Want to export your bookmarks to a .html file?  You can in Firefox with just a few clicks of the mouse.  This can come in handy when it comes to syncing your bookmarks with another browser, backing up or moving from PC to PC.  Mozilla has made the import and backup options in Firefox brain dead simple.

First, you will want to go to Bookmarks and then Organize Bookmarks from within the Firefox Menu toolbar.  That will open up the Bookmark Library.  From within there, click on Import and Backup and then Export HTML…

When you do, you will get a kind of “save this file as…” screen pop-up where the default name of the exported file will be bookmarks.html.  Select the location you wish to save the file to, and then hit the Save button.

There you have it.  You now have a picture perfect backup of your Firefox bookmarks.  Hope this basic tutorial comes in handy – and if you have any other bookmark exporting tips you would like to share – be sure to do so in the comments.

Since Facebook is the king of the hill when it comes to social networks, there have been a lot of add-ons dedicated to making it better.  Facebook is great, but is not without flaws.  Thankfully, these Firefox add-on developers have worked out some of the kinks and have masterminded some of the best add-ons for Firefox to date. 

Here are my top five Facebook add-ons you can add to Firefox.

 Friendbar

Facebook and Twitter are now easier than ever to use. Friendbar displays a running stream of text and photo updates right on the toolbar, and allows you to post updates, to like, comment, update, retweet, dm, and reply from the toolbar itself.

 Facebook Toolbar

Facebook seems to quickly be outgrowing the other social networks by leaps and bounds.  It is hard to find a friend that hasn’t switched over to it from the other social networks like MySpace and the like.  So with that said, why not grab a toolbar that will help you get a little more out of your Facebook usage and help you stay connected with your friends even better?

 Facebook Photo Album Downloader

In need of a way to download all the images you may have uploaded to your Facebook photo album?  Sure you could go through each image, click by click and download each one individually.  Why do that though, when you have FacePAD.  This extension will let you grab all the photos from any album you need on Facebook.

 Facebook Video

The popular Greasemonkey Facebook video script is now a full-fledged Firefox addon that lets users download or convert Facebook videos, and embed videos outside of Facebook.

 Facebook Dislike

You can “like” things on Facebook, so why can you not “dislike” things too? If you use Facebook, and you have Firefox – you can now add the feature some have really been wanting. You get the ability to dislike things that your friends have posted.

There are my top five, which one is your favorite?  I would have to say that the Facebook Photo Album Downloader is probably the most functional, so in turn – my favorite of the favorites.  What also would be the Facebook flaw you wish you could fix?  You might just be the inspiration for some Firefox add-on developer’s next creation.

So which bookmark add-ons for Firefox are downloaded most often?  Here are the top ten most downloaded bookmark extensions for the browser.

• SmarterFox – Browse faster by speeding up common tasks – faster downloading, searching, visiting favorites, copy & paste, and more.
• Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) – Xmarks is the #1 bookmarking add-on. Install it on all your computers to keep your bookmarks and (optionally) passwords backed up and synchronized.
• Delicious Bookmarks – Delicious Bookmarks is the official Firefox add-on for Delicious, the world’s leading social bookmarking service.
• StumbleUpon- StumbleUpon discovers web sites based on your interests, learns what you like and brings you more.
• Speed Dial – Quicker direct access to your most visited web sites and saved links.
• Google Toolbar – Not sure why people are still using this, however it did make it on my list of non-evil toolbars, so go figure.
• Brief -  Brief makes reading RSS feeds as easy and intuitive as it gets. Designed to have exactly the right set of features, it is powerful and simple at the same time.
• Fast Dial – Much like Speed Dial, this add-on gives you a quick visual way to access a number of web sites all from one page; showing thumbnails for each.
• iMacros – Automate Firefox. Record and replay repetitious work. If you love the Firefox web browser, but are tired of repetitive tasks like visiting the same sites every days, filling out forms, and remembering passwords, then iMacros for Firefox is the solution you’ve been dreaming of!
• Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar – This add-on does exactly what you would expect, it gives you multiple bookmark rows.  Yes, I like it when they name add-ons about what they do. 

There you have it, these add-ons have been downloaded more times than any other, and all will help you in one way, shape, or form with your bookmarks.  Have another favorite that you think deserves to be on the list?  Leave a comment, and tell me why.

Better known as the Facebook Photo Album Downloader, FacePAD will not only let you grab your own photo album, but will also let you download your friends’ photo album, event albums, and group albums with the click of a button. 

Here is a video from the developers on how to use FacePAD:

You can learn more about the add-on and get more help on how to use it via the Firefox Add-ons site.  If you want to backup your Facebook photos or save a few that a friend has uploaded, the Facebook Photo Album Downloader will be a great timesaver for you.

Why make the move?  Well, one would guess that sharing links might be a more profitable business model, more so than bookmark syncing alone.  Via the Xmarks blog, here are some FAQs for those of you who might have questions about the change:

• Xmarks is a superset of Foxmarks – it adds web discovery features to our world-class bookmark sync.
• If you choose to upgrade to Xmarks, it will work seamlessly with your existing Foxmarks account and will sync with your other computers running Foxmarks.
• Foxmarks.com and our existing Foxmarks add-ons won’t change overnight. We expect to have upgrades to all three Foxmarks versions available by the end of March and we’ll provide you with more detailed info once we return from the DEMO conference.
• We’re still hard at work finding better, faster ways to sync more things in your browser.

So what new features will be brought on with the new business model?

Smarter Search – In your Google search results, Xmarks will highlight the top three sites based on bookmarking history.  Put your mouse over the special icon to the side of the search results to learn more information such as reviews, and rankings.

Site Info Lookup – Clicking on the Xmarks logo in your location bar will bring up a detailed box letting you know more information about the site you are on, and help you discover other sites just like it.

