Bookmark Sync Messes Up Yet Again

If you have been reading my blog you will know that I moved Firefox to MultiProcessor E10s support, and because of that I gave up on Xmarks, since it doesn't support E10s.I have had years of issue with Xmarks Sync, which constantly messed up my Bookmarks especially between Firefox and Safari. The fact that iCloud Sync doesn't have a reset or the ability to easily erase your online bookmarks and clean them up.So I decided to try using the iCloud Bookmarks sync plug in which works on Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome on windows on my Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and then use Firefox and Chrome Sync. And it seemed to work for a while.But as of today I looked at my bookmarks and they were completely messed up yet again.Now I constantly keep backups of my Firefox bookmarks on my Mac, because of all the issues I have had. So I was able to restore my Firefox bookmarks, so I can restore them.The problem is that I have to run my Surface to get my bookmarks to sync, and we will see how it goes from the Firefox backup. Or maybe I will see how my Parallels works with the sync.I will update to let you know how it goes.EDIT:HA! Thought I might be able to fix my bookmarks easily, but after re-importing my Firefox bookmarks, my bookmarks are messed up all over all browsers and all operating systems.EDIT 2: I just imported my bookmarks into Firefox in Parallels and we will see how the sync goes now.EDIT 3:Ha! I was kidding myself. My bookmarks in Safari were so messed up it was a joke! I exported them as an HTML from Firefox, cleared my Safari  ones and imported them again.EDIT 4: Even better! After replacing my safari bookmarks with clean imported bookmarks I walked away for a few minutes and when I came back the bookmarks were all gone! So I had to import them again, and see what happens.EDIT 5:AND IT DID IT AGAIN! What the hell!

More fun with iCloud Bookmark sync

So after giving up on LastPass because it is not e10 multiprocessor compatible, I have been trying to sync my bookmarks using Firefox Sync, Chrome Sync and iCloud Bookmark Sync for windows. Unfortunately iCloud bookmarks is garbage, because it has no simple way to either clear bookmarks, or force a sync from a single source, and unfortunately it often gets completely corrupted! To clear it you have to disable sync everywhere except your mac, and let it sit, then clear your bookmarks and either import or create a new clean set. Unforunately this process is very unstable. It requires much switching off sync and waiting, and hoping.Keep your fingers crossed, as I am.

LastPass 4 does support e10s in Firefox, but no word on Xmarks

So I was let know that LastPass version 4 does in fact work with e10 multiprocessing in Firefox. The normal update does not work, so you need to install LastPass 4.0 from the web site.There is no word on Xmarks though.So I am now running the iCloud Bookmarks Plug In on my Surface Pro 4 to sync between Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. And using Firefox bookmark Sync to sync from my mac to my Surface Pro.

Looks like Xmarks and Lastpass will never support e10 Multiprocessor in Firefox

So it looks like neither Xmarks or Lastpass will ever support e10 Multiprocessing in Mozilla Firefox. For years Mozilla Firefox has been my browser of choice because of all of it's extensions. There was a short period where I used Chrome, but it is not as customizable. Firefox though is changing and is becoming multiprocessor, and that requires re-writing plugins to work with e10, or they won't work. Right no Firefox will still work without e-10, by keeping Firefox in the old mode without mulit-processor support.I contacted Xmarks/Lastpass support to see about their e-10 support, and I got this response.Hello,Thanks for reaching out to Xmarks Support.Through testing that we were unable to install Xmarks in Electrolysis e10. At this time, we have no plans to launch Xmarks compatibility with e10. I will submit a formal feature request ticket advocating your desire if you'd like.Thanks,JeremySo basically a paid service will never update their software and will very shortly lose all support for Firefox my favorite browser! Time to kill my accounts for xmarks and lastpass!Of course now the question is how to replace these essential programs. I am going to try out Firefox Browser sync, and iCloud sync. Unfortunately iCloud Browser sync only runs on windows, but I have my Surface Pro 4 running Windows 10, so I can try Safari Browser sync to sync between Chrome, Firefox and Safari on Mac. And it is e10 supported, so that might work. I will keep my backup in Firefox on my mac so I can keep replacing my good backups.

More fun with Xmarks and Safari

So I am still having major xmarks issues. On my Mac on El Capitan 10.11.5 I am running Firefox 47.01 and Xmarks 4.3.19, and I am running Safari 9.1.1 and Safari Technology Preview 9.1.2 (which was recently updated, and maybe the issue) and Xmarks for Safari 2.0.19.After creating my clean bookmarks in Firefox and making a clean backup of them I kept uploading them and overwriting the xmarks servers, but when I uses Xmark for Safari it has been seemingly just wiping out all my Xmarks in both Safari's, but leaving my completly messed up bookmarks on both my iPhone and iPad. So this time I turned off iCloud Sync for Safari on both iPad and iPhone and deleted the bookmarks then overwrote the Safari bookmarks on my mac with the clean bookmarks from Xmarks, and it left Safari empty of bookmarks once again. Weird. So I let it sit overnight with no bookmarks in Safari on my Mac, iPhone or iPad, but when I woke up that was no longer the case. Once again Safari had messed up bookmarks on my Mac (though nothing on iPhone and iPad sync iCloud is off completely) and the server copy on Xmarks is messed up again too!Great! So now I have also turned off iCloud on my Mac and have re-installed my good backup bookmarks into Firefox and re-uploaded them to Xmarks, and redownloaded them with Xmarks for Safari (which I have also uninstalled and re-installed) and once again I have no bookmarks in Safari. Maybe having iCloud though on all my devices it will eventually clear the bookmarsk in iCloud which are obviously totally messed up, though eventually I do want it to sync to my iPhone and iPad.I have contacted Xmarks support to see if they will do anything.I am thinking after this I may just need to kill Xmarks for Safari and just work from an exported bookmarks from Firefox and put them into Safari, as for sure something is not working with Xmarks!

