52431 - Optionally synchronize bookmarks with bookmarks/favorites of another browser

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: Bookmarks & History, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

This came out of bug 22642.

Mozilla should provide the option of synchronizing its bookmarks with the 
bookmarks/favorites/hotlist/whatever of another browser. This would be an 
improvement over the compulsory `Imported [sic] IE Favorites' folder which 
currently exists in the Bookmarks list.

Assuming that one day Mozilla is going to be stable enough to run forever, this 
means the following things.

* There should be stuff in the prefs dialog which looks something like this:
  [*] Synchronize Mozilla bookmarks with: [Netscape Communicator (bob) :^]
  (where `Bob' is the name of the Netscape Communicator profile)

* When Mozilla starts up, if the pref is turned on, it should:
  - read the bookmarks of the other browser
  - if the other-browser bookmarks were not able to be read, show a warning
    dialog and continue without changing the Mozilla bookmarks
  - if the other-browser bookmarks were empty and the Mozilla bookmarks list is
    not, ask whether the user wants to clear their Mozilla bookmarks too, or
    continue with their current Mozilla bookmarks
  - update the Mozilla bookmarks to reflect the other-browser bookmarks (without
    losing Mozilla-specific information such as encoding, style sheet, etc).

* Whenever a change is made to Mozilla bookmarks, Mozilla should make equivalent
  changes to the other-browser bookmarks.

* On OSes which support listening to files/folders, Mozilla should listen for
  changes to the other-browser bookmarks, and immediately update the Mozilla
  bookmarks to match. On OSes which don't support such listening, Mozilla should
  check for changes every x minutes, where x is roughly 5.

The exact protocols here would need to be fine-tuned so that it is possible for 
Mozilla and another browser to synchronize with each other in the same way, 
without causing undesirable results (such as unexpectedly empty bookmarks, or a 
dining philosophers problem).

Comment 1

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

The obvious first option for this would be to synchronize with the OS's own 
favorites folder (e.g. C:\Windows\Favorites\ or
Macintosh HD:System Folder:Favorites).

Comment 2

[Blake Ross]

Reassigning 79 Bookmarks bugs to Ben.  I was told this was going to be done 
shortly about two months ago, but it clearly hasn't been.  I think that's long 
enough for all these bugs to remain assigned to nobody.

Feel free to filter all this spam into the trashcan by looking for this string 
in the message body: ducksgoquack

Comment 3

[Peter Lairo]

i think this 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.

Comment 4

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

Netscape Nav triage team: this is not a Netscape beta stopper.

Comment 5

[Paul Chen]

Marking nsbeta1- bugs as future to get off the radar.

Comment 6

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

Paul Chen is now taking Bookmarks bugs. For your convenience, you can filter 
email notifications caused by this by searching for 'ilikegoats'.

Comment 7

[Peter Trudelle]

mass reassign of pchen bookmark bugs to ben

Comment 8

[Chris Lyon]

*** Bug 177860 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[daf]

Why make it optional, users see favorites or bockmarks as system whide so
mozilla / firebird should always be synchronize.
I acidental deleted my latest favorites (deleted the profile to have a clean
install) becouse i forgot that mozilla didn't use the favorites folder :(

Comment 10

[Wout.Mertens]

And please make it generic enough so that it also works with KDE and Gnome
bookmarks :)

Comment 11

[Karl Ruegge]

Take it simple!
Give the user a switch to use the IE bookmarks. Because IE bookmarks are one file for each 
bookmark. So  it's very simple to synchronize between many computers (I use 3, Windows and Mac 
OS X) by use of Offline Folders (Windows) or sync tools (on Mac).

If you have one file with all bookmarks it's very hard to synchronise many computers if the file has 
changed on more then one computer!

Import of bookmarks sucks. 

Comment 12

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

Mass reassign of my non-Firefox bugs to [e-mail]

Comment 13

[Bogdan Stroe]

*** Bug 250203 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[Bartlomiej Celary]

Another thing is why not implement a method for doing bookmarks synchronization via http or ftp? I am aware there are addons for this, but they are a bit unstable. Of course the synchronization with files or folders would be enough for this functionality, then you need only a memory stick and you are ok.

Comment 15

[Philip Chee]

I'm going to close this as WORKSFORME now that we have the Firefox Sync service, users can sync bookmarks, history, tabs, passwords with other SeaMonkey, Firefox, Firefox Mobile, and Firefox Home installations. For Sync with other browsers you'd have to write a Sync engine for those browsers to make use of the Mozilla Sync Service and Sync Servers.

Comment 16

[Philip Chee]

Oh and for sync with non-gecko browsers, you can use Xmarks Sync:
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/seamonkey/addon/xmarks-sync/>
<http://www.xmarks.com/>