Bookmarks.html

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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 Thereafter, by default, the bookmarks.html file is no longer updated.

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 in Mozilla Suite/SeaMonkey and a new file containing the default bookmarks will be created on start up. In Firefox 2 or below, deleting bookmarks.html will have no apparent effect because the bookmarks.html file will be recreated on start up from the bookmarks.bak backup file. Deleting bookmarks.html has no effect in Firefox 3, which no longer uses that file for bookmark storage.

Related files and folders

See also