks in Firefox 3 to another folder. Before I explain how this is done I would like to point out why someone would want to move the bookmarks to another folder.

One reason is synchronization. Placing them on a network drive for instance ensures that another computer can also access those bookmarks. Another reason might be security, bookmarks can obviously be stored on an encrypted hard disk so that no one could access them unless the encrypted hard disk is mounted. It would also make sense to place them in a location so that different profiles (on the same computer) can access the same bookmarks.

The only viable way of moving the bookmarks in Firefox 3 is by using symbolic links. Symbolic links are supported under Linux and Windows NTFS drives. I’m not sure about Macintosh though. A symbolic link basically is a forwarded link that tells the operating system to look at another place for the file.

The command for Linux is ln -s target_filename symlink_filename while Windows users could use the Junction tool by Sysinternals to achieve the same results.

Tags: firefox 3, firefox 3 bookmarks, firefox 3 tips, places.sqlite

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