Yes, shh, I can hear you. No need to yell at the internets. I will tell you which addons make up the amazing collection that keeps me firmly rooted. Rather than one giant post though, I’ll focus on a single addon per post over the next few weeks. Keep this page bookmarked as I’ll update it as more posts appear.

My Top Firefox Addons

• Xmarks – Bookmarks and password synchronisation
• Lazarus – Automated form recovery

Every time I install Firefox on a new machine, I go through and add every one of the above addons. Until Chrome can provide alternatives for most of them, I can’t see myself switching. Of course as always, I could be wrong? Is Chrome already the next best thing, or have I missed some addons which would transform my world?

Now to be honest, the mobile interface isn’t very strong. It’s not a genuine replacement for native bookmarks, but apparently there’s an iPhone application in the works.

Well until that iPhone application eventuates, I’ve come up with a quick fix. It’s not perfect, but it uses the native iPhone bookmark system which is a whole lot better.

Step 1: Download Xmarks for Internet Explorer

You can get the installation from here. Just do it. I know you don’t like Internet Explorer, and neither do I.

Step 2: Login and Setup

Make sure you choose to keep the server bookmarks and delete your local favourites! Otherwise you’ll end up with the useless default Microsoft links everywhere.

You could set up a separate mobile profile, but I’ve been using my home profile instead and it seems to work for me.

Step 3: Enable iTunes Bookmark Sync

Plug in your iPhone, open iTunes, and click on the Info tab. Select the option to “Sync bookmarks with Internet Explorer”, and click Sync!

Step 4: Comment

That’s it, you’re done. So comment on this post and tell me how it works for you, because as Jeff says, A Blog Without Comments Is Not a Blog. That’s all for today!

The main problem with bookmarks that has existed since they were born, is the issue of keeping them organised. These days I use multiple computers, with a number of different browsers, and my bookmarks get out of control. Why would anyone want to use bookmarks anymore? In his post titled “Do We Still Need Bookmarks?“, Jono answers this question with these insightful use cases:

The Todo List. “I want to look at this, but not right now.” Someone gave me a link to a cool video about robots, but I don’t want to watch it right now, because I’m in the middle of something. Or, there’s a web form I need to fill out, but I don’t have the information I need yet. I bookmark the page because there’s an action I want to take later.

Sharing. “Oh man, this is funny!” This time, I found the cool robot video, and I want to show it to someone. I found a hilarious picture, or a news article that proves I was right in that argument we had a week ago. Either way, the value is in the sharing. I bookmark it so that later on I can give the link to others.

Frequently Used. “I want to get back here fast.” The page where I view my bank account status, the central documentation page for the project I’m working on, or a hub from which I often start surfing. I bookmark it because I expect to return often and I want to get there fast.

The Research Collection. “This fits right in to something I’m working on.” I’m a history teacher, preparing a lesson plan, and I’m collecting resources about World War 1. Or, I’m a political blogger, and I’m collecting links about all the ways my Least Favorite Politician has screwed things up. I bookmark pages because I want to add them to my growing collection of data on a certain topic.

This is exactly how I use my bookmarks, as well as everyone I know. We’re all just stuck copying our bookmarks from one computer to another and importing into the various browsers we use. What else can we do? Call Captain Planet and the Planeteers? No, they’re too busy fighting Dr. Blight and Looten Plunder. What we need is Xmarks!

Formally known as Foxmarks, this service lives in the cloud and performs automatic synchronization of bookmarks between all of your computers and browsers. What evolved as a Firefox Add-on, Xmarks now supports the top 4 leading browsers today with a range of plugins and native applications. As it’s in the cloud you have the benefit of your bookmarks being backed up and available wherever you have internet access.

“It sounds ok, but I’m not convinced,” a random reader might say. Well that’s just the start, look at this impressive list of features:

• A simple web interface to access and organise your bookmarks.
• The ability to define different profiles for home, work, etc., to filter which bookmarks are available where.
• Secure sync of stored passwords between when you use Xmarks with Firefox.
• Mobile bookmarks are supported with a special mobile interface directly in your browser.
• The website has a cool blue colour scheme (I like blue).

Now to be honest, the mobile interface isn’t very strong. It’s not a genuine replacement for native bookmarks, but apparently there’s an iPhone application in the works.

Xmarks is my number 1 favourite browser plugin ever. The first thing I do when I use a new computer or browser is download the appropriate plugin, and pull down my bookmarks and passwords. The process usually takes less than a minute, and I have an exact copy of my toolbar links and all of my saved login information. Any changes I make will be synchronized immediately, which makes it perfect for the “Todo List” style of links. For the most important things I’ll place them on the toolbar so that I see them right away when I get home. Best of all, it works over HTTP so you can use Xmarks behind a proxy.

A year ago I would have agreed that bookmarks were dying off. With the power of the cloud, Xmarks brings back bookmarks, big time!