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Will you develop a method to salvage existing bookmark description data? Or delay destruction of existing data until someone else does?

  • 2 (ردّان اثنان)
  • 1 has this problem
  • 11 views
  • آخر ردّ كتبه the-edmeister

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Advance apologies for my bad phrasing. Volunteers can't speak for Mozilla. But after long association they do get a lot more information that leads them to adopt Mozilla's views. We peons of the user non-community don't read the support forums, and often don't even read the release notes. So the disappearance of the description field comes as a complete surprise to us.

Losing this feature really smarts for those of us who have become accustomed to store essential data there. How can sufficient pressure be brought to bear on Mozilla to prevent destruction of existing data in our bookmark files by v.62 and subsequent versions, until a satisfactory substitute appears? "Bookmark Notes" seems to be heading in the right direction, but isn't an answer until its import function is operational.

Advance apologies for my bad phrasing. Volunteers can't speak for Mozilla. But after long association they do get a lot more information that leads them to adopt Mozilla's views. We peons of the user non-community don't read the support forums, and often don't even read the release notes. So the disappearance of the description field comes as a complete surprise to us. Losing this feature really smarts for those of us who have become accustomed to store essential data there. How can sufficient pressure be brought to bear on Mozilla to prevent destruction of existing data in our bookmark files by v.62 and subsequent versions, until a satisfactory substitute appears? "Bookmark Notes" seems to be heading in the right direction, but isn't an answer until its import function is operational.

الحل المُختار

The Descriptions data wasn't destroyed yet, you just can't access that data with Firefox 62. Firefox 64 is when that data will be wiped.

If you go to the Library window and open Import and Backup, then use Export Bookmarks to HTML ... that file will have all your Description data along with you bookmarks. Open that HTML file in Firefox and you'll be able to view that data, just below the related bookmark; scroll down to see the data.

My suggestion is to submit Feedback to Mozilla here to make a request: https://qsurvey.mozilla.com/s3/FirefoxInput/

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Support forum volunteers work with the Firefox we have today and can help with options/settings and workarounds, but we don't make user interface or other decisions. This is not the place for a pressure campaign, as it diverts resources from users with critical support issues.


As you know, Firefox 62 no longer shows the "Description" field for bookmarks. The data is still available, but can't be viewed within Firefox. It is planned to be removed in Firefox 64.

To access and archive that data now, you can:

Export Bookmarks to a locally saved Web Page (HTML File)

Please see this article: Export Firefox bookmarks to an HTML file to back up or transfer bookmarks. That creates a web page, so you can open it in a Firefox tab, or in any browser. You'll notice the descriptions nested below the linked titles of the bookmarks that have descriptions.

(If you are visitor from the future after the data was deleted so you can't use Export, try converting one of Firefox's automatic .jsonlz4 bookmark backup files to HTML format using this tool: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/bookbackreader.html)


Next steps:

This will depend on your needs.

(A) If you just need to consult the existing descriptions, the HTML file may be good enough.

(B) If you need to occasionally update the descriptions but don't need them within Firefox, then you could consider using a reference program such as Zotero (more info below) to store your bookmarks and descriptions.

(C) If you need to access descriptions within Firefox, but it's not essential that they be properties of your bookmarks, you could investigate new extensions. These may be rough for the first few weeks/months as user concerns are addressed and you may want to consider extensions that associate notes with their own list of sites rather than necessarily tying them to bookmarked addresses.

I don't have any recommendations at the moment.

(D) If you can't live without descriptions integrated with your bookmarks, you may consider the Extended Support Release of Firefox 60, also known as ESR. The ESR track was designed for companies that only want feature changes on an infrequent basis. So Firefox 60 ESR will only get security updates for the next 10-12 months, staying stable with the features of Firefox 60. Then ESR will jump to a new version, expected to be Firefox 68.

More info on this option: Switch to Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) for personal use.


Migrating Bookmarks to Zotero

There are a number of tools you could use to manage notes and annotations on your bookmarks. This is one of them.

Zotero is an open source bibliographic/research tool for collecting references. Zotero knows how to read a Firefox HTML bookmarks file and will preserve the descriptions. You can keep your storage purely local, or you can optionally sync with the Zotero cloud.

This is a one-way trip: you can send new references to Zotero from within Firefox using a Zotero add-on, but you won't be able to read/edit bookmark descriptions from within Firefox.

If you want to try it:

The Zotero research tool is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux from https://www.zotero.org/

When you click an item in your bookmarks collection, Zotero displays the Title, URL, and "Abstract" which contains the imported Description. (Screenshot #1) Double-clicking the item will launch the page in the default browser.

Zotero also has an optional Firefox Connector webextension, which allow saving new pages to a Zotero collection (either under the bookmarks structure, or other folders the user created in Zotero). (Screenshot #2)

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(I didn't look at cloud sync.)

Using a second program is less convenient than using Firefox features or a fully self-contained Firefox extension. However, it might suit your needs.

Modified by jscher2000 - Support Volunteer

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الحل المُختار

The Descriptions data wasn't destroyed yet, you just can't access that data with Firefox 62. Firefox 64 is when that data will be wiped.

If you go to the Library window and open Import and Backup, then use Export Bookmarks to HTML ... that file will have all your Description data along with you bookmarks. Open that HTML file in Firefox and you'll be able to view that data, just below the related bookmark; scroll down to see the data.

My suggestion is to submit Feedback to Mozilla here to make a request: https://qsurvey.mozilla.com/s3/FirefoxInput/