Closed Bug 17917 Opened 25 years ago Closed 12 years ago

Add "smart" roaming bookmarks (etc.) with sync capabilities

Categories

(SeaMonkey :: Bookmarks & History, enhancement)

enhancement
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: mattdm, Unassigned)

References

Details

I really rely on Navigator 4.5+'s roaming access feature. It'd be wonderful to
see that in Mozilla, and better yet, to see a more intelligent version: transfer
only the differences, allow concurrent access, and provide a nice gui conflict
resolver for when clashes arise.
Depends on: 17048
Creating dependency, since this is a exhancement to bug #17048
Component: Browser-General → XPApps
QA Contact: leger → claudius
Target Milestone: M20
Updating QA Contact.
Assignee: leger → slamm
Component: XPApps → Bookmarks
Updating component.
Rsync might provide some useful code to implement this feature.  See 
http://rsync.samba.org/. It's GPLed.

If it isn't included by definition, offline usage of remote prefs would be 
nice, too. (IIRC, NS 4.x doesn't provide that capability.)

(Adding my vote. :)
Move to "Future" milestone.
Target Milestone: M20 → Future
 
Assignee: slamm → ben
nav triage team:

Unfortunately, won't get any roaming capabilities for beta
Keywords: nsbeta1-
Keywords: mozilla1.2
i think syncronizing would be a valuable feature. Particulaly the ability to
syncronize bookmarks within Mozilla/Netscape itself. There must be many people
who wished they could syncronize the collected bookmarks at home and at work on
a weekly/monthly basis.

This may be going too far, but it would be even better if one could selct which
bookmarks folders where synchrinized. That way, one could select to synchronize
bookmark folders like "Computers", "Search Engines" and "General"; and exclude
things like: "Family", "Private/Secret", MyCompanie's Confidential Stuff", etc.

This needn't be limited to bookmarks, it could apply to Mozilla/Netscape address
books too. This is a feature that is sorely missing from ANY browser.

It also shouldn't be limited to roaming access (is that a FREE service
somewhere? - sounds interesting) but should be allowed with loading files on
took home from work via floppy (or sent oneself via e-mail).

- I'd vote for this bug pronto, but I've used up my 5 votes ;-(
i'm not sure if this is related to bug 52431 which plairo also spammed.
Yeah, remote bookmarks would rock. Just no time before 1.0. 

Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Remote bookmasks *and* remote newsrc...
Paul Chen is now taking Bookmarks bugs. For your convenience, you can filter 
email notifications caused by this by searching for 'ilikegoats'.

Assignee: ben → pchen
Status: ASSIGNED → NEW
mass reassign of pchen bookmark bugs to ben
Assignee: pchen → ben
re comment #11 : 

roaming newsrc definitely has to be optional. I access a different news server
at work and at home, so sharing newsrcs would be a mess.
Depends on: 147344
I have been looking for a software for ages which can do sync between my
addressbook and bookmarks at home and at work. 

Nice to know that someone here at mozilla had already thought of it. 

It is a wonderful feature and even if there are no free services available for
this right now, mozilla could be programmed to use a simple web/ftp server for
this purpose.

Once the user has defined a server and or a service (like netscape may introduce
one) mozilla simply write the bookmarks as XML, address book as LDAF and maybe
even  the calendar as a CSV file. When i am at home, and i log into a mozilla
with the server address programmed, it syncs my addressbook, calendar and
bookmarks at pre-defined intervals in the preferences. 
Why cant there be an option to copy the Bookmark and the Mail-Filter-Rulez
and perhaps more in the imap-account ?
Dirk

Something like that might be one approach. Also ACAP -- http://asg.web.cmu.edu/acap/
Alex Savulov and I (and others) are working on this as proof-of-concept for a 
full roaming architecture we've dreamed up.  See 
news://news.mozilla.org:119/3D49DD24.7050306@netscape.com for more 
information, but please try and avoid adding noise in the discussion.  The 
more messages we have to read the longer it takes to get this done.

