bitful

Premise 1: I do not really need to access all my internet bookmarks anywhere. Yes it is handy, but I am more interested in investigating and working towards a future where our browsing profile will follow us everywhere (if we allow it to, and when we want it to), and synchronisation of our data and preferences plays a big part in it.

Premise 2: my configuration works for the following set of devices/data:

• home desktop computer Firefox 2 bookmarks
• home desktop computer Internet Explorer 7 favourites
• home laptop Firefox 2 bookmarks
• iPod Touch Safari bookmarks
• Windows Mobile 6 smartphone mobile favourites
• work desktop computer Firefox 2 bookmarks

The objectives are

• to access my full set of Firefox bookmarks on all computers at home and at work
• to access my full set of Firefox bookmarks on my iPod Touch
• to customise Firefox with a different bookmarks toolbar on my home and work computers

Synchronising bookmarks across Firefox installations is very simply done by using the Foxmarks Firefox plugin.

The Firefox add-on Thinger that lets you create multiple bookmark toolbars. I have a 'Work' and a 'Home' toolbar, and configured Firefox to use the former on the office computer and the latter on my personal machines.

The iPod Touch cannot synchronise bookmarks with Firefox but syncs with Safari bookmarks or Internet Explorer favourites . I chose Explorer, this means I need to sync my Firefox bookmarks and Explorer favourites so that the iPod can pick them up. I use the Firefox add-on Syncmarks.

Windows Mobile only syncs the content of the Mobile Favourites bookmarks subfolder. I don't mind it as I don't use my smartphone to browse the web that much, so I only keep a useful subset of bookmarks in the Mobile Favourites folder. If you need to you can sync all your Internet Explorer favourites to Windows Mobile (it involves an additional application and further synchronising).

Complex? Yes.

Reliable? Yes, until one of the elements changes and does not communicate nicely with the others (for instance, I reluctantly uninstalled Firefox 3 RC2 because many plugins had not been updated by their developers yet).

Worth it? Well, yes, if you regularly use several devices and want enjoy a somewhat seamless web experience and keeping stuff organised in one location only. I know I do.

UPDATE (14 August 2008): Syncmarks does not work with Firefox 3, and I have not found an alternative yet. If you do, please let me know with a comment here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 8th, 2008 at 8:31 am and last modified on August 15th, 2008 at 6:34 am, and is filed under technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.