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Xmarks

grahamperrin

grahamperrin

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jun 8, 2007
4,942
648
Focusing solely on Xmarks

http://xmarks.com


From the iPad Apps area …

LaurieAnn said:
Does a browser exist that incorporates XMarks bookmark synching? This is probably the one thing I miss the most when surfing the net on my iPad2. I realize I can synch my bookmarks on the computer with Internet Explorer via iTunes. I was hoping something was out there that had it built in the browser.
Click to expand...

BobbyCarbn said:
Firefox works like a charm with the Xmarks extension.
Click to expand...

I see Mozilla Firefox for Android but not for iOS.


In the OS X Mavericks (10.9) area …

Xmarks Safari sync


From the OS X Yosemite (10.10) area …

Under Features Mac OS X should have:

Freyqq said:
Be able to sync bookmarks, but not tabs and history, in safari
Click to expand...

Under What browser are you currently using?:

Freyqq said:
… Safari is great, but I want my bookmarks synced to my windows computer too. …
Click to expand...

grahamperrin said:
… For extended discussion of things other than the browsers, please aim for something other than this topic. …
Click to expand...

Freyqq said:
I've tried xmarks. It didn't cleanly sync bookmarks and every once in a while, half of my bookmarks would mysteriously be missing.
Click to expand...

@Freyqq was the problem limited to Safari 8.x, or was that half missing from all synchronised areas?

If not missing from all areas, then was the missing half present at https://my.xmarks.com ?


I use OS X Mavericks, I'm gradually switching to PC-BSD and I'll almost certainly use Android …

Whenever Safari 7.x appears to have trouble with bookmarks, https://my.xmarks.com appears OK.

In my case the trouble affecting Safari 7.x may be something that's peculiar (and confidential) to my use of Mavericks.
 
Last edited:
grahamperrin said:
Focusing solely on Xmarks

http://xmarks.com


From the iPad Apps area …





I see Mozilla Firefox for Android but not for iOS.


In the OS X Mavericks (10.9) area …

Xmarks Safari sync


From the OS X Yosemite (10.10) area …

Under Features Mac OS X should have:



Under What browser are you currently using?:







@Freyqq was the problem limited to Safari 8.x, or was that half missing from all synchronised areas?

If not missing from all areas, then was the missing half present at https://my.xmarks.com ?


I use OS X Mavericks, I'm gradually switching to PC-BSD and I'll almost certainly use Android …

Whenever Safari 7.x appears to have trouble with bookmarks, https://my.xmarks.com appears OK.

In my case the trouble affecting Safari 7.x may be something that's peculiar (and confidential) to my use of Mavericks.
Click to expand...

I had to periodically restore from a backup on the xmarks site, as bookmarks would just disappear. I was trying it with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. This was about a year ago though; maybe it is better now.
 
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OK, so here's a screen shot of apparent duplication:

apparent duplication.png

I'll use the Xmarks de-duplication routines then edit this post.


Postscripts

Firefox has trouble showing the web interface to my bookmarks. Weird.
 
Last edited:
Freyqq said:
… bookmarks would just disappear …
Click to expand...

Recently I had something like the opposite. Some tidying, previously done by me, was apparently undone. I can't guess how it occurred but it was first noticed in the bookmarks bar of Safari on Mavericks. I used the web interface to Xmarks to restore from a day earlier.
 
Time to breathe a little life back into this thread---I'm sooooooo done with Xmarks. For the upteenth time, loads of bookmarks and missing, but more annoying than that, about 1,000 bookmarks are duplications, making my bookmarks completely unusable.

Any alternatives out there? I bounce back and forth between Chrome and Safari (the latter of which has become a pain to use, riddled with problems, horribly slow, etc.). There must be something that actually works.

Fingers crossed!
 
I stopped using Xmarks a few years ago because the extension would crap out on me. I simply backup my bookmarks once every other week. I should do some spring cleaning on my bookmarks but I've been putting that off for about 17 years now and simply don't care to do it. Coincidentally, I ran a bookmark checker last summer and managed to only find that only about 80 bookmarks were dead, out of many thousands.
 
Zenithal said:
Coincidentally, I ran a bookmark checker last summer and managed to only find that only about 80 bookmarks were dead, out of many thousands.
Click to expand...

I'm curious---bookmark checker? Had no clue such a thing existed. Any chance you have a link to share (sounds like a GREAT idea).

grahamperrin said:
Did you ever sign in and allow Google to attempt synchronisation?
Do you ever enable Safari in the iCloud pane of System Preferences?
Click to expand...

No, they've always been toggled off, since Xmarks warned turning them on could corrupt the Xmarks sync. Sadly, Xmarks is fully capable of sync corruption on its own.... :::sigh:::
 
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Holy moly.

Found the "Fast Bookmark Scanner" extension for Chrome. Disabled Xmarks, then ran the extension. The heaping pile of messed up folders it discovered was mind blowing---one particular folder had been duplicated 26 times, each duplicate holding 1,300+ links.

That's nearly 44,000 links that, based on the folder name, began as about a half dozen original links.

Pretty sure I'm not going to be reactivating Xmarks once this is cleaned up.
 
If that's the one I'm thinking of, be careful using it because it interprets different sub links within a domain as a duplicate.
 
Great. Good to know I'm not the only one who keeps bookmarks around. Unfortunately, bookmarks severely affect browser performance.
 
Zenithal said:
Great. Good to know I'm not the only one who keeps bookmarks around. Unfortunately, bookmarks severely affect browser performance.
Click to expand...

Huh. Didn't know that. Now I feel even better about the radical approach I just took:
  1. Slimmed down my bookmark mountain using "Fast Bookmark Scanner"
  2. Exported backup copy of remaining bookmarks
  3. Deleted all bookmarks from Chrome (yup---that's the radical part)
  4. Rebuilt only the 25-30 bookmarks I use regularly
  5. Turned Xmarks back on, to overwrite the server copy
  6. Launched Safari, dumped all bookmarks, and let Xmarks overwrite that with my pristine little group of bookmarks
If I need anything in the backup, well...I'll deal with it then. For now, I'm testing the waters to see just how much is truly necessary and how much was stuff that used to be.

Both browsers' toolbars look very zen all of a sudden. :)
 
Yeah, I've got around 7K myself and after loading the bookmarks into a new profile, browsers feel slower. I really should go through them but with 7K of them why bother?
 
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