Foxmarks: Bookmark Synchronization Heaven

Long have I searched for the magic bullet solution to my bookmark synchronization woes.  I’ve wanted a simple plugin that would synchronize my bookmarks between multiple installations of Firefox and Safari, thus making it simple to access said bookmarks from any computer, or between the two commonly used browsers on my Mac.  I’ve looked at many options, but always the solution only allows me to sync one browser or the other, leaving me looking for some secondary sync tool to get between Firefox and Safari on my Mac itself, not via network or a proper sync.

I’d almost given up on finding a solution, then, a few months ago I started using Delicious. It was cool because there were plugins for Safari, Firefox, and IE, and of course, it’s by default a web based bookmarking system. Its cool, I like it, but I just didn’t use it much. The plugins integrate it into the browser by giving you ANOTHER bookmarks menu, not by integrating with the browsers’ bookmark system.

Before ever using Safari or Delicious, my Firefox bookmark sync tool of choice was Foxmarks. It provided a web interface for remote access to my bookmarks, plus a nice sync interface for all my Firefox installations. I was randomly poking around today and discovered that Foxmarks now works with Safari and IE! I was excited and wasted no time installing Foxmarks for Safari. So far, it works great!

For the most part, it works just as you’d expect, bookmarks sync between all my Safari(Mac only, for now, I think) and Firefox(Mac, Linux, and Windows) installations without hassle. I’ve yet to try out the Internet Explorer functionality, but I’m guessing it works pretty well. I just don’t use IE enough to care.

One caveat to be aware of: both Firefox and Safari use some browser specific URL syntax to access internal functionality for recent bookmarks, etc. That stuff will only work on the browser where it was created, Safari on Safari, Firefox on Firefox, etc. For me, that’s a non issue, I rarely use those features. I have tested and confirmed that javascript bookmarklets (like for Tinyurl and Cornify) do seem to work after syncing. Those are about the only reason I use on the bookmark menubar.