Cross Platform Browser Bookmark Autosyncing?

Milo_Mindbender asks: "So, geek that I am, I have several computers at home and several at the office, these come in both Windows and Linux flavors. Most have a copy of Firefox but for various reasons some have Mozilla and Internet Explorer too. Naturally, I'm going crazy trying to keep all the bookmarks in sync. Has anyone seen anything that can do this AUTOMATICALLY? I'd really like to just be able to use the 'add bookmark' feature in any browser and have them all sync up every now an then (each launch or at least each day). Various searches return tons of hits on bookmark managers, far too many to try them all out...so has anyone found anything that works?"

Comments

Easy...

[zebs]

One option is a firefox extension called Bookmarksftp which basically uploads your bookmarks to a ftp server and downloads them as and when asked (or automattically). A version compatible with Firefox 0.10 is available here

To get the bookmarks in IE bookmarkstofav will do, but theres no proper version for Firefox 0.10

Not only bookmarks

[samjam]

I also want to keep read-news in sync (gmane, etc)

Also read-mail in sync. Thunderbird does IMAP badly, Outlook Express did a better job, and emails marked as read on one machine are then marked as read on another machine even if the messages have already been downloaded on the other computer. I use thunderbird exclusively now.

Sam

Re:Not only bookmarks

[samjam]

OE lets you access fully and in every way the cached imap items.

Thunderbird only lets you do this if you first elected to work offline; if not then the cached items are unavilable.

OE uses the cached item when you move messages, thunferbird wants to download them again.

If I have 2 IMAP PCs. noth OE, both having downloaded all messages, and I read a message on one of them it gets marked on the server as read, and then the other OE detects this and also marks them as read when it syncs.

Basically, thunderbird IMAP support is not transparent.

Its still very good, though, and the junkmail support overcomes this slight annoyances.

Sam

Use your server

[linuxwrangler]

As a geek with several computers at home you surely have your own web server running somewhere. Do what I do...just create a page of your favorite links. I do that and set it as my home page on all the computers I use.

If you want to get fancy set it up with a database backend for easy update.

Re:Use your server

[Birdddman]

You could also try this if you have your own server.... http://www.frech.ch/online-bookmarks/screenshots.p hp?style=shock There is a little javascript applet in you Navigation Toolbar and you can add new bookmarks with one click. Also, there is a way to add the webpage in your mozilla sidebar (a simple F9 and there are your bookmarks.)

This one is pretty nifty

[Myrkur]

http://www.spurl.com/ Allows you to access your bookmarks anywhere.

Spurl

[Mawbid]

If you don't mind somebody else storing your bookmarks, you could use Spurl. You bookmark the current page using a bookmarklet, or you can bulk upload your bookmarks. You access them on the spurl site or from the sidebar.

Delicious?

[billybob]

I'm going to assume you've either heard of http://del.icio.us and dont like it, or you've been living under a rock for the past few months. Delicious isnt everything youre looking for I'm sure but it is pretty neat. It's been around for almost a year but just in the past month it has gotten insanely popular.

Now it doesnt sync your bookmarks with your browsers, instead it's an online place to store your bookmarks. What many people think is the best thing about it, including myself, is that you dont organize your bookmarks into folders. Instead you give them tags, and each bookmark can have more than one tag. A tag is basically just a category.

So for example if you're a web develper such as myself and you find something on javascript that just tickles you pink, then you click your little bookmarklet to add a post to delicious (there are many third party tools available as well), then tag it as "web dev javascript" or however you want (that's what I'd do)

At this point I only have about ~50 bookmarks so its not too handy yet but it will be. If I want to see all bookmarks on development, I can just type in "dev". If I want web development, I can type "web dev". If I want to see just javascript thigns, I can type "web dev javascript" or just "javascript". It's really cool because your bookmarks can fall under an unlimited number of categories, rather than the old structure of trying to figure out the one specific place you want to put this bookmark.

The other good thing is obviously you can access it from any computer on the internet, and not just the ones you normally use. I have already found this aspect of it very useful.

It's also a cool way to see what people are interested in that day. delicious/popular shows the top 20 or so links that have been added each day. If you want to see what other people have found that's interesting on javascript for example, you can just go to delicious/tag/javascript and it will show the last ~100 links that have been added to the site and tagged with "javascript". And each link it shows will also show how many other people have that same link bookmarked, so it's easy to find the popular things in any category.

I recommend it if you haven't checked it out already. :)

Super easy - yahoo toolbar

[stu72]

I've been using yahoo toolbar for the last few years and it's a life saver. I have used to access the same set of bookmarks on countless office & home computers, even when I moved across the country for the summer. Check it out.

You just bookmark using the toolbar, instead of the native browser. You can import/export/organize/etc.

I think they limit you to 1000 but that hasn't been an issue for me yet.

how about just using a floppy

[josepha48]

I know this is more of a 'manual' solution, but one option is just to put the bookmarks on a floppy and transfer them between computers.

If that does not work, then there are several people who have mentioned using either yahoo's toolbar, or some other online tool that deals with that for you.

I am supprised that there is no extension. Alternatively, if you have web space you could upload your bookmarks to you own web space on line then just use that as the master. Of course you'd ahv to find a way to protect your data.

Re:not so Super easy - cross platform

[stu72]

sorry - I missed the "cross platform" bit above. I have no idea if yahoo toolbar works on anything but wintel. oops.

Netscape 4.x Roaming Profiles

[Radical Rad]

Netscape used to have something that would do this called Roaming Profile. It would sync with an LDAP server. That functionality is being recreated in Mozilla but it has been a low priority. Take a look at bug 17917 at bugzilla.mozilla.org and vote for it if you want to see it finished anytime soon.

xml standard??

[moosesocks]

we really need some sort of standardized XML bookmark format for sharing between platforms and browsers. since most browsers don't extend their bookmarking functionality beyond a simple name/description/folders system, one simple format would be enough.

In fact, data standardization could be good for a lot of things. vCard and vCalendar (now iCal) were both incredibly successful (vCal less so after MS dumped it).

Re:xml standard??

[Gadzinka]

There already is bookmark XML standard, it's called XBEL. But AFAIR only Galeon and Konqueror use it :(

Robert

Re:xml standard??

[drimios]

Apparently the Bookmarks Synchronizer extension for Mozilla firefox (mentioned above) also uses XBEL to store the bookmarks on a ftp server. Bookmarks Synchronizer extension: http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php? id=14&vid=15 or http://cgi29.plala.or.jp/~mozzarel/

horde.org

[tickticker]

the Horde suite is implementing a bookmark management and consolitdation system called Trean.

http://www.horde.org/trean/

Sitebar

[najt]

Try Sitebar. It runs on a PHP/MySQL server (public servers available) and there are plugins/extensions for major browsers.

Try Bookmark Synchronization Extension for Firefox

[thumper]

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=4174 2