I'd like to go further and have individual bookmark folders be remote-sync-
able to different places, which the architecture will support but which is 
really a separate bug.

It won't be transferring only the differences anytime soon, and concurrent 
access may or may not be a part of the initial version.  (This depends on how 
well bookmarks can already support such things; probably it can, in which case 
concurrent access is in.)
Assignee: ben → jkeiser
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Summary: [RFE] Add "smart" roaming bookmarks (etc.) with sync capabilities → Add "smart" roaming bookmarks (etc.) with sync capabilities
Good idea and implementation suggestions, but I would rather have my bookmarks 
FTPed to a directory of my webspace at my ISP.  Don't most people get webspace 
with their accounts?  Why use a central server?  The file FTPed should be 
plain HTML so I can access it from any browser.  Mozilla would just need to 
have controls for synching and specifying FTP info (i.e. server name, login, 
directory).  Keep it simple.
That was in fact the idea (you could remote sync to an FTP server), but alas no
more time have I, and someone else has got something apparently working in bug
120429.
Blocks: majorbugs
Keywords: mozilla1.2
Perhaps syncing to a WebDAV server may be useful. Doesn't that help keep track
of changes?
I would prefer having my profile on a pendisk and take it with... Maybe a good 
aproach would be letting the user choose between various sources like a 
profile server or a file on disk...

Is there already any "hacking like" way to take my profile with me on a 
pendisk?

Sure. Make your .mozilla directory be a symlink into the pendisk mount point.
(Or just mount the pendisk *as* your home dir.)

Anyway, an approach like that *could* be integrated with this, but I think
network-based is going to be more widely and long-term useful.
(In reply to comment #22)

There are some promising Extensions that are being developed for Firefox in
relation to this bug...

Bookmarks FTP - Sync
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=41742

> Is there already any "hacking like" way to take my profile with me on a 
> pendisk?

Firefox on a USB Drive
http://www.texturizer.net/firefox/tips.html#oth_usb
http://firefox.wlkr.net/fb101.htm
http://markpasc.org/weblog/2003/08/26_firebird_from_a_zip_disk.html
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=48597

Run Firefox in RAM partition (tutorial)
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=55195 

Since I can't code, I'm trying to keep this up2date as improvements in Managing
Mobile Profiles appear on the scene...
Mozilla Profile Migration & FAQ - Mobile Profiles 
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=54104
> It is a wonderful feature and even if there are no free services available for
> this right now, mozilla could be programmed to use a simple web/ftp server for
> this purpose.

Another solution: put the changes on an email server! If one uses Mozilla on
different computers in different locations, one usually has access to the same
mail account...

I think of two ways:

1.) Simple: put a complete copy of the bookmarks on the mail server.

2.) Implement a general-use and modular client-server protocol and GUI for
calendar, bookmarks, address book, document sharing. Modular means that it may
be used using all sorts of tricks: storing on mail accounts (and "hacking" the
mail app to ignore such messages) via smtp or imap, on http, on ftp, via ssh,
via rsync...

eMail is the most common and convenient method to exchange small bits of data in
a non-professional non-realtime environment (I guess :-)) ).

The GUI would need to let the user resolve conflicts or let him set default
behaviour.
It should be configurable that an icon representing the sync state is being
displayed in the status bar. I'm offline most of the time :).
*** Bug 242067 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Blocks: 242067
No longer blocks: 242067
No longer depends on: 17048
> I really rely on Navigator 4.5+'s roaming access feature. It'd be wonderful to
> see that in Mozilla

Fixed in bug 124029.
...but not the rest of the sentence. :)
Product: Browser → Seamonkey
*** Bug 285890 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
No longer blocks: majorbugs
Assignee: john → nobody
Status: ASSIGNED → NEW
Priority: P3 → --
QA Contact: claudius → bookmarks
Target Milestone: Future → ---
Now that we have Weave/Sync which synchronizes much more than just bookmarks, this is WORKSFORME
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 12 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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