Online bookmarks

July 2, 2006 8:27 AM

Is there an easy, transparent way to store your bookmarks online?

I've just recently began using my dual-booted Linux more often, and I'm getting increasingly frustrated by having two sets of Firefox bookmarks.

I have used del.icio.us in the past, and it's nice to play with. However, it's not usable enough for me to replace the 'old-fashioned' bookmarks. I do not want to log into a webpage, and add links via web forms, and I don't particularly care about other people's links most of the time. Furthermore, plain old folders are usually enough for me, and I don't really require tags.

Really, I want something not too far from the current Firefox system. The perfect extension would do something like this: ask me to log in once (but puhleaaze store my credentials for future use), populate my Bookmarks folder, store any new bookmarks I might add. Does something like this exist?

posted by Harry to computers & internet (11 comments total)

Google Browser Sync does this.
posted by mmascolino at 8:31 AM on July 2, 2006

I've been very happy with foxmarks.

The google offering doesn't seem to be compatible with some of my other extenstions, but foxmarks works well and syncs between 3 different profiles (computer a, computer b, thumbdrive portable) without any problems. And on the occasionaly instances where my profile gets wiped or messed up by accident, I just hit the force-download from the server and I'm back up and running.

Foxmarks also allows for a web based interface to your bookmarks if you're away from your own computers/firefox alltogether.
posted by tiamat at 9:06 AM on July 2, 2006

Portable Firefox
posted by glibhamdreck at 9:09 AM on July 2, 2006

Run away from Google Browser Sync: it doesn't work properly with many websites, notably phpBB discussions.

However; use Google Bookmarks, plus, for Firefox, the Google Bookmarks Button extension (which successfully mimics the functionality of the Google Toolbar on MSIE). And, of course, you've got a web-based interface too.
posted by jamescridland at 9:17 AM on July 2, 2006

I second the Google Bookmarks idea. If you don't want a toolbar button and would prefer your bookmarks on the main menu bar, you can also use the GBookmarks extension.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:33 AM on July 2, 2006

jamescridland: can you say a bit more about that? What makes it "not work"? As far as I can tell it doesn't interface with the sites in any way, just syncs your settings, no?
posted by bonaldi at 9:51 AM on July 2, 2006

I've tried Google Bookmarks, Del.icio.us extension, and Google Sync.... The easiest, no-brainer way is Google Sync, but I tend to have a LOT of links I want to keep, and don't like them cluttering up my browser, so I use both Google Bookmarks and Google Sync.

I'm going to echo bonaldi and say that there's nothing in Google Sync that would interfere with web pages in any way... it only does something when your browser first opens, after that it's dormant.
posted by hatsix at 10:28 AM on July 2, 2006

Google Sync seems to be the thing I'm looking for. hatsix, how do you combine Google Bookmarks and Sync in your use? Are there any shared bookmarks between the two systems?
posted by Harry at 11:09 AM on July 2, 2006

Google Browser Sync is very unstable. It's crashed a few of my browsers (maybe too many bookmarks). Just warning ya.
posted by rinkjustice at 4:21 PM on July 2, 2006

Foxmarks.
posted by JamesMessick at 4:28 PM on July 2, 2006

You *could* just use the same profile folder for both browsers. That way you'd sync not only your bookmarks, but your extensions, themes, saved passwords, history etc. without having to do anything at all on startup.
posted by flabdablet at 4:29 PM on July 2, 2006