Smart bookmark Archives -

This is documented elsewhere, but perhaps comes across as too nerdy for some. If you’re using Windows XP, recovering from a crash or whatever, and find that your Firefox bookmarks (and bookmarklets and bookmark toolbar) have disappeared, here’s what to do:

Close Firefox if it’s running.
Find your profile in c:Documents and Settings[your XP user name]Application DataMozillaFirefoxProfiles
There should be a subfolder there called bookmarkbackups. Find the most recent bookmarks html file in there (usually with a date after the ‘bookmarks’ bit.
Copy it to somewhere safe and rename the existing one bookmarks.html.
Copy it to the default profiles folder (up one level from the bookmarkbackups folder, deleting the existing bookmarks.html file.)
Close Firefox if it’s running and launch it. Your old bookmarks should be restored.

(And, while I’m at it, here’s a solution if your Firefox browser refuses to remember any of your changed settings in toolbars etc when you close it, resetting everything back to what it was before. The same bug — likely to be fixed soon — also deletes your search engines in the search box to the right of the address box. This fix will fix both problems:

Locate the localstore.rdf file in the same place as above.
Delete it.
Restart Firefox. You should be good to go.

Thanks, GreenKri.)

Here are two additions to my Directory of Bookmark managers:

Henrik Sjöstrand tells me of his Netvouz, which includes

your own online bookmarks page which gives a good overview of your favorite web sites and easy access to them. You organize your bookmarks in categories and tag each bookmark with keywords and can then browse them by category or tag, or search for them. Bookmarks can be public (like a social bookmark manager) or private. Your bookmarks are regularly validated to ensure they are not broken. It also has import/export capabilities, intranet bookmarks, Hotpicks for your most used bookmarks, RSS feeds, an Add2Netvouz button for easily bookmarking new sites, and a clean-looking user interface. The “new” and “popular” pages show what other people use and is a great way to discover new interesting web sites.

While from David Ross, author of WindowSizer, comes FavoritesFinder:

Favorites Finder runs in a bar at the bottom of your browser and by typing a few key letters you can navigate quickly to any website you’ve added to your favorites. You can now add more websites to your favorites and reach them much more quickly than by scrolling through a long list with your mouse.

Instead of scrolling through a long list of bookmarks or typing the full address for a website you can simply click in the Favorites Finder bar, type a few letters from the website title, address or folder name, hit Enter and be off to that site. It’s especially useful for those sites you’re always visiting, be it an ebay listing, your webmail, or favorite blog.

Favorites Finder is available as a free 30-day trial, downloadable from To continue use after that costs $12.95.

Anyone with more suggestions to any of the directories, please feel free to drop me a line.