More fun with Xmarks on Mac, huzzah for Xmarks for Safari (if only it worked)

So I finally got X-marks to sync, but it was a total pain in the arse. In fact I had to wipe my whole Firefox profile, and use Firefox Sync to get all my plug ins back and then re-log into everything, and then import my clean bookmarks backup and use that to Upload over the Xmarks server. I then did the same at work where I have a portable Firefox setup, though after checking my x-marks bookmarks online they were still old, so I synced again this morning and the server ones finally seem to match.Now is where the real fun begins! So I went to Xmarks for Safari and told it to Download my bookmarks, as it's bookmarks were by far the most messed up. The first attempt seemed to merge my server bookmarks and Safari ones so they were an even bigger mess, so I tried downloading again, and now I have no safari bookmarks at all! YIPPEE!!!!So in Xmarks for Safari I did a Reset Xmarks and relogged in and told it to keep data on server, and discard data on this computer (of which there is none). And Nothing. ABSOLUTELY NO BOOKMARKS IN SAFARI, nor in Safari Tech Preview. Good job Xmarks!So finally my bookmarks are clean on the server, but I have absolutely no bookmarks in Safari, and my iPad and iPhone each still have the really messed up bookmarks from the strange merging of my clean bookmarks and my clean bookmarks, and they all have iCloud sync turned on.And it looks like the solution I have used in the past is no longer viable. I used to boot into Bootcamp and let Apple's iCloud Sync Extension work to sync my Safari boomarks, but posts online I am looking at seem to imply that the extension no longer functions with the latest Firefox and the plug in has been pulled. Thanks a lot Apple. Really appreciate the help!Can't Apple make a damn syncing plug in for Bookmarks for those of us that don't use Safari on the mac, since we are forced to use Safari on our iOS devices?

Anyone else have major problems with XMARKS on Mac?

So I am a Mac user, but I do not use Safari as my browser of choice, but I still want my bookmarks to sync between browsers and get to my ipad and iphone. And my browser of choice is still Firefox (I used Chrome for a while but missed all the plug ins with Firefox) as I like it expansion abilities (and yes I know in the near future it will lose them and start using Chrome extensions, and I will likely re-evaluate then).So to keep my Bookmarks synced for a long time I have been a user of Xmarks. It works with Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and nominally Safari. On PC Apple has released a bookmark sync plug in for iCloud that works very well, but they have never released it for mac. So I use XMARKS.The problem is I think with Xmarks Safari, which is finicky at best, and often if I am not paying attention to my bookmarks, they all get mixed up and unorganized. Things get pulled out of folders and moved all over, and yes in XMARKS you can go see old sets of bookmarks, but it isn't exactly a quick or easy process, and often to find a clean set of bookmarks I need to go back far enough that I lose any recent bookmarks that I have added, so I end up just re-organizing my bookmarks once again.I just spent the last 2 days doing that gain, and am doing a force overwrite of my server bookmarks, so hopefully all my browsers end up with my nice clean freshly organized bookmarks, but I don't expect it to work, as old things always pop up and things get completely disorganized.Plus it makes me nervous that my upload has been doing this for the last half an hour!Which even though I am doing a forced overwrite of the server, I can bet things will get messed up (and yes I have exported my bookmarks and made a backup from Firefox, as this organization took a long damn time).And somehow my bookmarks never seem to make it to Safari or my iPad an iPhone correctly no matter what I do. And I often end up manually importing the bookmarks into Safari, but then the sync gets all messed up.Let's hope for once this actually works.(EDIT) Yup, well now that I have my clean set of bookmarks, it seems I can't get them to Force Overwrite on the server! Xmarks just seems stuck at synchronizing. And Firefox keeps locking up so I have to force quite. Yipee. I guess I can manually delete Safari's bookmarks and import the firefox ones and see how that goes, but I have never had a good experience with that! SHIT!(EDIT AGAIN) Walked both dogs and when I came back the sync was done, but when I checked the bookmarks online, they were the old ones, so it didn't seem to work. SHIT! This is really annoying!

Mozilla Firfox is dumping it’s plug ins, moving to chrome style extensions

Ars Technica reports that Mozilla is dumping it's plug ins in favor of Chrome Style Extensions. This will mean a more modern browser which is less likely to crash, but it means no more extensions that can deeply change the browser.And it is it's powerful plugin style that is why I have stuck with Mozilla even when Chrome was faster, so this might mean the end of me sticking with Mozilla. I use quite a few Moxilla extensions ever day, like Tab Mix Plus and download them all, and if they are gone, there goes my support and use of Mozilla. I personally have always been willing to have a little less stability to keep Mozillas awesome plug in support, so I think this is an awful idea!Honestly I am going to give Vivaldi a try, it is a new browser for power users from one of the founders of the Opera browser. With Mozilla removing it's most powerful features, a customizable alternative based on the same webkit engine as Chrome sounds like a great idea! ArsTechnica has a good look at it.