Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Firefox 3 <=> Google Browsersync

Recently upgraded my laptop to Ubuntu 8.04, which comes with Firefox 3. Which isnt too bad, weren't it for the fact that Google decided to discontinue their browsersync extension. I've gotten so used to that extension that I really don't want to give up on the features it provided.

My initial reaction was to use firefox2, which is also available on Hardy Heron. The only problem with that is, once you have started firefox3, your profile will have been converted to a format that messes up addons in firefox2.. so no extension works anymore on ff2. There are some solutions on the web, but those involve deleting your old profile directory.. something I didn't want to do as I'd have to reinstall all the plugins again.

That left me looking for alternatives...

A popular one is foxmarks.. however it only does bookmark syncs, whereas Google Browsersync also did history, cookies and passwords. It does look like a nice addon, but didn't have everything I needed.

Next stop.. Mozilla Weave.. it's early in the development, but that doesn't scare me too much.. unfortunately the signup page has been disabled. It does however look like the best option feature wise and it'll probably become the defacto sync tool, meaning the other external ones will probably become obsolete anyway.

So... I downloaded the addon and had a look at the code. The webserver storage part is done with standard DAV access, figured I might be able to set something up on my own server... I was right.

I'll describe the setup in a next post...

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