Firefox bookmark location

On 5/1/06 18:28, "Hector I. Macedo" <hecmaccomcast.net> wrote:

> Where are the old bookmarks so I can save them before updating that
> hd? And then how can I integrate them to the 1.5 version? Thanks!

~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/

--
Barry

>From: "Hector I. Macedo" <hecmaccomcast.net>

>I updated Firefox from 1.0.7 to version 1.5 and all my bookmarks
>disappeared.

Firefix has acted strangely for me too. A dialog box opened a few months ago
stating that my version of the browser was being used (?) by someone else
(which is odd becasue I am the only user on that computer), and I was
obliged to start a new version of Firefox and start the bookmarks collection
again from scratch.

Then, a few days ago, the dialog box appeared again and I was asked to
select another user account, which I did, and the old version suddenly
appeared, with the old bookmarks still intact. But what on earth happend to
the second, newer, lot of bookmarks? I have looked everywhere for the way to
open that dialog box manually but without success!

If anyone has any ideas on this, please let me know.

Paul

[I've seen Firefox do this, in situations where I launched it immediately after quitting the application. I suspect the GUI had dropped, but the binary was still up. Since the binary was up, Firefox saw that one user profile was already in use and prompted me to choose another. --Andrew ]

On 1/5/06 1:28 PM, "Hector I. Macedo" <hecmaccomcast.net> wrote:

> I updated Firefox from 1.0.7 to version 1.5 and all my bookmarks
> disappeared.
>
> All is not lost, I have another hard drive that I haven't changed.
> Where are the old bookmarks so I can save them before updating that
> hd? And then how can I integrate them to the 1.5 version? Thanks!

I use Safari most of the time but I've also run Firefox 1.5 since it came
out (and 1.0.7 before that).

/Users/USERNAME/Library/Appliation Support/Firefox/Profiles/RANDOM
STRING.default/

The file should be bookmarks.html but in my folder I also found
"bookmarks.bak" (same size & date as bookmarks.html), "bookmarks-1.html" and
a "bookmarkbackups" directory containing two more copies of differing ages.
I'm not sure how all these copies came to be.

I haven't tried it but if you want to incorporate an older bookmarks file
with a newer one, you could probably do so by opening both in a plain text
editor like TextWrangler (not TextEdit because it'll try to render the HTML)
copy everything below [H1 LAST_MODIFIED="1126274656">Bookmarks</H1] in the
old copy and paste it at the bottom of the new copy. Make backups of each
file before proceeding.


[I changed the angle brackets ("<", ">") to square brackets ("[", "]") for readability on the HTML side of WebCrossing. The referenced HTML should naturally use angle brackets. -Andrew]

> Firefix has acted strangely for me too. A dialog box opened a few months ago
> stating that my version of the browser was being used (?) by someone else
> (which is odd becasue I am the only user on that computer), and I was
> obliged to start a new version of Firefox and start the bookmarks collection
> again from scratch.
>
> Then, a few days ago, the dialog box appeared again and I was asked to
> select another user account, which I did, and the old version suddenly
> appeared, with the old bookmarks still intact. But what on earth happend to
> the second, newer, lot of bookmarks? I have looked everywhere for the way to
> open that dialog box manually but without success!
>
> [I've seen Firefox do this, in situations where I launched it immediately
> after quitting the application. I suspect the GUI had dropped, but the binary
> was still up. Since the binary was up, Firefox saw that one user profile was
> already in use and prompted me to choose another. --Andrew ]

I've had this problem with Mozilla and the solution is to delete a lock file
in the profile folder

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/twiki/bin/view/CSDocs/MozillaFAQs#The_Profile_Manager
_Tells_Me_My

On 1/6/06 9:52 AM, "Paul Atroshenko" <patroshhotmail.com> wrote:

> Firefix has acted strangely for me too. A dialog box opened a few months ago
> stating that my version of the browser was being used (?) by someone else
> (which is odd becasue I am the only user on that computer), and I was
> obliged to start a new version of Firefox and start the bookmarks collection
> again from scratch.

The only time I've seen this happen was when I tried running Deer Park, an
optimized version of Firefox (there are version compiled specifically for
G3s, G4s, & G5s), when the regular Firefox was already running. Deer Park
(and presumably other independently compiled version of Firefox) uses the
same profile as Firefox and profile use clearly involves some file locking
to prevent simultaneous use by two applications or two instances of the same
application.
 
> Then, a few days ago, the dialog box appeared again and I was asked to
> select another user account, which I did, and the old version suddenly
> appeared, with the old bookmarks still intact. But what on earth happend to
> the second, newer, lot of bookmarks? I have looked everywhere for the way to
> open that dialog box manually but without success!

Mozilla's support pages have good information on this but it glosses over
the Mac-specific path information.
http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/profile

To manually invoke the Profile Manager, start the Firefox program from the
command line followed by the -profilemanager switch. However, the command is
not /Applications/Firefox.app -profilemanager because Firefox.app is a
bundle (which are really directories). The actual program which can take the
switch is buried inside the bundle.

/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -profilemanager

Note that this is the common format of bundles, the "real" program as far as
the command line environment is concerned is usually in Contents/MacOS/ and
named the same as the .app bundle (capitalization may vary). This is useful
to know for other instances when you're trying to start a program from the
command line.

>appeared, with the old bookmarks still intact. But what on earth happend to
>the second, newer, lot of bookmarks? I have looked everywhere for the way to
>open that dialog box manually but without success!

Firefox supports multiple user profiles, each with its own settings.
As Andrew said, sometimes it is possible for the same OS X user to
run 2 copies of Firefox. That's when you get the dialog, because
Firefox doesn't allow 2 copies to use the same profile.

One way of showing the profile selection dialog is to go into a
Terminal window and do:

<path to Firefox.app>/Contents/MacOS/firefox -profilemanager

See: <http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/profile>

(Interestingly, the equivalent page for Thunderbird says holding down
Option while starting the app will bring up the profile manager. But
I don't want to quit and restart Firefox to try this out.)


At 6:52 AM -0800 1/6/06, Curtis Wilcox wrote:
>I haven't tried it but if you want to incorporate an older bookmarks file
>with a newer one, you could probably do so by opening both in a plain text
>editor like TextWrangler (not TextEdit because it'll try to render the HTML)

If the number of bookmarks is small, then you can open the old
bookmarks.html file in Firefox, show the current bookmarks in the
sidebar, and drag the links over. You can use a file: URL to
navigate the local filesystem to the old bookmarks.html file, or use
the open command from a Terminal window.

--
Larry Rosenstein
lrosensteincatsincharge.com

At 5:26 PM -0800 1/7/06, Larry Rosenstein wrote:
>>If the number of bookmarks is small, then you can open the old
>bookmarks.html file in Firefox, show the current bookmarks in the
>sidebar, and drag the links over. You can use a file: URL to
>navigate the local filesystem to the old bookmarks.html file, or use
>the open command from a Terminal window.

        Dragging and dropping the bookmarks.html file onto the application
should also open it in a Firefox window, without the need to do any
file:URL navigation.



--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://public.xdi.org/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *