Well, it turns out that add-on synchronization isn’t isn’t here yet and keeps getting bumped from the official Weave roadmap. So, our plans for a completely synchronized Firefox experience among our PCs were somewhat dashed… until now.

(Still, Weave will synchronize just about everything else: browsing history, passwords, bookmarks, open tabs, etc. For those of you not wearing tin-foil hats, I highly recommend you check it out.)

Like I said, my hopes for that Holy Grail of browser synchronization, add-on sync, were unfilfilled until I discovered an entirely separate Firefox add-on designed to fulfill that purpose: Siphon.

Siphon’s purpose as of right now is to fill that missing link and ensure that your favorite browser add-ons are available on whatever computer you’re on: at home, at work, on-the-go, etc.

Simply install Siphon through the Firefox add-ons interface (go to Tools > Add-Ons and search for Siphon) and create an account through siphon-fx.com. Then, specify what add-ons you want to synchronize. Once you’re done, set Siphon up on your other computers running Firefox and let the beautiful act of synchronization occur.

The developer of Siphon, Ian Halpern, has big plans and doesn’t intend on stopping at add-on synchronization. Future features of Siphon include the following:

• Support for syncing themes and enabled/disabled properties
• Automatic Add-on download and install
• Configurable user specified server support
• Easier Add-on management
• Different user profiles
• Support for syncing extension settings
• Support for other mozilla applications

So, g’head and give Siphon a try… and then let us know what you think in the comments. If you like it, make use of the Mozilla Add-Ons “Contribute” function and donate a whopping $3 USD to assist with further development of what could potentially be a VERY useful add-on.

Related Links:
Weave FAQ |  Weave Download |  Weave Project Homepage

Mozilla announced the official 1.0 release of Prism: the utility designed to enable your favorite web apps to live outside the browser.

Not only does Prism allow end users to create separate desktop apps for each of their favorite sites (think Gmail, Facebook, etc.), it also allows site devs to specify certain settings that can be activated specifically on Prism apps… settings like fonts, proxy settings, tray icons, etc.

The following is just a snippet of information about Prism’s history and future but you can read more on the official release post… or just check out prism.mozilla.com.

“The ability to run stand-alone web apps and access them like normal desktop apps provides instant benefits to end users. However, a number of the advantages are only available when software developers take advantage of Prism-specific features. With the release of Prism 1.0 beta we are ready to start fostering an ecosystem that makes it easier for developers to create and distribute compelling web app bundles.”

Are you using Prism… or do you just prefer the application shortcuts that can be created by Google’s Chrome browser? Voice your opinions in the comments.

Update: Just so you know, there are two ways to go about using Prism: a desktop application (for the Linux, Mac & Windows platforms – run it and just fill in the URL of the site you’d like to turn into a separate desktop app) or by the Prism Firefox extension.

With Weave, you can synchronize your browser’s bookmarks, browsing history, passwords as well as any tabs that you might have open across any of your PCs – safely and securely. Here’s Mozilla’s official project description:

“Weave Sync is a prototype that encrypts and securely synchronizes the Firefox experience across multiple browsers, so that your desktop, laptop and mobile phone can all work together. It is part of the Weave project, which aims to integrate services more closely with the browser.”

Along with the 0.3 release, Mozilla is now officially supporting Fennec; Mozilla’s own mobile browser. Eventually, at least according to the project roadmap, Weave will enable you to synchronize your browser preferences and add-ons (read: extensions) in addition to all of the aforementioned items.

Give it a try by downloading from the official Mozilla add-ons site: Weave 0.3. Or, check out the official Weave project site at http://labs.mozilla.com/projects/weave/.

Do note, however, that the 0.3 release requires Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 or greater… which is still in a testing phase. (Hence the “beta” label.) Plus, if you do decide to g’head and upgrade your version of Firefox in order to take a peek at Weave, some of your other add-ons might very well break in the process. A great number of mine did.

ReadItLater is a Firefox add-on designed to help you keep track of new blog posts, news stories, etc. that you just don’t have time to read right now.

