The Business Blog at Intuitive.com

Dave Taylor has been involved with the Internet since 1980 and is widely recognized as an expert on both technical and business issues. He has been published over a thousand times, launched four Internet-related startup companies, has written twenty business and technical books and holds both an MBA and MS Ed. Dave maintains three weblogs, The Business Blog at Intuitive.com, focused on business and industry analysis, the eponymous Ask Dave Taylor devoted to tech and business Q&A and The Attachment Parenting Blog, discussing topics of interest to parents. Dave is an award-winning speaker, sought after conference and workshop participant and frequent guest on radio and podcast programs.

Moving from Safari to Firefox, and importing bookmarks

After hearing lots of good things about Firefox, a new open source web browser from the Mozilla developers, I've decided to try it for a few weeks instead of Apple's Safari browser. The only problem is that the current version of Firefox doesn't have the ability to import the XML-based bookmarks file that Safari keeps.

But it's not a problem thanks to a few minutes with Google.

I started out by reading through the Firefox forums, without any luck. Then I just switched to Google and searched for +safari +bookmarks +file +html and within the first half-dozen results found a link to the free application Safari Bookmarks Extractor. 30 seconds of download and this free application sucked out the 480 bookmarks and 48 folders in my Safari Bookmarks list and turned them into a flat HTML file on my desktop.

Then, in Firefox, I choose Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks, then File -> Import, and selected the new html file. No more than a second or two later they were all imported, and a little drag-and-drop action later (putting things where I wanted them) I have a completely identical bookmark bar and set of bookmarks off the Bookmark menu.

Quickly and easily done! And now I can try another browser and see how it works compared to Safari, which I've used as my main browser for at least a year. Want to take the Firefox challenge with me? Write about it here...

Posted by Dave Taylor at May 12, 2004 11:26 AM

Comments

DT take alook at this...

http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/010355.shtml#010355

Posted by: Peter C on May 12, 2004 12:16 PM

Interesting stuff, Peter. Actually, I've just wasted an hour playing with themes and skins and am starting to find the edges of the implementation. Even with the Mac OS X specific themes there are quirks to implementation, and I can't yet find one that will let me change the background color of the main navbars yet. Further, I'd like to have the address section a bit smaller so that the Google search section is a bit larger, but that's not an option. (Worse, there's no search history, a feature I already miss quite a bit).

Also, I figured out how to change to Firefox as my main browser: I had to go into Safari and set the default browser to Firefox. Weird.

Ah well, it's certainly interesting. Will I make it another week with Firefox? Not sure at this point...

Posted by: Dave Taylor on May 12, 2004 3:02 PM

Dave:
1)You can change the size of the address section via CSS, just ask in the THEMES forum on mozillazine and someone will help you out.

2) If you open up the History panel (toolbar icon or via "View->Sidebars->History") at the top there is a "search" texbox where if you start typing it will show the relevent URLs in your history
Or were you looking for something different?

-Jed

Posted by: jed on May 13, 2004 1:01 PM

Also: where did you get the cool Movabletype script that asks for the equation for posting?
Thanks
-Jed

Posted by: jed on May 13, 2004 1:05 PM

Jed, thanks for the tips! I've gone ahead and posted my wish-list to the Firefox community at mozillazine and we'll see what answers I get. :-)

The equation query box is something I wrote on my own and I'm not willing to share it, using the simple logic that because it's different and unique, it's that much more effective. And effective it is: I see 400-600 hits/daily to the mt-comments.cgi URL, but get zero (knock on e-wood) actual spam messages on the Weblog. Sweet. :-)

Posted by: Dave Taylor on May 13, 2004 3:05 PM

Oh yeah, it also works at keeping out comments from people who can't do basic math. :-) :-)

Posted by: Dave Taylor on May 13, 2004 3:06 PM

Hey, Dave--thanks for the import utility. I decided to move over to Firefox (at least tenatively) tonight but was struggling to figure out how to move over the several hundred bookmarks from Safari.

You and I worked together briefly while we were both at Purdue a decade or so back. Glad to see you're still keeping up the great work.

Posted by: Johndan on July 25, 2004 8:22 PM

Great to connect again with you Johndan! Gosh, has it been a decade since we were in West Lafayette? Wow...

Btw, I'm back to using Safari for now, and eager to pop the new beta of Safari off the Mac OS X Tiger CDROM that I just got from Apple (shhh) which apparently has a built-in RSS subsystem too.

Posted by: Dave Taylor on July 28, 2004 9:24 PM

I tried the bookmark import with Firefox preview release 1.0 and SafariBookmark Extractor as described above.

Firefox asks me to click the Import from file radio button....but when I hit 'Next'...nothing happens...no import...no nothing. (Tried restarting first, too).

Thoughts?

Posted by: darius on September 17, 2004 9:05 AM

Yeah, I'm having the same problem, Darius: nice html page from Safari, no response from Firefox.

Posted by: RevJan on September 17, 2004 10:40 AM

I have the same problem with the disappearing File > Import Box. Got all excited to try out the new Firefox, but can't use any of my old bookmarks...

Posted by: jesse on September 17, 2004 6:25 PM

I'm having the same problem here too. Very frustrating.

Posted by: Stacey on September 22, 2004 12:28 PM

I'm rolling with Firefox version 1.0 Preview Release now!

You can import Safari bookmarks with an older build of Firefox. When you then run Firefox PR1 old bookmarks have been imported.

Posted by: Elliot Winard on September 23, 2004 2:38 PM

yep, me too - having the same problem with the boomarks import - when I click next nothing happens

Posted by: samesame on October 3, 2004 3:50 AM

I just tried this too... here's how I got it to work, as mentioned previously.

You can grab an older copy of Firefox here:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/releases/0.9.1.html

Just move your current copy of Firefox out of the Applications folder, install this one, import the bookmarks file, then replace the old Firefox with the new one.

Kind of a pain. Hopefully they'll fix the bookmark importer soon.

Posted by: Mike on October 7, 2004 1:04 PM

Guys,
Read DTs post. He doesn't use the main File > Import ,
he uses "I choose Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks, then File -> Import, and selected the new html file."
;-)

Posted by: Cyndi McKenna on October 21, 2004 9:25 PM

I'm using Firefox 1.0 Preview release running on Mac OS 10.3.5, and I get the same prob (and yes i'm using the Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks way, Cyndi :p )

guess i've gotta try Mike's workaround...

Posted by: Scott Moore on October 21, 2004 11:05 PM

Try this. Very easy and quick. http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11550

Posted by: rich miller on November 15, 2004 3:47 AM

hi. here is another way to import safari bookmarks since the "Safari Bookmark Extrator" application won't work with so 10.3.9 or 10.4: http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/mac911/2005/04/safariin/index.php

Posted by: Galen West on September 24, 2005 9:59 AM

Just read your instructions for importing Safari bookmarks into Firefox. Problem is I don't have a Manage Bookmarks, then File -> Import. It just says orgnanize bookmarks. So are you talking about an earlier or later version of Firefox??? I have 2.0.0.11

Posted by: JB on January 18, 2008 11:42 AM

I'm using a Mac, are you talking about Firefox on a PC?? Perhaps you should have specified this!

Posted by: JB on January 18, 2008 11:44 AM

Before you leave a comment, a tip: If you're interested in blogging, you should sign up for my Blogsmart News so you can stay up to date on the latest insider tips and ideas for your Internet business and marketing efforts. Sign up right now and you'll get a free copy of my "Insider's Guide to Blogging" ebook too!