From MozillaZine Knowledge Base

bookmarks.html stores bookmarks in Firefox 2 and below and in other Mozilla browsers. The Bookmarks Manager (accessible from the Bookmarks menu) provides an interface to edit, import, and export this file.

Note: Starting in Firefox 3, places.sqlite is used instead of bookmarks.html for storing bookmarks. When first upgrading to Firefox 3, the contents of bookmarks.html are imported. Thereafter, by default, the bookmarks.html file is no longer updated. For more information, see browser.bookmarks.overwrite and bug 381216.

Editing

Although the Bookmarks Manager is the primary interface for managing bookmarks, bookmarks.html can be edited directly. The file uses a simple HTML structure that includes definition lists, anchors, and headers. A typical bookmarks.html bookmark contains the URL, name, and other meta data:

<DT><A HREF="http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/CR-CSS21-20040225/" 
 ADD_DATE="1079992089" LAST_VISIT="1132078168" LAST_CHARSET=
 "ISO-8859-1" ID="rdf:#$kLc2Z">Cascading Style Sheets, level
  2 revision 1</A>

The application should be closed before changes are made, else the changes will be overwritten.

Moving

This file can be moved to a different profile without any extra effort.

Deleting

Deleting bookmarks.html will delete your bookmarks. A new file containing the default bookmarks will be created on start up.

Related files and folders

• bookmarkbackups folder
• bookmarks.bak
• bookmarks.html.moztmp
• bookmarks-(date).html
• bookmarks-(number).html

See also

• Bookmarks not saved
• Import bookmarks
• Lost bookmarks
• Multiple bookmarks files created