Automatically sort Firefox bookmarks

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How To Sync Firefox Bookmarks and Passwords Privately

Most Firefox users who want to sync data like bookmarks or passwords use the built-in sync feature to do just that. Firefox Sync requires an account, and uses that account to save the data in the cloud. While easy to setup, it means that data is hosted on a third party server that you do not have control over. Most extensions and services that offer third party solutions do the same thing. If you do not want your data to be hosted on a third party service, either because you want to be in full control or because of business regulations, you could check out the Sync Places extensions for the browser.

SyncPlaces, unlike other tools of its kind, allows you to store the data on your own servers. The Firefox add-on can store the data on four different servers:

Web serverWeb server with SSLFTP serverFile server

You need to restart the browser after you have installed the extension. SyncPlaces adds an icon to the browser’s status bar that you can click on to open the options and configure the synchronization.

The configuration option consist of the usual information, server IP, username and password for instance, but also options that let you configure the process. You can configure the extension to synchronize data automatically, at specific times of the day, regularly, or on startup or shutdown. The information can be encrypted and compressed to secure and speed up the transfer, and you can furthermore switch from synchronizing all bookmarks to synchronizing a specific bookmarks folder only. Data can either be merged with what’s stored on the server, or replaced completely.

Takes a backup of your current bookmarks before overwriting them, which you can restore if it all goes wrong. You can also manually take a backup at any time, or restore from this backup.

Bookmarks are stored in JSON or XBEL format. JSON is ideal for all the new Places features (tags, queries etc). XBEL is ideal if you still use Firefox 2 (although you’ll lose the new Places features) or wish to style your bookmarks so you can access them from any browser, or without installing the SyncPlaces extension. You can also send bookmarks in HTML format if you don’t wish to style XBEL yourself.

The core benefit of using SyncPlaces is that you have got full control over both the local installations of Firefox and the server the data is stored on. It in turn means that you need to have access to a server to use the extension at all. While it is possible to use third party servers like the GMX server, it would undo the main purpose the extension has been created for. Firefox users who have issues configuring the extension should check out the author’s support website which offers a collection of tips to get common issues sorted out.

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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Monday April 16, 2012 -
Tags:firefox add-ons, synchronize

You are here: Home » Browsing » How To Sync Firefox Bookmarks and Passwords Privately

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Print Multiple Tabs or Bookmarks As One PDF Document In Firefox

The majority of web page to pdf extensions let you convert a single web page into a pdf document. This may often be all that’s needed, but it is not very practicable if you want to create a pdf document from multiple web pages. While you could now do some copying and pasting into Microsoft Office or Open Office, and use the programs to create the pdf document for you in the end, you’d probably be interested in a more straightforward option.

The Firefox add-on Print pages to Pdf could be a solution, provided that you are running Firefox on Windows or Linux. Linux support has just been added by the developer in the latest add-on version, and it currently is limited to 32-bit versions only. It is likely that this is going to change in the near future.

The extension has a whooping file size of more than 8 Megabytes under Windows, which is something that you should take into considerations, especially on computer’s that do not have a lot of RAM installed.

Once you have installed the extension and restarted the Firefox browser, you will notice that a new entry has been added to the right-click context menu in the browser.

Here you can select to print the active tabs, or all open tabs, to pdf. You also get the option to print the pages as they come, or only text. Keep in mind that all tabs of the active window will be printed to pdf in this case, and not all tabs in all windows. One option for researchers would be to bookmark all relevant pages into a single bookmark folder to print the whole folder in the end to a single pdf document. I’d suggest you open a new window before you start your research if you plan to print the open tabs to pdf using the extension.

You can also print bookmarks, for instance in the bookmarks’ folder to pdf. Just right-click a folder or selected bookmarks again and select one of the options displayed to you in the context menu.

Before you start converting websites or bookmarks to pdf, you may want to take a look at the extension options. Here you can make a lot of changes. The general tab allows you to change the output directory and menu appearance in the browser. If you have no intention of converting bookmarks to pdf, you can disable the context menu option here. The pdf document is automatically opened once it has been created, which you can block here as well.

The pdf global and webpage tabs can be used to change the output. The global tab displays options to change the output format to postscript from PDF, configure the output paperformat, units and margins, outlines, and to include a table of contents on the first page of the pdf. The table of contents is pretty interesting, as sub headings are for instance added to the contents as well automatically.

The webpage tab handles styling, header and footer layout preferences for all selected pages and bookmarks. From adding custom text or a header file over including or excluding external and local links, to the exclusion of backgrounds and graphics. It is all there and needs to be configured once for all printing activities. The default settings are working well, but customizing them provides you with more flexibility and cleaner looking print outs.

This extension works really well with several print-related add-ons, like Edit Page.

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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Sunday March 25, 2012 -
Tags:firefox add-ons, pdf, print

You are here: Home » Browsing » Print Multiple Tabs or Bookmarks As One PDF Document In Firefox

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Create A Custom Firefox Installer with Add-ons, Bookmarks And Preferences

Deploying a customized version of the Firefox web browser can be quite the daunting task. It does not really matter if you are a home user who wants to copy Firefox to another PC, or a system administrator who has to deploy Firefox on hundreds of PCs. Home users can use Firefox backup programs like Febe or Mozbackup for instance to copy their extensions and settings to the new computer.

Firefox Addon Maker offers to create custom Firefox installers that will not only install the selected web browser version, but also add-ons, plugins, bookmarks, passwords and other custom preferences.

The portable Windows application displays all customization options on one screen. It begins with the selection of the Firefox edition that the installer should install on target computer systems. The program supports the current stable version of the browser, the beta version and the previous version. It does not support Aurora or Nightly versions, or older versions. All program interface languages are selectable here as well.

While it is possible to include existing profile data in the installer, it is also possible to create a custom installer without it. You can select one of the detected Firefox profiles directly, or a custom profile path instead which is for instance necessary for portable versions of the browser, or if the correct profile path has not been detected by Firefox Addon Maker.

The private and common options menus define which settings and components are copied from the selected profile to be included in the installer.

The following choices are available:

Private Options: Include bookmarks, passwords, cookies, history, preferences, sessions and extension user dataCommon Options: Including extensions and themes, plugins, components, search engines, dictionaries, modules and hyphenation

It is possible to copy the complete profile, or only select preferences. Home users for instance may want to include all preferences and settings, while business owners might not want to include cookies, passwords or the browsing history.

It is probably a good idea to create and configure a new Firefox profile to be used for the creation of the custom installer, as it is not possible to customize individual settings further. All extensions will for instance be copied over, without options to select only some. A new profile allows you to customize the installation exactly the way you want it to be distributed.

The editable options can be used to set Firefox as the default browser on the target system, to select custom interface icons, and to disable the browser’s Migration Wizard, Compatibility Wizard and Crash Reporter.

The program furthermore offers to include the latest Adobe Flash Player and Shockwave plugins, as well as Macromedia Authorware, Windows Media Player and the Microsoft Office 2007 in the installer. This is useful if the option to include plugins from the selected Firefox profile has been disabled.

The installer can add the Firefox installation to the start menu, pin it to the Quick Launch toolbar and place a shortcut on the desktop.

A click on Create Installer finally creates the custom Firefox installer. The program downloads the selected version of Firefox before it is processed and the installer is created.

The program saves the custom installer on the desktop. The program and the created installer are compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system.

Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook or Twitter. Create Custom Firefox And Thunderbird Installations
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Firefox Profile Preferences Cleaner About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Wednesday February 29, 2012 -
Tags:portable software, windows software

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