Bookmarks Synchronizer (FTP)

[Mixxster]

I know its probably in this board somewhere but i dont want to spend my time looking at 33 pages of posts. Does anyone know How i can make my bookmarks xml file clear and easy to read like: http://cgi29.plala.or.jp/~mozzarel/xbel/xbel.xml. I tried just copying her fires: xbel.css, xbel.xsl, rss.png, and folder.png. but it still loks like an xml file

[DirtyDan04]

What are you saying?
Do you want http access to the ftp site?
If so, you should be able to click the "http" radio buttion under "Remote File Settings". I have not needed to try this so I can not say how/if it will work.

[Mixxster]

I know its probably in this board somewhere but i dont want to spend my time looking at 33 pages of posts. Does anyone know How i can make my bookmarks xml file clear and easy to read like: http://cgi29.plala.or.jp/~mozzarel/xbel/xbel.xml. I tried just copying her fires: xbel.css, xbel.xsl, rss.png, and folder.png. but it still loks like an xml file

What are you saying?
Do you want http access to the ftp site?
If so, you should be able to click the "http" radio buttion under "Remote File Settings". I have not needed to try this so I can not say how/if it will work.

What I am saying is How do I make my bookmarks file easy to read, so that way I can acess them anyware without having to install the extension? Notice how: http://cgi29.plala.or.jp/~mozzarel/xbel/xbel.xml is in a nice organized table? Thats what I want. Is this possible? Also I found a bug. when the extension "remove it permanently" is installed then the sycronzie bookmarks is not in bookmarks menu.

[DirtyDan04]

I think I see now. I suggest that you find the bookmarks.html file and copy it to the place you desire. On my Mac it is in the path "/Users/danieljones/Library/Mozilla/Profiles/Daniel%20Jones/4klrdm5i.slt/bookmarks.html". I cannot remember the windows or linux paths. However, they are in subfolder of the user settings folder. On windows that is "C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Applications" I think.

If this does not help you, I will stay silent while one of the more knoweledgeable members of the forum reply.

[beavis]

I know its probably in this board somewhere but i dont want to spend my time looking at 33 pages of posts. Does anyone know How i can make my bookmarks xml file clear and easy to read like: http://cgi29.plala.or.jp/~mozzarel/xbel/xbel.xml. I tried just copying her fires: xbel.css, xbel.xsl, rss.png, and folder.png. but it still loks like an xml file

Just put this line to your xbel.xml
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="xbel.xsl"?>

[Mixxster]

Just put this line to your xbel.xml
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="xbel.xsl"?>

Well, I tried that. Looks like this: http://home.comcast.net/~mixxster/xbel.xml ,
the xsl file is here: http://home.comcast.net/~mixxster/xbel.xsl ,
the css file is here: http://home.comcast.net/~mixxster/xbel.css ,
Now does anyone know how to make it look like this: http://cgi29.plala.or.jp/~mozzarel/xbel/xbel.xml ?
I want to be able to have it in this format, so I can go to it anywere, say from school, where there is no firefox.

[beavis]

No you didn't insert the line into your xbel.xml

Your xbel.xml has to start with:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="xbel.xsl"?>

Just take a look at your xbel.xml and the one from japan (press ctrl-U to see the code).

[Fife Club]

I love it when I can actually help others rather than always being the guy asking for the help. But I found a solution to my Bookmarks Syncronizer problem and I want to share it with others, incase it can help others with a similar problem. I do not know how this solution works but it did fix my problem and now the extension works beautifully.

I was NOT receiving any error messages. If your problem invlolves any sort of error message that this solution isn't for your situation.

Problem:
Uploading and downloading the xbel.xml file to my server worked fine when done manually.
But even though I checkmarked both the "Auto download on startup" and "Auto upload on exit" options, it never even attempt any automated transmissions. (Those popup windows that display the progress never showed up). So bacically, my "do it automatically" settings were being completely ignored.

Solution Summary:
I went to about:config and located the browsercount setting. Now I have no idea what the heck this is but it's value was set to 5. I changed it to 1 and after a relaunch, the auto upload and download features began working fine. Viola.

Step By Step:
1) Type about:config in your Address field and press enter.
2) Type bookmarksftp in the Filter field to narrow the list of variables.
3) Double click on the variable bookmarksftp.browsercount.
4) Change the integer value to 1, click OK, and then exit Firefox.
5) Relaunch Firefox. It should now be working but it may not actually do anything until you exit the second time, when it should upload the xbel.xml file to your server.

Question For Smart Guys:
Like I said, I don't know how this works - it's just how I fixed my Bookmarks Syncronizer extension. So now I'm curious to know what the heck is the browsercount variable for anyway? What do the different integer values mean? And how did mine get stuck on 5?

Hope this post helps some poor shmo out there who is having problems with automatic uploads and downloads. Good luck.

