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Puzzled why there are no review pages for Firefox Sync. Almost no documentation, either.

  • 20 απαντήσεις
  • 1 έχει αυτό το πρόβλημα
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  • Τελευταία απάντηση από Happy112

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XMarks is closing. Eversync is unreliable. So the only sync in town for Firefox users is Firefox Sync.

That makes it a shame that Mozilla doesn't have a review page, where users can rate Firefox Sync and talk over their experiences. It would greatly reassure potential users.

Also, Firefox Sync is under-documented. Does it have, like XMarks, a facility by which users can access their bookmarks when they cannot access their local browsers, e.g. when travelling? No way of knowing, without trying it! Does it sync Folders and the arrangement of links within folders accurately? No way of knowing, without trying it! Does it allow uploads to the server, downloads from the server? No way of knowing, without trying it!

Come on Firefox, a few pages of documentation, please!

XMarks is closing. Eversync is unreliable. So the only sync in town for Firefox users is Firefox Sync. That makes it a shame that Mozilla doesn't have a review page, where users can rate Firefox Sync and talk over their experiences. It would greatly reassure potential users. Also, Firefox Sync is under-documented. Does it have, like XMarks, a facility by which users can access their bookmarks when they cannot access their local browsers, e.g. when travelling? No way of knowing, without trying it! Does it sync Folders and the arrangement of links within folders accurately? No way of knowing, without trying it! Does it allow uploads to the server, downloads from the server? No way of knowing, without trying it! Come on Firefox, a few pages of documentation, please!

Όλες οι απαντήσεις (20)

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Here are some help articles about sync. If you have any questions, just ask. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/search?esab=a&w=1&q=Sync

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  1. There is no web access to Sync data, due to the encryption features that are employed. IOW, Sync data can only be accessed via a Firefox installation where you have enabled Sync, not from other browsers while you are traveling. Although Portable Firefox on a USB 'stick' can be used with Sync and used on Windows OS devices.
  2. Yes, Sync will synchronize bookmarks in folders accurately, but depending upon how deep the folders go it might take some time to become fully synchronized. Sync does handle Tags for bookmarks and synchronization works a lot better when the user uses Tags rather than multiple levels of bookmark folders. Firefox moved beyond folders for categorizing bookmarks back in June 2008 with Firefox 3.0.
  3. No "uploads" or "downloads" of Sync data. All data flows thru 'local' sync on each device to the Sync server; no other type of access is possible. User control is very limited, and there is no "master device" and no "slave devices"; data is handled equally on desktop / laptop devices, with "mobile" devices getting a lesser volume of data than was is shared with desktop / laptop devices; mainly involves huge numbers of bookmarks, browsing data, and sometimes tabs sync data. And that varies depending upon the data storage capacity of said "mobile" device.

As far as lack of documentation for Sync, I agree and have been pushing for more support articles for a number of years now with little response from management. Hopefully now that there is major "push" by Mozilla for users to sign up for Sync that will change, but honestly I don't think that will happen. "Institutional history" of past shortcomings with features and how little support they receive from the managers or "higher-ups" is sorely lacking in Mozilla as an organization.

user since Aug 2002 with Phoenix 0.3

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Thank you, the ed-meister. This makes things clearer.

It would be good to have a ratings page, too. Ratings are reassuring, or otherwise. Look at the XMarks and EverSync ratings, you'll quickly draw conclusions. Those conclusions are useful for users.

"If you have any questions, just ask" - sorry, no. Bookmarks are sensitive, highly important to many users. People want a sense of what's going to happen. How reliable is the system? Is there a backup when my bookmarks are messed up? (OK I get that - no). Will it alphabetize my backmarks without asking? And tags - I've never used tags for bookmarks, yet we're told that, for almost a decade, Firefox has preferred tags to folders. So how does that work? Could we have pictures of what it might mean to use a tagging system, how a person might organize his/her bookmarks through tags, because I have no idea and can't visualise it

Incidentally I use my folders not as containers, but as dividers, i.e. 2 levels only, not multiple levels. I mention this to illustrate that people use bookmarks in diverse ways. So they want to know in advance - will this bookmarking system work for me?

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If you'd like to have some informative documentation (and reviews) about Sync :

Unfortunately there is nothing that we, volunteer contributors on this support forum, can do about it, but you could submit your suggestions and ideas here :

Input page: https://qsurvey.mozilla.com/s3/FirefoxInput/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/firefox

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Firefox

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/

Worth a try .......

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Thanks Murphy, I have now posted a request for better documentation and a ratings page to the Firefox input page.

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matthewmontagupollock said

Thanks Murphy, I have now posted a request for better documentation and a ratings page to the Firefox input page.

My pleasure, Matthew - and : good for you  !

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matthewmontagupollock said

It would be good to have a ratings page, too. Ratings are reassuring, or otherwise. Look at the XMarks and EverSync ratings, you'll quickly draw conclusions. Those conclusions are useful for users. How reliable is the system? Is there a backup when my bookmarks are messed up? (OK I get that - no). Will it alphabetize my backmarks without asking? And tags - I've never used tags for bookmarks, yet we're told that, for almost a decade, Firefox has preferred tags to folders. So how does that work? Could we have pictures of what it might mean to use a tagging system, how a person might organize his/her bookmarks through tags, because I have no idea and can't visualise it

Not sure what you mean by a "ratings page". If you are talking about "user ratings" for the Xmarks & EverSync add-ons for Firefox in comparison to the built-in Sync feature, you're not going to see that come from Mozilla or the Mozilla Add-ons website. You would need to search for that on the web, like at GHacks.net or a similar website that writes about Firefox and add-ons for Firefox.

Sync maintains no data backups, one data set is maintained; data that is collected and synchronized from the connected devices. Sync doesn't alphabetize bookmarks, just as that feature isn't one that Firefox has either. And extension does exist, but that was created by a 3rd party developer. I have a hard time understanding why anyone would even want to alpha-sort bookmarks. Page titles, thus the Bookmark title is usually too wordy and most of the time doesn't really alphabetize in a manner that makes much sense; I re-word the title of bookmarks I save most of the time so they are more searchable via the search feature in Firefox bookmarks.

As far as Tags for bookmarks goes, I have never used that feature myself, I prefer using folders and many times save the same bookmark in multiple folders rather than use the Tags feature. But I gotta say that there are days that I regret never attempting to wrap my mind around the "tags" feature and at least giving that feature a try (to understand it). Quite honestly though, over the years I pretty much stopped giving a damn about bookmarks and keeping them organized due to my extreme disappoint with Places in Firefox. IMO, Mozilla changed what worked just fine for me and didn't fix the faults I experienced with how Firefox handled bookmarks and that Tags feature was such a disappointment that the only thing I did after Firefox 3.0 and Places was to split my bookmarks in (roughly half) and start running 2 separate Profiles with different bookmarks in each Profile; computer related topics in one Profile and all other hobby interests & general surfing topics in the 2nd Profile. And by the time I'm on the internet for more than a 1/2 hour I usually have both Profiles open for the rest of that sitting in front of my PC and switch between them frequently.

Question that I have for you is; how much effort have you put into learning about Bookmark Tags in Firefox? Here's a basic articles to help you understand Tags https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/categorizing-bookmarks-make-them-easy-to-find

As far as using folders as "separators", are you aware that Firefox has had "separators" since long before this web browsers was even called Firefox? I used them when this browser was named Phoenix and Firebird before Firefox 0.8 came out.

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Hi the-edmeister!

My answer - I've put zero effort into learning about Firefox tags. I've seen tags in the context of CRMS, and never liked them.

Why? [1] Extra bureaucracy. I just haven't got time to tag things [2] They don't suit how I use Bookmarks. It would be really difficult to explain without having you sit next to me, but I can try.

Let's go. I have a set of bookmarks devoted to learning a language, Filipino (known as Tagalog).

Top Level folder: PHILIPPINES Next level folder: DAILY NEWS + LEARNING TAGALOG This has approximately 200 bookmarks - They MUST be arranged in a certain order. This is critical. The order is not alphabetical, but an order of usefulness. - They are divided under headers/folders, for which I use bookmark folders. However these folders are not used as containers, but as headers

So there will be the following headers/folders:

DAILY NEWS + LEARNING TAGALOG

  DAILY NEWS
  link
  link
  link, etc...
  TAGALOG SITES
  link
  link
  link, etc...
  ENGLISH- LANGUAGE SITES
  links as above
  GRAMMAR
  links as above
  GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA SITES
  links as above
  STORY SITES IN TAGALOG
  links as above
  BIBLICAL PARALLEL TEXTS (useful for language learning!)
  links as above
  DEEPER GRAMMAR
  links as above

Does that make any sense? To repeat, those folders are 'empty', they are just headers signalling a collection of links.

Now I suppose it would be possible to convert all this into tags, but I have never seen a tagging system which gave me confidence. My impression is that tagging was a phase which some CRMs got enthusiastic about around a decade ago. I get the impression that the enthusiasm has since died.

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I understand what you are doing with folders, which is similar to what I do with folders of bookmarks, except that I have gone as far as 3 folders "deep" with some categories. But one thing that I do doesn't seem to be very popular, I use the Bookmarks Sidebar for accessing my bookmarks and use the Search "bar" in the Sidebar more often than not to access similar bookmarks by "name" which does take a bit of time when I save a new bookmark by editing the "title".

IMO, Xmarks (when it was still called Foxmarks and only did Firefox bookmarks) was the first using Tags and Mozilla got the idea from Foxmarks. Main difference was that the Tags feature in Firefox wasn't made to be compatible with the way Foxmarks was setup code-wise; and that was long before Mozilla came up with Sync as the Weave extension for Firefox 3.5 & 3.6 where it was initially made available for Firefox. Name change to Sync when it was made a standard feature and was built into Firefox 4.0 back in 2009.

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Yes I use the Bookmarks Sidebar too. I never use the top drop-down.