Then of course, you have the bookmark and password backup and syncing capabilities that Foxmarks already brought to the table.  The Xmarks browser add-on is Firefox only right now, but they promise to have Internet Explorer and Safari versions running soon.  Firefox fans can grab the Xmarks add-on here to try it out.  It is worth pointing out that you can install Xmarks even if you have the Foxmarks add-on installed on your computer. Xmarks will upgrade your current Foxmarks add-on and continue to sync and back up your bookmarks (and optionally passwords).

So what do you think about the change?  Excited about the new features, or disappointed that an old Firefox friend is changing its ways?

Here are some of the important files you might seen in your profile folder and what they are used for.

• search.sqlite and the searchplugins folder – The first file, search.sqlite stores the order that your search engines (for the search box) are sorted. Inside of the searchplugins folder you can find all the extra search engines you have installed.
• mimeTypes.rdf – your preferences with respect to what Firefox does when it comes across known file types.
• formhistory.sqlite - this is where information that you have searched for or entered into forms on web sites (think autocomplete) is stored.
• places.sqlite – this is the file that contains your bookmarks and previously visited web sites.
• cert8.db – all your security certificate settings and any SSL certificates you have imported are stored here.
• permissions.sqlite – the file here stores site specific preferences, such as if you allow it to install add-ons, show images, display popups or any special orders you have allowed for that domain.
• key3.db and signons3.txt – these are the files that store your password information you have saved.
• persdict.dat – this file will hold your words you have personally put into Firefox’s built in spellchecker.
• cookies.sqlite – your web site cookies are stored here.

Now, I do know there are more files – however, these are the files that are most important for you to know about, just in case something bad might happen.  Hopefully, this additional documentation will come in handy when troubleshooting your own Firefox issues or problems.

How to Backup Your Bookmarks Manually

From the Firefox menu bar go to Bookmarks >  Organize Bookmarks to bring up your bookmarks manager.  Now you want to click the top button that says Import and Backup.

Next, select Backup.  This will bring up a “Save As” box where you can save your bookmarks to any location.  Make sure you leave the bookmark as a .json file too.  Since Firefox 3, this is the type of file Firefox uses for backups.  If you wish to export your bookmarks as an HTML file, go to Import and Backup > Export HTML.  That will give you the more traditional .html backup.

Recover Firefox’s Internal Bookmark Backups

Did you know that Firefox has been backing up your bookmarks all along?  They are in your Firefox profile folder.  First thing you need to do is find your profile folder for Firefox.  Depending on your operating system this may be in a different location.  If you are unsure, be sure to check out this previous post: 

• Where is my Firefox Profile Folder?

Once you make it in there you should see a folder named “bookmarkbackups”.  Double-click that folder, and there you have some of your saved bookmarks that you thought you had lost waiting for you to restore them.  If you want more backups to be saved (default is 5) then check out this previous article on the simple about:config tweak you will need to do.

Backup Your Bookmarks with an Add-on

There are many extensions for Firefox that will help you backup too.  My personal favorite is Foxmarks, which comes with the additional feature of syncing them with another PC (another good backup technique in its own right).  Here are the best:

• FEBE – The perfect add-on for those backing up and don’t wish to rely on other services.
• Foxmarks – The greatest backup and syncing extension out there today.
• Delicious Bookmarks – Yes, syncing with services like Delicious is another great way to backup your bookmarks.

Now the question is how do you and when did you last backup your own Firefox bookmarks?

Having given it a round two now, I am happy to say I have done so.

After the death of Google Browser Sync, I was looking for a new way to keep my bookmarks on my desktop and my bookmarks on my laptop the same.  Foxmarks does the trick with what they call Seamless Sync.  I have not had to mess with it once since I installed it. It just works.

With a service or extension like this I’d like to pretend it isn’t even there, and Foxmarks makes it very easy to do just that.  Some of the other nice features of Foxmarks are:

• Easy Backup & Restore
• Web Access to your Saved Links
• Mobile Access
• Share Bookmarks with Friends
• Import & Export Your Saved Links

I am delighted to say that Foxmarks has earned a spot on my hall of fame add-ons list for being one heck of a nice addition to Firefox.  If your looking to keep your bookmarks synced up, there is no better solution out there right now.

Told you last week about Google’s plans to kill off the semi-popular Google Browser Sync extension.  According to Ars Technica, while they were tossing the dirt in the hole – somebody decided to do this:

Google is distributing the Browser Sync source code under the BSD license and is making it available through a Subversion source control repository on the Google Code website.

Good news for those of us who really liked this add-on.  The reason for its popularity is that it didn’t just sync up your bookmarks.  It also would transfer your passwords, history and cookies.

Personally, I am looking forward to giving Weave a shot (Mozilla’s version of the same service) due to the fact that Mozilla would know how to do it best.  Right now from what I have seen, it looks like it is still kind of buggy.

Not much is up on the Google Code page for BrowserSync but will be worth keeping an eye on in the next few weeks and months ahead.

Backup the Firefox files called:

• signons.txt
• signons2.txt
• key3.db

Copy and past them into the place you want to back them up to, and you are done.  To restore them, make sure you don’t have Firefox running and then go into your current profile folder and copy and move them in.  They should replace the ones in there currently.

Now to backup your Firefox 2 boomarks, dive back into your profile folder and look for a file called “bookmarkbackups”.  Double-click that folder, and there you have some of your saved bookmarks that you thought you had lost waiting for you to restore them.

To restore your bookmarks in Firefox 3, go to Bookmarks and then Organize Bookmarks.  In the Library, click on Import and Backup and click on “Import HTML”.  The on screen wizard should walk you through the rest of the steps.