Mozilla Weave – ur doing it right
A friend recently asked about syncing bookmarks across different browsers. Right now it seems like the best tool for that is Xmarks, which performs the admirable task of making sure bookmarks are all lined up between IE, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.
I had used Xmarks in the past (it used to be a Firefox exclusive, Foxmarks), but lately I hadn’t been as synced up as I could be. I will openly confess to using Firefox almost exclusively for my web browsing needs – so the ability to sync across several browsers seemed unnecessary.
The big option for Firefox users right now is also made by Mozilla – Weave. Taking advantage of the assumption that the intended user is browsing with Firefox exclusively, Weave does bookmark synchronization and a whole lot more.
Obviously, bookmark syncing is present. Expanding on that, Weave will also sync the Firefox toolbar settings as well. Example: I have my toolbars tweaked so my bookmarks are just icons on the top menu bar, next to the Help menu. I think it looks nicer than using the standard bookmark toolbar and frees up some screen real estate on my laptop. When I make changes to this toolbar (or any toolbar, for that matter), those changes are saved to my Weave profile. If I add a shortcut on my laptop, the next time I load Firefox on my desktop computer said shortcut will automagically appear.
Continuing in features exclusive to Firefox, Weave will also sync the settings of your Personas, or user themes, assuming the necessary add-in is installed on the computers being use. The Awesome Bar will also be updated, so typing in the same words or phrases will get the same results on all computers.
And if you could possibly want more, Weave also allows you to use the history and even the closed tabs fr
om other Firefox installations. Firefox recently added the ability to recover closed tabs, meaning the user doesn’t have to worry about accidentally closing a tab and then having to root through the history folder to find it. Once Weave is installed, a new item is added to the History menu: “Tabs From Other Computers”. It’s a small addition that turns out to be more useful than most would assume at first.
I have three different computers I that I use Firefox with, two at home and one at work. Weave has proved to be a pretty handy tool for keeping my user experience consistent across all of them. Mozilla is always hard at work, making sure that Firefox is a world-class browser and also working on other special projects like collaborative coding, browser enrichment, and giving everyone the ability to write extensions. Check out the Mozilla Labs site to see all the neat things they’re working on.