dpihl's dashboard

There continues to be a crying need for some sort of Firefox extension that allows Firefox portable to use the bookmarks and add-0ns of an individual web user, and not the administrator of the computer network. It's clear to me that foxmarks has the potential to solve this problem, because it is already hosted on a cloud computer server somewhere out there in cyberspace. Check out the blog at portable apps dot com, and you'll see this is the number one complaint.

I am constantly frustrated by the lack of an easy way to either move my bookmarks out of folders, or get foxmarks to probe deep into those folders. Duplication nightmares continue to veer me away from using Xmarks under any circumstances. Too bad... Firefox Portable users are turning themselves inside out in search of a way to keep their favorite widgets and bookmarks as they launch firefox portable Just take a squint at the forum over at PortableApps.com and you'll see what I mean. People are up in arms about the lack of portability, and Xmarks could seriously alleviate some of their problems if only you could solve some of your OWN problems first!

>> It sounds like the synchronizer mis-identified already-established bookmarks as being sufficiently distinct to not warrant merging during the initial synchronization.

Yeah, I made the mistake of moving a bunch of bookmarks out of their respective folders so the duplicates would be easier for a different program to identify. As soon as foxmarks found the folders were missing, it restored every last one of them. Now I have more duplication than ever before. I know, I know, my fault. But I still wish some program out there could browse inside of folders to locate identical URLs.

Thanks for supporting my claim, DJ. I really think duplicate bookmarks are the crux of the matter. If there were an easy, intuitive way to eliminate exact duplicates, few people would have a problem with the "forced upgrade" to Xmarks, with synching between different browsers, with synching between different computers, etc.etc. etc.

If it would just check for duplicates, especially in folders five or six levels deep, then I would not have a problem at all with the merge feature. It's a really wonderful concept, but only if it helps you stay organized, instead of increasing your clutter.

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The ability to sync my bookmarks with Safari and Internet Explorer sounds nice. So does syncing with Opera, FLock, Google Chrome, iCab, etc.

The only thing is, syncing between two computers has already caused me more headaches than I can possibly cope with. I keep trying to delete bookmarks, and they reappear on the next auto sync.

Yes, yes, I know. I was supposed to change the preferences file. I'm pretty sure I did that three or four times. I set it so the data on the server would be deleted and replaced with the bookmarks on my home computer. All to no avail.

So I downloaded duplicate detector, check places, search places, sync places, and sort places. I downloaded several others, but these claimed to be useful for finding and eliminating duplicate bookmarks. Something conflicted with something else, and I had to turn off one to try any of the others. I spent hours eliminating my duplicates (thousands of them), and then reactivated foxmarks.

Foxarks tells me I need to install an update to Xmarks. I install the update, and voila! Now I have four or five duplicates of some bookmarks, and at least three copies of most. I'm at my wits' end. Until Xmarks can find duplicated bookmarks, I'm not about to add IE or Safari to the catastrophic mess I now face!

Thanks, but no thanks.

Synching bookmarks and passwords between my home and work computers is nice and all, but Xmarks could fill a much larger void in my life if they could sync Firefox portable with my stuff at work and home.

Simply put, portable apps should be leveraging the concept of cloud computing more effectively, and nowhere is this more true than with firefox portable. Sure, it would be nice if I could work in open office and then sync my work with google docs, but that's merely a "would be nice" kind of an idea.

Firefox portable relies heavily on prefs, bookmarks files, and add-ons that reside somewhere on my local hard drive. If I take firefox with me, I loose the ability to do stuff like read translated Japanese with perapera kun. So in a sense, Firefox is still not very portable.

Xmarks has already solved several of the most important aspects of this concept, now it's just a matter of getting firefox portable to utilize these features better. Instead of calling upon system resources from the local hard drive, firefox portable needs to be redirected somehow to system resources on a server somewhere out there in the great big world wide web.

I use a lot of public computers throughout my day. Public libraries, internet cafes, school computer labs, etc. etc. etc. Many of these do not allow patrons to install software, and do not allow patrons to add bookmarks to their browser, and do not allow you to open multiple browser windows. That they don't have firefox installed is not a problem if I have permission to run my portable apps from a USB memory stick.

The inevitable problem I run into, is that I cannot leverage the real power of firefox if I cannot access my bookmarks and passwords from my home computer. Moreover, I'd like to be able to use several firefox add-ons (like xmarks) on a shared computer, which is impossible for me to do right now.

Eric, if you folks are honestly considering t-timmy's suggestion, I would implore you to synchronize your efforts with the author of all those wonderful software titles over at portableapps.com.

I agree with t-timothy that xmarks is great, but if you could somehow make my firefox experience truly portable, that would fill a legitimate need in my life.

I am assuming that you could even limit the amount of server space needed if the various plug ins and add ons could somehow be installed once on the server, and then accessed by the local copy of firefox portable on the fly.

Shoot, wouldn't it be neat if I could turn on and turn off these extensions on the fly? No need to load the entire Japanese dictionary every time I launch firefox! Browsing could be so much faster if I could turn on that resource only when I'm actually going to use it!

Years ago, this was a compelling feature of Cassidy and Greene's Conflic Catcher. You could create multiple profiles, and pick between them when booting up a macintosh computer. If you weren't planning on writing any music during a session, you did not have to load MIDI manager, FreeMIDI or OMS during boot up. You then would not be required to configure your studio as soon as boot up was complete.

It was a great idea, but ultimately under-utilized by C&G's faithful customers because it was not very self-explanatory. That you COULD create different bootup profiles was a selling point, but how to take full advantage of the concept was unclear.

My opinion is that C&G could have made this feature more practical if they had offered a few preset "templates" Their engineers could have optimized a factory stock Macintosh with the extensions used by certain customers in certain common computer use scenarios.

The same is possibly true for firefox. When launching the program, wouldn't it be nice if I could select from a few preset profiles that cover the most common web browsing experiences? Tweak it for Multi-lingual users, tweak it for photo uploaders, tweak it for social networkers, tweak it for bloggers, tweak it for filtered access, etc. Plenty of add-ons exist for enhancing these various user experiences on firefox, but it's not always clear how they interact or interfere with one another, or how much much these add-ons drain the computer's available RAM and other resources.

Again, if you tweaked firefox for typical end-users, you could create templates and thus reduce the amount of server space needed to store the add-ons and extensions used by each end-user.

Many fast food operations have reduced inventory hassles by offering "combo meals". They didn't have to reduce the number of choices on the menu, they merely had to offer customers an easy to understand "template", with the price already calculated to keep the math easy.

Hope this feedback is useful in your ongoing deliberations.