As you’re navigating the Interwebs, you’re bound to come across plenty of things that you’ll want to read when you have some spare time. Upon encountering one of these items, you can just click the ReadItLater button and save it for later.

There’s plenty of other extensions/add-ons that can do the same thing but RIL is definitely the most polished of the bunch. One of it’s more powerful features is the ability to synchronize your list across different computers.

This add-on has proven to be priceless but today’s release just made it even sweeter. Some of the new features released in today’s update include online access to your saved items (access them even without Firefox and ReadItLater), PostRank sorting of your saved items, enhanced UI-customization options (including a new option to read your list in a sidebar), enhanced offline functionality (have RIL automatically save offline copies of your saved items) and, my personal favorite, Google Reader integration.

As for that last item, if you’re like me, you’ve got a ridiculous number of RSS feeds and just want to flag an item to read later without actually opening the page. Well, you can now just check the box next to the item in Reader and RIL automatically captures the source and adds it to your list.

If you spend more than a few hours in the browser every day, you’ll definitely want to add ReadItLater to your frequently used Firefox add-ons.

How does it work? Start to drag a link or an image and “drop zones” instantly appear. Each drop zone represents a different command and dragging the link or image onto the drop zone activates that particular command. The zones are completely customizable and you can modify the color, transparency and location of each drop zone that you’ve enabled.

If the concept sounds vaguely familiar, there’s a good chance you’re thinking of a couple of other add-ons that have been around for a while longer: Super DragAndGo and Easy DragToGo. Those particular add-ons enable you to quickly drag a link downward to open it in a new background tab or upward to open in a new focused tab… in addition to enabling you to quickly drag an image to save it to a default location. (Note: if you have Easy DragToGo installed, Drag & DropZones’s functionality will render Easy DragToGo useless. The two, apparently, cannot coexist.)

Source: Lifehacker via Webware

For those of you operating a Windows-mobile powered device, this day promises not to disappoint.  For, you see, Opera decided to release the latest version of their eagerly-anticipated (and what seemed to be indefinitely-delayed) mobile Web browser.  The beta is a free download but will most likely require the purchase of a registration upon it’s final release.  (The last version of Opera Mobile cost about $30…and wasn’t that good.  Granted, it was still better than any version of Internet Explorer Mobile but that’s not saying much.  This version trumps the last one and I’ll most likely be willing to purchase it to improve the Windows-mobile Web browsing experience any way I can.)

Improvements over the last version (v8.65) include performance enhancements, pan & zoom browsing (remarkable and very iPhone-esque), Web standards compliance and the ability to save Web pages and/or images to your phone.

Try it out and I think you’ll agree that it’s definitely the best Windows-mobile based browser out there…at least until Mozilla officially enters the market.

Source: http://www.opera.com/products/mobile

Delicious allows you to export your bookmarks to an HTML file and while the file does include your various tags, Firefox 3 does not allow tags to be imported via an HTML file.  Instead, the browser uses the .json data interchange format to deal with tags.  So, up until now, I’ve been able import my del.icio.us bookmarks into Firefox via HTML but the many different tags I’ve assigned using the del.icio.us service were NOT imported.

Fortunately, the latest release of Flock, the social browser we’ve covered before, can act as a transition tool to allow for the type of import you want.  Flock, by default, automatically merges del.icio.us bookmarks with your own local bookmarks (including tags) when you engage one of Flock’s "social" features and login to the Delicious service.

Now, as you may have read, the Flock 2.0 beta was released today.  This release finally uses the Firefox 3 code-base thus enabling Flock to use the same bookmarking system (for the most part) as Firefox.  So, if you enable the Delicious service from within Flock 2.0, you can then export your bookmarks to a .json file once Flock has finished integrating them with your local bookmarks.  (Note, this can take more than a few hours depending on the amount of bookmarks you have stored on the del.icio.us service.)  To do this, open up the Favorites Library by going to Favorites > Organize Bookmarks from within Flock 2.0.  (You’ll notice an interface similar to that of the Firefox 3 bookmarks library.)

