Friday, December 03, 2010

My Guide to Synchronize Bookmarks Across Browsers

One big drawback in using several browsers is to synchronize bookmarks. Now now, just a tad of patience would be good. I can hear some of you shouting out names like xmarks, delicious, etc. New releases of FF and Chrome come with their own sync options. So many to choose from, right! You may be spoilt for choice. 


Currently, I am using IE 9, FF4, Chrome 9 and Opera 11 on both Windows and Linux platforms. So, now you know that I am game for any cross-browser sync solution. I have tried quite a few products, xmarks, bookmark bridge, bookmark sync, transmute, etc. Here's what I experienced.


I have used xmarks for quite some time now and was initially a big fan with their concept and product. I was really quite sad to hear that xmarks was going to go down. I even pledged support. But recently I have to admit that my opinion is changing a bit. I have been frequently running into problems with xmarks. You might ask, "What problems, Sir?". Well, first of all, bookmarks get duplicated after a few syncs. Also, the sort order of the bookmarks would get mixed up. Here, I would like to point out that I am an end-user and am in no position to judge why this happens. These bugs may be related to the browser or xmarks, and I really don't care.


I had contacted xmarks support team quite a few teams, but unfortunately, they did not respond excepting the initial thank you response. For an avid Internet surfer (daily average is round about 10 hours, I hope you get the idea!), this becomes really irritating. 


So, this is now what I do. I am now using Chrome's default option to sync my bookmarks. Then, I am using Transmute to copy the updated set of bookmarks to FF, IE and Opera. This is a bit more work, but it is free and more importantly, there's no bugs to bug you!


I really loved Xmarks and had recommended the software to many friends. I am not sure whether they are facing the same problems that I faced.