-Brading Software Message Board
+--Forum: Bookmark Converter Support and Bug Reports
+---Topic: Bookmarks dropped from Firefox->Firefox sync started by Steve
Posted by: Steve on June 14 2005,17:50
I've been using Bookmark Converter 3 for several months now. At first, everything seemed fine, but now I notice that the conversion process has a tendancy to drop recently added bookmarks. I can't figure what the common denominator is -- it doesn't seem to happen all the time, but it always seems to be bookmarks added within the past few days that are lost.
I generally sync my laptop at startup with my desktop, which is always on and usually has some browser windows left open (relevant because on exit, Firefox seems to replace any updated copy of its bookmarks with whatever the last open instance was showing. As far as I can tell, updates to my desktop bookmarks file generally get overwritten when I eventually shut Firefox down, but that's OK so long as I've got one complete copy.)
Other relatively minor complaints: (1) After a sync, the recent folders ("Create in") in the Firefox Add Bookmark dialog are set to random values. (2) Bookmark icons are lost. (3) Whatever data Firefox uses for Date Added, Modified, & Viewed seems to get creamed.
Aside from all that this is still far and away the best sync product for Firefox. (Hmm... is that a cheer for you, or a slam of Firefox?
)
Posted by: Magnus Brading on June 14 2005,18:42
Thanks for your input!
I'm a little confised though, you say that you perform the sync operation while at least one of the browsers are running, and that you are aware that the browsers often overwrite the bookmark files when they are closed, but still you are surprised that the new bookmarks are overwritten?
I think this sounds like a clear case of one of the open browsers overwriting the newly created bookmark file (hence, the lost added recent bookmarks). You must always have all involved browsers closed while performing a sync, merge or conversion operation.
Please let me know if I misunderstood something in your report.
And about the smaller issues, these are planned to be supported in a future update, please stay tuned.
Posted by: Steve on June 15 2005,02:43
Thanks for the response. Yes, I was aware that the browser on one of the machines was open, and that the bookmarks on that machine would get overwritten. But I wasn't expecting that the bookmarks on the other machine would.
In other words, if I have machine A (browser closed), and machine B (browser open), and merge the two, I would expect to initially get [bookmarks.html from A] + [bookmarks.html from B] on both machines, with the copy on B being overwritten by the cached bookmarks from the browser on B when that browser closes. I'm OK with that, since all I really need is one copy, somewhere, containing all of them. But I would not expect to lose bookmarks on A.
If the browsers on both machines must be closed during a merge, I'll make sure to do that. I wasn't initially aware I needed to do that. But I still wonder why I'm getting the result I'm getting, rather than what I expected.
Posted by: Magnus Brading on June 15 2005,09:47
The problem in this scenario is that the next time you sync browser A and B, it will seem like the user of browser B has advertedly removed the new bookmarks (since that bookmark file was reverted to the state before the last sync when it was subsequently closed), and hence Bookmark Converter will do its job and remove these again in the browser A too (deletions of bookmarks are synced to, otherwise it would only be a simple merge).
So yes, please close all involved browsers before performing any sync, conversion or merge operations, and it should work.
Posted by: Steve on June 15 2005,15:13
Ahhh, I wasn't aware that bookmark deletes were also synced! Silly me, that explains it.
Thanks for your help, and keep up the good work!
Posted by: Steve on June 15 2005,15:20
Hmm... So is the quick merge option for doing a simple merge, while the synchronize option is for doing a merge including deletes?
Posted by: Magnus Brading on June 15 2005,21:49
Yes, the merge operation will simply add/combine all involved bookmark collections, while synchronization is a more advcanced operation where e.g. deletes and reorderings are handled too.
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