Sync your bookmarks and passwords

Written by Roshi

All of us have to juggle between multiple systems and different browsers at home and office. I complete the research part for my articles on my Samsung NC20 while returning home from office and often write my blogs on my husband’s MacBook at home before retiring to bed. So I save a lot of websites as bookmarks and favorites on Safari, Firefox and IE. However, I am now able to synchronize all my bookmarks and favorites in all systems and browsers thanks to Xmarks.

I need to work on multiple browsers—Safari at home, Firefox in office and Google Chrome on my netbook, but even if you are using only Firefox in both home and office PCs, you will still find it difficult to track your favorites and bookmarks. Xmarks eases your headache by syncing your bookmarks and passwords in all the systems and browsers you use. You just have to install the Xmarks add-on for all your browsers and favorites on each system and they will be synced automatically everywhere.

Xmarks is a free browser add-on, which can retrieve your passwords and bookmarks even if your system fails or browser crashes. It was earlier known as Foxmarks as it was exclusively available for Firefox, but now it is available for Internet Explorer, Safari and the dev version of Chrome also. You can download it for your favorite browser from its official website.

IE and Safari users can download the installer file from Xmarks website and install it to their system. Firefox users can download it from Firefox add-ons page or from the ‘Tools’ menu of the browser. Search for Xmarks and add it to your Firefox browser and click on ‘Install now’ to start the installation. Then restart Firefox to complete the installation.

After installation, Xmarks will confirm if you have an account with Xmarks or not. If you are using it for the first machine, go for a new account by entering your username, email id and password.

After registration, Xmarks will synchronize your bookmarks by syncing them to its server on the cloud, which you can access by signing into Xmarks website or by installing it on multiple machines. Here you can also choose the option to sync your passwords with Xmarks.

When you want to sync your bookmarks and passwords on the first machine on other machines, just install the Xmarks add-on on each machine and register with the same Xmarks id you had created on the first machine. Go to tools and scroll the mouse over ‘Xmarks’. Hit the ‘Synchronize now’ option, which will automatically give you all your passwords and bookmarks from the first machine. Every time you add new bookmarks or password, just click ‘Synchronize now’ and automatically they will be synchronized to the Xmarks server and then to different machines.

Customize the Xmarks add-on by modifying the settings using the ‘Tools’ menu. Choose your synchronization option—automatic, ask first, or sync on shutdown. You can also monitor the history of your bookmarks and restore the old bookmarks anytime. It also includes options to modify your profiles, encrypt your bookmarks and many others.

You can view a copy of all your bookmarks and favorites on the cloud by logging into Xmarks website. It gives you a lot of options such as add new, open, preview, delete and sync your bookmarks. You can also share your bookmarks with friends in the form of a webpage, RSS feed or widget by sending them emails. Xmarks also allows you to restore your old bookmarks from the website. You can import the current bookmarks of your delicious profile or export your bookmarks in an HTML file.

Xmarks has recently added a new site discovery feature to their website, by using all the bookmarking sites information from its users. Site discovery option is displayed, when you click ‘Show site info’ from the ‘Tools’ menu. Type any website address in the URL bar and Xmarks will automatically display the information of top five sites saved as bookmarks by other users.

The best thing about Xmarks is that my bookmarks will be automatically synchronized on my netbook , laptop and desktop without fail.

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