[DirtyDan04]

Step By Step:
1) Type about:config in your Address field and press enter.
2) Type bookmarksftp in the Filter field to narrow the list of variables.
3) Double click on the variable bookmarksftp.browsercount.
4) Change the integer value to 1, click OK, and then exit Firefox.
5) Relaunch Firefox. It should now be working but it may not actually do anything until you exit the second time, when it should upload the xbel.xml file to your server.

Question For Smart Guys:
Like I said, I don't know how this works - it's just how I fixed my Bookmarks Syncronizer extension. So now I'm curious to know what the heck is the browsercount variable for anyway? What do the different integer values mean? And how did mine get stuck on 5?

One small refinement on your step by step is, if you type "browsercount" into the filter, instead of "bookmarksftp" it narrows your search even more. The result is that only the bookmarksftp.browsercount variable is showing.

To answer your questions, browsercount is a variable that is incremented when a browser window is opened, it is decremented whenever a browser window is closed. This is something that BS does transparently when these events occur. When FF crashes BS cannot decrement normally; therefore, it get some value stuck in it. With this value stuck in it when you open a browser window it increments normally, and when you close it decrements normally, but since it already had some non-zero value in it, it never reaches 0, so it never can trigger the upload/download event to occur.

Clear as mud, right? I hope this helps. I would emplore some kind soul to rewrite this extension so that it initializes bookmarksftp.browsercount to 0 or 1 when it is first run. I tried looking at the code with that in mind, but it was way to complex for me.

[DirtyDan04]

On my windows machine I have noticed that if I have FF browser windows open when I log off or quit that browsercount stays whatever number number is was. Like if I have 5 browser windows open and have to reboot when I start it up again browsercount starts at 5. Appearently, Windows does not exit FF it just kills it. Since it cannot execute the BS code browsercount never gets updated, so I have to do it manually.

I think this behavoir may explain alot of the mystery around why browsercount gets foobared so often. I guess the moral of the story is: ALWAYS, whenever you restart in windows, make sure to exit FF manually before hitting the yes button.

This does not happen on my Mac. I do not know about Linux.

Does anyone out there Have any idea about Linux?

[Fife Club]

Change of plans. I have no choice but to disable this extension until it gets fixed.

Now it's all coming back to me full circle. I first installed this extension in November and I wrote about how it worked fine for one day and then stopped working all together. Then I tried it again this week and discovered how to make it work using the browsercount fix. Well today it's not working again and I just realized that this is the exact same problem I had many months earlier. My xbel was not synchronizing again this morning so now I knew to check browsercount and it was set to 2. I set it to zero (I used 1 last time but either one works) and upon restart it began working again. So yes my workaround fixes the extension but it's ridiculously pointless if I have to fix it every single day. If that were the case I may as well just do syncronization manually.

I think DirtyDan04 was saying that this incorrect browsercount is caused by cashing browsers, closing windows before manually exiting FF, or other improper actions. But I can tell you that I had nothing go wrong yesterday or today. When I exited Windows, FF was already closed. And I had no crashes of any applications. So the browsercount is getting screwed up for no apparent reason.

Dear Torisugari or other extension developers
I love what this extension does when it is working properly and I want to use it on every computer I use. Thank you very much for creating it, but something has to be done to force browsercount to zero when exiting or opening or something to fix this bug that kills the automation. PLEASE.

[[Karl]Aschnikof]

sorry guys ...but i have no time to read 33 pages.
my problem is that the "Bookmark Synchronizer" is uploading the xml file but when i click on download the file i become the massage: the file is not XBEL format.
i have this problem under linux firefox 1.0 german version.
with the BS version 1.0.1

i have the problem when i upload the file with linux.
when i upload the file with windows, i can download it without problems with linux.
so i think the linux version make a problem with uploading the file

someone know a answer?

[Ingridt]

I use Bookmarks Synchronizer with both Windows XP and Linux Mandrake(Mandriva), but it does not really work well: bookmarks added in a windows-session do not appear in the next linux-session and vice-versa. When I look into the xml-file, all bookmarks are there, but I never see what I added in the other OS, only what I've added in the same OS.
How can I solve this?

[dewey1973]

Is the "Merge" option documented anywhere? How is it's behavior different from the normal behavior? Does it address situations where both computers edit the favorites before they are synced? For example, what happens if on computer A, a favorite for xyz.com is added. At the same time on computer B a favorite for abc.com is added. Then both browsers are closed and their changes are uploaded. It would seem that only one of these changes will survive (whichever uploaded last.) Is there any way the extension can be set up to capture both changes?

[DirtyDan04]

Dear Torisugari or other extension developers,

One thing that would greatly enhance the usability of this extension is if the "Synchronize Bookmarks" would have a sub-menu containing the options:
"Upload"
"Download"
"Configure"

This way one would not have to open the configure dialog just to up/download the file.

Thanks much for the excellent tool. It has made my surfing much more enjoyable.