Using Foxmarks on Different Computers
February 11, 2009
by Walter S. Mossberg
Here are a few questions I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.
I have Firefox on my home laptop, but Internet Explorer on my office laptop. Can I transfer my Firefox bookmarks on my home computer to IE on my office computer using the Foxmarks bookmark-synchronization service you recommended? And how would I go about doing it?
Yes. You start by uploading your bookmarks from Firefox at home to your Foxmarks Web account, using the Firefox version of Foxmarks. That will establish the bookmark collection on the Web site as identical to your Firefox collection. Then, you install the IE version of Foxmarks on your office computer, and, when it prompts you to sync, you can either merge the Web-based bookmarks you previously uploaded from Firefox with the ones already on IE, or choose the option to overwrite the IE bookmarks entirely with the ones online.
Does the Foxmarks service work with AOL’s browser bookmarks?
AOL’s browser is not supported. Neither are some other browsers, such as Opera or Google’s Chrome. Foxmarks currently comes in versions only for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari (Mac version only). The Firefox version also works with Flock, which is a browser heavily based on Firefox.
Do you have any idea what the realistic hardware requirements will be to run Windows 7?
Microsoft hasn’t announced these yet. But the requirements for the current beta version are likely to be similar to those for the final release. The beta hardware requirements are: a 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor; 1 GB of system memory; 16 GB of available disk space; support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory available for graphics; and a DVD-R/W Drive.
In the past, Microsoft’s minimum requirements have tended to understate what’s needed to run Windows well, even when doing typical tasks. It’s too early to say if this will be true of Windows 7. But I can say that, in my testing so far, the beta of Windows 7 runs much more quickly and smoothly than Vista on the same hardware.
- You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.
Comments
I have another question. I am using Maxthon, which is based on IE. But it appeared that Foxmarks doesn’t recognise Maxthon, and has uploaded IE favourites. Is Maxthon after all NOT compatible with Foxmarks?
Posted by Benjamin Han at February 12th, 2009 at 7:43 pmI have been using Windows Live Sync (formerly FolderShare) to sync my bookmarks across several PCs, and as Mr. Mossberg reported in his Sept 2005 column, it worked very well.
Now that I have started using FireFox, I was immediately interested in using Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks); however, it differs from Live Sync in that it stores your bookmarks on it’s own servers (whereas Live Sync syncs via an encrypted PC to PC stream, and does not store your data anywhere else).
How secure is Xmarks? What level of comfort is there if you stored Account ID information in the Favorites “Properties”?
Posted by James Greeno at July 31st, 2009 at 10:40 am