From there, select the "Import and Backup" option from the main menu and save the .json file to any directory you’d like.

Now, open up Firefox 3 and head over to Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks.  From the main menu, select Import & Backup > Restore > File:

Find the .json file in your file explorer and import the contents.  Once Firefox is finished importing your bookmarks, the tags section over in the navigation area will now contain the entire list of tags you’ve created/assigned through del.icio.us:

Now, normally in Firefox 3 or Flock, you could click on one of those tags and any bookmarks related to that tag would then be displayed over in the left-hand side.  What’s strange, and something I’ve yet to figure out, is that the bookmarks DON’T display in the area on the left when selecting a tag in the nav area.  However, when you type in a tag or a keyword relating to a site you’ve bookmarked from inside the location bar (a.k.a. "awesomebar" or "address bar") in the main Firefox window, the appropriate results display:

Regardless, your favorite sites are now discoverable from within Firefox even if the situation isn’t 100% conventional.  You should also note that, with this scenario, an HTML export of your bookmarks from within Firefox doesn’t perform properly.  A .json export and restore (like we did above) does, however, work properly but you end up with the exact same result…no visible bookmarks in the Bookmarks Manager.

Anyway, it’s a temporary solution if you’re wanting to migrate your data.  If you have any other suggestions or solutions, feel free to contact us (suggest *at* fansoftech *dot* com) or drop a comment below.

Update: the fine individuals at e-accent.com have created a site dedicated to this very idea: http://delicious.e-accent.com.

Basically, you backup your current bookmarks from Firefox (to the .json format.)  Then, you export your current bookmarks from http://del.icio.us (with tags).  Once you have those two files, you can merge them together with e-accent’s tool and the site will generate a .json file that you simply import into Firefox 3.

It worked like a charm for me but I did notice that I needed to un-check the "notes" option when exporting from the Delicious site in order for the e-accent tool to generate a proper merged .json file.  Now, I have all of my del.icio.us bookmarks WITH tags inside Firefox. 

I’ll now be using Mozilla’s Weave Firefox add-on to synchronize these bookmarks with my other machines.  I’m already using Weave to synchronize browser cookies and passwords so this conversion just allows me to rid myself of one extra extension that I have to keep up with when re-installing Firefox on any of my machines.

Five days ago, the Del.icio.us team announced and subsequently delivered the final version of that extension to the official Mozilla Firefox add-ons repository.  Be sure to check out the official blog post from the del.icio.us team detailing all the new features in the release: "Firefox 3, Delicious and You."

Overall, the extension provides a great way to keep your bookmarks (with tags and notes, too) synchronized on each of your computers and, of course, on your http://del.icio.us account.

(FoT Tip: If you’re a nut for synchronization, you should also check out the Mozilla Weave extension for Firefox.  In addition to bookmark synchronization, Weave also allows you to sync stored passwords, cookies, browser history and saved form data.  Check out what we had to say about that a couple of weeks ago.)

Microsoft devotees shouldn’t feel left out as the team has also announced and released a beta version of an add-on for Internet Explorer.

Not only has it not been updated since 2006, the extension isn’t even compatible with the 3rd release of the Mozilla Firefox browser.  (As is typically the case with Google, mum’s the word on any plans and nearly 100 status requests have gone unanswered in the official forum for Google Firefox extensions.)

Mozilla answered the cries of many, however, when it released "Weave" late last year.  The official extension (from the company who brought you the Firefox browser itself) allowed for synchronization of your bookmarks, history and saved form data.  With the next release, they added support for cookies.

Now, with today’s release, they add support for passwords as well…thus leaving Google Browser Sync entirely useless.

The extension even allows for developers to extend Weave for their own applications but you can read more about that, and Weave’s many other features, on the Mozilla Labs blog. Or, you can just download it now: https://services.mozilla.com/.

Note: once you begin the initial synchronization, be prepared for the browser to choke just a little bit while the sync occurs.  Once you’re finished with that initial synchronization, however, it’ll be as smooth as silk to keep your browser information up-to-date on all your computers.

Now, if they only would allow for synchronization of Firefox extensions…