Firefox Missing Bookmark, Profile and Extensions Restore

😯 The last few upgrades for firefox had been rather cool for me, till the latest 1.5.0.6 which completely wiped out my bookmarks… My years of bookmarking all GONE! Duh… only to rejectively close the program, take a timeout only to slowly recreate their bookmarks while chanting swear words – hehe thats what most users will do after being “betrayed” but their favorite browser, so as it would be…

For me it’s a different story as I backup my bookmarks, (the wonders of backing up) but considering my last backup being more than a few months ago, I am really missing out alot. (Even WinXP system restore won’t get them to return).

Latter do most of us know, that Firefox is actually smart enough to keep backups of your bookmarks (thats why its still the best web browser right?) & to prevent file corruption whenever Firefox ever had a chance to crash.

So don’t just cry & weep over the browser or your bookmarks in the fine comfort or digital death (R.I.P), here are the steps to get them up as good as new:

In WinXP, head to the following directory:

Replacing whatever in the [Brackets] with your username to get to the hidden folder path. From there, copy out the latest bookmark file (usually named to dates like bookmarks-2006-08-10.html)

Start Firefox, under Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks, Choose File -> Import then point it towards the file you’ve copied out ok & vollia! all your latest bookmarks are all in! Remember to backup the .html file in a safe place in your harddrive just as an added precaution, (also in case future updates move or deletes the bookmark backup folder).

Inside the C:\Documents and Settings\[Your Username]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ folder is also an assortment of personal data which might want to backup as well, such as saved form history, browsing history, extensions as well as your encrypted saved password file (so it beats having to remember all your login passwords). Perfect if you are migrating your firefox profile from PC to PC.

Since all your passwords are stored in the files key3.db and signons.txt, you might want to get around some possible hacking problems by encrypting or renaming these files, as told by this rather useful resource by cybernet to mask your password file.

Lastly, with Firefox besides being a fast stable browser with excellent tabbed browsing, extensions are the other thing why Firefox is DA browser! With some of my personal recommendations of the extensions I use, you can check them out by searching through the Firefox extension database.

😎 Recommended Extensions:

• Adblock – Blocks ads, etc perfect for adsense publishers who don’t want to accidentally click on their own ads.
• CrashRecovery – With this, crashes are good! The Purr-fect tool for any system reboot/crash. Restores all tabs with actual URLs on next run.
• Dictionary Tooltip – Searches 20 over online dictionaries for the meaning of any single word you highlight in FF.
• IE Tab – IE only websites? screwed up layouts? emulate Internet Explorer in FF!
• Duplicate Tab – Ctrl-N to the maxes, being Ctrl-T this time

On yea yesterday was Singapore’s 41st birthday! Happy National Dayz!