I sometimes use Search, but not often since the 'show parent folder' add-on stopped working.

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Hey Matthew, in addition to what 'Murphy' suggested - you could also start a thread on the contributor forum :

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/support-forum-contributors

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Anyway if you use Firefox Sync, and you use Firefox Bookmarks similarly to how I do, and it works for you, that gives me confidence. My brief trial of EverSync worried me. Nice people, but they seem to be fighting daily crises as they go along.

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Please remember Sync is for Syncing devices (plural) and is not a storage center. You will end up loosing your data if it is only one device.

Be a little self serving in Firefox rated there own product. As well it is not a Extension so is not on that page.

These are other options : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?platform=windows&q=bookmark+Manager

This is all I have on Sync :

You have more than enough information as seems everyone has given all that they have. Please Mark the Solution that best Answered your Question. Thank You.

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Thanks. I have set up Firefox Sync, or rather signed in to an account I already had. Nothing seems to happen, bookmarks are not synced, no sign of any action. So now comes the debugging process, I suppose. I suspect this was why I originally gave up on it long ago and moved to Xmarks. Maybe I have the now-abandoned version of Firefox Sync, who knows? I wish one could see if Firefox Sync is doing something. The whole thing seems so hidden. With Xmarks one had a dashboard, precise dates of last backup, one knew when something was happening, one had a restore process... oh well.

This is all free, and off the backs of volunteers, and if you are out there I am truly grateful. But if Xmarks would charge money to stay alive I would pay.

As to not rating, citing the fact that this is not an add-on as a reason for not rating seems a little bit of a quibble, as does the conflict-of-interest argument. If you rate, you get honest feedback. Take a look at EverSync's ratings or Xmarks ratings, you'll get the point. No manufactured positivity there, just honest people grumbling about their (free) products.

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Sync is part of Firefox, so the "now-abandoned version" of Sync shouldn't be an issue. If your Account was with the older version it just wouldn't do anything or would raise an error message when you tried to log in. And each of the last two versions of Sync 1.1 & 1.5 had their own distinct server with totally unique log in procedures; Sync 1.1 server was removed a few years ago - no longer exists and the transition process died at the same time.


As I mentioned, there is a reported incompatibility between Xmarks and Sync. Users who mentioned problems when using Sync and Xmarks didn't fully explain their problems or didn't report how they solved their issue. of they even got that far.

This is how I recommend you to proceed.

  1. Go to Help > Troubleshooting Information = about:support in the URL bar and scroll down to Places Database > Integrity and use the Verify Integrity button to repair the Places database.
  2. Do that on each device you intend to connect to Sync.
  3. Then create a new Firefox Account and see if Sync works in that account.
  4. Don't rush to add the additional devices; it may take some time to get the initial data loaded for each device.
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matthewmontagupollock said

As to not rating, citing the fact that this is not an add-on as a reason for not rating seems a little bit of a quibble, as does the conflict-of-interest argument. If you rate, you get honest feedback. Take a look at EverSync's ratings or Xmarks ratings, you'll get the point. No manufactured positivity there, just honest people grumbling about their (free) products.

Just a thought : The closest thing to 'rating Firefox's Sync' you'll find right here on the support forum - you won't see any positive rating, but as soon as users have problems with the feature, they'll post here .......

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In Eversync and XMarks, the place to put your grumbles is clear and obvious - the review pages provided by these companies. The psychology is obvious. You are irritated. You post a review explaining why, and give a negative rating. You have done a public service and punished incompetence in one short post. Very satisfying.

Here, with Firefox Sync, any complaints are spread thinly throughout the comments. No satisfying 'hit-back at 'em' star system. Neither is there an easy sense of whether the majority are satisfied with the system, or not. Many or most unhappy users would simply have abandoned the system, I suggest, rather than posting their complaints into a universe of users apparently overwhelmingly focused on other issues. So rather than the relative infrequency of complaints being an indication that users were satisfied, I suggest it was caused by the lack of a proper complaints system. Users didn't feel that their complaints would be heard, so they saved their breath and bailed out. How else would one explain the very large number of XMarks users?

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My rating of your post(s) :

Eloquent, insightful and philosophical .......

Five stars.

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Thank you! Character defect: I prefer to grumble about the system rather than solve problems within the system. Life should be smooth and easy, and I grumble when it isn't. Unfortunately it generally isn't.

The-edmeister seems a person really interested in solving other people's problems. He is the guy who should be congratulated!

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matthewmontagupollock said

Thank you! Character defect: I prefer to grumble about the system rather than solve problems within the system. Life should be smooth and easy, and I grumble when it isn't. Unfortunately it generally isn't. The-edmeister seems a person really interested in solving other people's problems. He is the guy who should be congratulated!

If only you knew how you made me laugh just now - I bet 'the-edmeister' knows  !

You made somebody laugh : that's worth an additional star  !

I could talk with you for hours, but I'm afraid that if I did, some grumpy moderator would kick my derrière .....

But : you make some really good points  !