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J. Brad Hicks (bradhicks) wrote,
  • Mood: sleepy

Quick tech question about Firefox 2

The local papers haven't got the time for anything except World Series news, about which I would be hard-pressed to care less. The national news feels to me like it's in reruns; by this time in the election season, most politicians have figured out which of their lines focus-test the best and are trying to make it through the next couple of weeks just repeating themselves over and over again. What other news there is mostly elicits nothing more from me than a one or two sentence put-down, and I don't aspire to be Tucker Carlson.

Nor, of course, does it help that we're now entering the time of year where, between the darkness and the encroaching cold, I feel a powerful urge to spend half or more of my day in bed under a heavy comforter. The distraction of the bed calling to me non-stop is having a very "handicapper general" effect on my ability to complete complex thoughts.

That being said, if you don't mind, instead of my usual self, can I ask you to help me find something?

According to a newspaper article that I did see, Firefox 2 is rolling out Tuesday. To get a head start on it, I downloaded 2RC3 tonight, and found that one extension that I rely heavily upon is incompatible. So thoroughly incompatible, in fact, that my usual trick of editing the maximum version in the *.rdf file doesn't seem to have worked.

So, does anybody know of an extension other than the long-abandoned Favorites Converter that will export my Firefox bookmarks to Internet Explorer automatically, either every time I change them or, failing that, every time I close Firefox, so that I can launch web pages into Firefox from the windows Start button's Favorites sub-menu? One that's compatible with Firefox 2?
Tags: tech
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  • 12 comments

utilitygeek

October 23 2006, 12:42:22 UTC 6 years ago

I don't know of anything that does exactly what you ask offhand, but there are two options that spring to mind.

The first is an extension that allows you to open URLs with the IE window in Firfox tabs. I don't know if it works with IE7, but I imagine it does. I think it's called IETab. I can look it up at work if you're interested.

The second is that Firefox, like it's predecessors back through Netscape, stores its bookmarks in a simple HTML file. It's not pretty, but it's quite parsable. You could always set that as your IE homepage. Again, if you're interested, I can point you to it.

bradhicks

October 23 2006, 13:02:43 UTC 6 years ago

No, neither of those are the problems I'm trying to solve. What that previous extension was doing for me was making it possible for me to click Start, mouse up to Favorites, and see the same things I had bookmarked in Firefox.

dawnshadow

October 23 2006, 13:15:02 UTC 6 years ago

I don't know of an extension like that off-hand, but maybe you could try again in a week or so and see if the developers upgrade it once 2.0 is released, or email them and ask if they plan to?

bradhicks

October 23 2006, 13:35:59 UTC 6 years ago

Unlikely - since they didn't update it to be compatible with 1.5. I had to hack the extension myself to force it.

rjb5

October 23 2006, 13:23:13 UTC 6 years ago

If you don't mind living a little dangerously, it is possible to disable Firefox's check for extension compatibility. All extensions you have will then be used -- whether they work right or not, however, is anyone's guess. So far, though, for the 4 or 5 extensions I use, I've had no problems.

The official but rather arcane documentation of this feature is here:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Extensions.checkCompatibility

For a more wordy, but much more clear description, see:

http://www.perfectblogger.com/2006/09/make-extensions-compatible-with-firefox2/

Method # 2 is the one that seems to work for me.


Good luck.

seantaclaus

October 23 2006, 14:10:48 UTC 6 years ago

I can take a look around and see what pops up. However, with IE7 having just come out, a lot of cross-browser conversion utilities/extensions may well have to be redone as it is, so there's a possibility that you may not see one currently viable for a week or so. I don't expect it would be longer than that, as usually when the final release of something comes out, that's when most of the external developers put out their particular tidbits for said application. Why? Anything pre-final, no matter how close, has the potential for changing some aspect that their coding relies upon, when the final comes out.

alienne

October 23 2006, 16:27:13 UTC 6 years ago

I can fix this for you without a firefox extension, actually. Remind me the next time i'm there.

--Adrienne

utilitygeek

October 23 2006, 16:44:42 UTC 6 years ago

Because it's lunchtime: A metaphor too far

You whet our appetites, but give us no juicy details. Please, you must feed our ravenous curiosity.

discogravy

October 23 2006, 17:16:25 UTC 6 years ago

I've been saving my bookmarks via Stumbleupon (for things I just like) and google's toolbar bookmarks (for things i visit often). I realize this will probably not be a solution you'll want, but thought I'd mention it...

discogravy

October 23 2006, 21:19:45 UTC 6 years ago

also, ran across this today: http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/browsersync/index.html

dawnshadow

October 26 2006, 02:41:47 UTC 6 years ago

Ah, I think I've found something (if you're still searching.) Try http://bookmarkbridge.sourceforge.net/ . It's a seperate app and has to be run manually, but it seems like it would probably work.

bradhicks

October 26 2006, 04:37:10 UTC 6 years ago

What I found instead is MR Tech Local Install, which to my pleasant surprise was able to force the extension I had been using to work with 2.0. If you're having problems getting an extension to work, this is definitely worth trying.