Sync up my browsers!

Dec. 16, 2011
Syncing across my two most used and favorite browsers :
Firefox and Chrome
Ok so Firefox has a Sync feature that allows you to synchronize your preferences, bookmarks, history, etc on all your PCs that uses Firefox. Although, i have known about Firefox sync for some time, I never really bothered to use it until recently because I own multiple personal computer…seriously, I do. I don’t particularly designate each one for a specific type of work e.g work, school, home, gaming or anything like that. However, I do have 1 “clean” laptop in which I really don’t have anything installed except for MS Office, Firefox, and Chrome so that it can perform faster. Then I have what was once my “software experimental” laptop where I tried out software, but now it has become more of the dutiful and diligent laptop where I use it for all sorts of activities and tasks.  I have gotten to the point where I’ve passed the software application experimental phase and I’m onto better things like experimenting with slightly bigger things such as learning Linux and playing with its various distributions.

Anyways, the point being …I use all of my PCs on a regular basis and sometimes almost all of them are actually turned . So I have bookmarks here and there, it becomes inconsistent and sometimes I want to get to a particular site, but I bookmarked it on my other PC…so then I’d have to turn that on(that’s why sometimes I have all 3 PCs turned on at the same  time) …and it just gets tiresome plus it makes the user experience awful!!

Therefore, I decided to set up Firefox sync on almost all my PCs (except for PC, gotta sync that up soon) thus allowing me to access not only my bookmarks but also history from other PCs since sometimes I find some really interesting articles, reads, or tutorials, and I would want to be able to access those tabs from other PCs.  I’m super happy about that now!! Yeah, I don’t know why I hadn’t done this early…would have saved myself a lot of grief.

Sync-ing Chrome?
So Firefox and Chrome are my two favorite and top used browsers, inevitably I also have some bookmarks that are scattered here and there on chrome. Luckily though I don’t have as many chrome bookmarks as I do with Firefox. My first reaction after I synced up my Firefox was..how about I sync all my chrome stuff?

Well isn’t that a genius idea! So I hopped on that task too, signed into the chrome browser account, tools—>options—personal—Sign into Chrome(GOODNESS I LOVE GOOGLE…but I’ll save my google rant for another day) and sync-ed up all my extensions, bookmarks, etc. Definitely saves me the time of installing these extensions on various PCs…it’s such a hassle and super inconvenient.

“Synchronizing” Chrome with Firefox
Finally, I thought to myself, there’s gotta be an easier and direct (preferably built-in) way to import data or sync across different browsers, without going through the trouble of exporting the bookmarks then importing them. Well maybe it already does exist…I don’t know, but if it doesn’t perhaps I can create one. Luckily, the day after I discovered (thanks to an article on Lifehacker) that apparently you can set up chrome’s default behavior to open the pages I previously closed. Again, SUPER excited to find this out…and as I was doing that I noticed that there is a “Browsing Data: Import data from Another Browser” in the tools—options. Hah! that’s fantastic since I have already synced all my Firefox stuff, now I can just DIRECTLY import them! Furthermore, since I have chrome linked across all my PCs, when I import the Firefox bookmarks it will then sync with other chrome browsers that are signed in! BOOM!! Now both my favorite browsers, Firefox and Chrome have the same bookmarks and similar history!
Super Win!

Alright, I know importing data from another browser is NOT considered syncing, however, it does provide me with a better user experience and a much more efficient and effective way of keeping my data consistent + up-to-date!
A built-in import data from another browser is exactly what I wanted/needed!

Lastly, I’d like to mention that Firefox does not have the “Import data from another browser” built-in option like Chrome does, but according to 1 news article it will be developed in a future version of Firefox, version 11. Links can be found in my sources at the bottom.

So in a nutshell
1. Sync all your firefox browsers

2. sync all your chrome stuff (signed in through chrome browser account..which is your gmail account)

3. Import your Firefox data into Chrome through Chrome browser. Go to tools—Personal—Browsing Data.

Sources

Lifehacker

Chrome
http://lifehacker.com/5867446/the-always-up+to+date-power-users-guide-to-chrome

Firefox
http://lifehacker.com/5867444/the-always-up+to+date-power-users-guide-to-firefox

Techdows
http://techdows.com/2011/12/firefox-11-to-support-chrome-data-and-settings-import.html

-The Social Nerd