How to backup and synchronise bookmarks in different browsers
- Grab the RSS feed and read our posts in your leisure
- Drop a comment on this post
- Follow author on Twitter | FriendFeed
If you bookmark a lot of websites, it’s always a good idea to have them backed them up somewhere. The best backup place, of course, is the Internet where all your bookmarks stay safe from any possible hardware failures that may cripple your PC (let’s hope not!). In this post, we shall see how to effectively backup and synchronize your bookmarks in all the five major browsers – IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari.
Delicious for all!
Delicious is no stranger to us, being the largest online bookmark organising and sharing service. Meanwhile, Delicious also offers official add-ons for Firefox and Internet Explorer that keep the bookmarks in your browser and your Delicious account completely synchronized. If you’re using another browser, simply grab the Bookmark on Delicious bookmarklet and use it to save bookmarks in your Delicious account (rather than your browser).
Of course, Delicious isn’t the end of the world, and you can choose from various other options if you want to. Read on!
Internet Explorer Internet Explorer continues to be the most popular browser, and version 8 has really made this browser worth a second look. Manual : Internet Explorer allows you to export all your IE7Pro : We’ve shown you all but half the goodies that IE7Pro brings to IE. This tiny tool has an “online service” that can upload your favorites to it’s servers and sync it automatically across all your other computers (running IE with IE7Pro). To enable this online service, fire up IE7Pro’s Preferences window (Ctrl + F7), move to Online Service, and check the Sync bookmarks automatically option. You’ll of course need an IE7Pro account, and creating one is child’s play from the interface. Windows Live toolbar : Another way to sync favorites is by using the Windows Live Toolbar. Just sign in to your Windows Live account through the toolbar, and it will keep syncing your favorites with your online Windows Live account. The favorite links can be accessed online at http://favorites.live.com. Mozilla Firefox We all love Firefox. With over 6000 add-ons and counting, there are always more than one ways to get something done with this browser. And backing up bookmarks is no exception. Manual : Like IE, manually backing up bookmarks in Firefox is dead simple. Xmarks : Xmarks (previously Foxmarks) is a solid add-on that can sync your bookmarks and even passwords across multiple PCs. In addition, Xmarks can suggest tags for new bookmarks, and show information about your visited sites based on this bookmark database. Xmarks is also available as Foxmarks for IE 6 / 7 and Safari 3(Mac OS X only), though with significantly less features. Opera Opera is well-known for overcoming it’s lack of extensive add-ons by including a vast array of inbuilt features. So it should be no surprise that this sleek browser comes with the handy Opera Link, which can synchronise your bookmarks, notes, Speed Dial, history, and even searches across all your devices running any version of Opera. To enable Opera Link, select Synchronize Opera from the File menu, sign in / create your My Opera account, and select the items that you want to be synced. All these items can be accessed anywhere from your My Opera page. Manual : Opera allows manual importing and exporting of bookmarks, feeds, and contacts. To export bookmarks as an Opera-supported list only, choose Export Opera Bookmarks…; else select the Export Bookmarks as HTML…. Google Chrome Chrome is a relatively new browser, with less robust bookmark managing features than other browsers. Nevertheless, it does allow you to manually export bookmarks as an HTML file. Open Chrome, and press Ctrl + Shift + B to open the Bookmark Manager. Now select Export Bookmarks… under Tools option. If you’re looking to backup the complete profile including your history, bookmarks, searches etc., try the free Google Chrome Backup tool. As of now, there isn’t any way to setup automatic online syncing of bookmarks in Chrome. Safari Safari hasn’t gained much popularity among Windows users, and there aren’t many useful add-ons available for it. If you do use Safari, you can manually backup your bookmarks through File > Export Bookmarks… How do you organise, backup and sync your bookmarks? Say in the comments! bookmarks favorites, cookies, and feed items as an HTML file. To do so, click on the Favorites button and select the Import and Export… option.
