With rel 3 of firefox, the bookmarks are now kept in an sqlite database. It seems to be a very shaky system --- just take a look at the mozilla web pages about recovering a corrupted database - including the "tough luck Charley, your going to loose 'em"

When I start firefox, all of my bookmarks are there, but I have not been able to export them; and have not been able to restore them from the backups.

I do know how to write an sqlite "select" statement, but have not been able to find the bookmark names and descriptions in the database.

The reason for this post is to ask if
anyone can point me to a description of the bookmarks database that will help me find my bookmarks so I can build a file of them to put into a different browser.

I am done with firefox (and seamonkey)

Generally, to modify the bookmarks, select the Bookmarks menu, then select the Organize Bookmarks option.

There also is an add-on called SQLite Manager that allows direct inspection and modification of the sqlite data.

The decision to use sqlite is Yet Another Example of developers shoving their toys down the throats of end-users.

Perhaps the sqlite model better supports tagging and other fringe elements of maintaining bookmarks, but for those who have no such needs, the old-fashioned HTML bookmark list was great. People who do not use favicons, tagging, or anything else related to that should be provided the option to use the old-fashioned bookmark model.

A part about this decision I dislike is deleting history does not always work. History is now contained in the same data container as bookmarks. I have found that the best way is to close Firefox, delete all the JSON bookmark backups, and delete places.sqlite. I have the browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML option set to true and that forces Firefox to save the bookmarks in the old format in the location I specify in browser.bookmarks.file option. I never used the address bar history much anyway.

Not to mention the sluggishness of XUL and the irritating GTK interface rather than a native QT for KDE users.

Sure, the code is free to modify --- if one has the skills or money to hire somebody who does. In other words, the software is not much different than proprietary software.

I sure hope Konqueror becomes a much better browser in 4.x. Or the Opera devs add a few tweaks I want. I too am weary of the Mozilla philosophy.

There is also a GUI you can use to examine sqlite data base files. It may be in your distribution's repositories.

Unfortunately that does not work. I have been to the mozilla web page, that leads me to believe that the bookmarks database is corrupted.

I have it; There are ten tables involved; and it looks like there might be pointers to other files -- anyway I failed to find the bookmarks in their bookmark database; That raises the question "if they are not in the database, how come the browser still has them?"

I set "browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML" from the "about:config" browser page to 'true'; and added the entry "browser.bookmarks.file"; But after starting and restarting firefox, no .htlm file.

Thanks you for the reply, Woodsman

Gary

From the "Bookmarks" menu choose "Organize Bookmarks", then use the "Import and Backup" dropdown menu to do backups, or import/export your bookmarks from/to an HTML file.

I thought the menu names were straight forward and no one would have difficulties finding them.

Sorry, been there, done that --- it does not work;

I exported my bookmarks to an HTML file, and imported them to another system. It just works. Maybe I'm lucky.

like i said: Been there, done that ----- it did not work

Fascinating. I had no idea that this was being done.

Though I find sqlite to be a very useful tool, I wouldn't consider it for something like a bookmark manager. Too much like using an elephant gun to kill a gnat.

And FF3 definitely is annoyingly slow.

FF3 is much faster than FF2 but consumes awefully large amount of memory.

A little more google searching yielded info that there is an SQLite Manager addon for firefox that appeared to be a little easier to use than sqliteman. I found that little tidbit HERE. That page describes a little bit about the bookmark database.

Using the sqlite firefox plugin, three corrupted tables were found; then I exported the places.sqlite master table.

Now to see I I can figure out how to re-load it

Correcting the problem was simple, and streight forward and worth a try if your firefox is version 3 - which uses sqlite database for bookmarks.

This worked for me, no quarentee it will work for you; but if it does, its a whole lot simpler than what mozilla wants to put you through.
I tried it with a test "places.sqlite" before rebuilding the real bookmark file.

As simple as this:I have not chacked to see if anything was lost; what is important is that I at least got most of it back.

Gary

Interesting, and good to know. Thanks for posting the solution.