Last week I was in a hurry and made a rookie mistake.  I was working on a project and needed for some weird reason (using a software program that is not compatible with Firefox - . . . MindManager. .   aahemm. ..  ) to get a copy of all my Firefox bookmarks into some strange and weird program called Internet Explorer 7. 

I had not heard of this program which devotees sometimes call IE7, but I needed to find a way to import in a copy of my Firefox bookmarks, so that I could then use some special function in the desktop software program that I was working with on this special project.

The Problem - I lost my Firefox Bookmarks!

So after I imported bookmarks into this IE7 beast, I noticed about a day later, that I had lost about 80 percent of my bookmarks in Firefox.

Why 80 percent and not 100 percent?

I have no idea.  For some reason the bookmarks in about 100 folders that I had were deleted from Firefox.  They still exist in Internet Explorer which imported them but they were stripped out of Firefox.

So the quick lesson I learned from this, is actually one that I learned a long time ago with IE 6 (yeah I actually had used this beast before, but tried to block it from my memory).  You need to back up your Favorites and Bookmarks to separate special files and folders on a regular basis.  If you add lots of bookmarks often, then you may want to back up more often, if not, maybe quarterly is good enough.

How to back up Firefox Bookmarks

This is pretty easy.  Just go to the Bookmarks button on the Firefox menu, click on the Bookmarks manager.  This will open up a new window and you can now select the export option under the file menu of the Firefox bookmarks menu.  Make sure you send it to a safe place!

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I ran across an article today describing a way to run the MindManager Viewer in from Firefox.  Basically, all you have to do is run a virtual session of internet explorer within a firefox window with an IE Tab plugin for Firefox.

Now that does not sound terribly secure to me, but if you are desperate to get those 2 or 3 things to run in Firefox that only run in IE maybe you want to risk the security of your machine.  That’s not for me and I am generally fairly experimental in this area.  But something about running a virtual browser within a browser seems like it would open up a number of security risks.  The last thing I would want is to have one of my readers tell me they were attempting to complete a student loan consolidation and their personal information got hacked because they were running an experimental tool, just to make MindManager work right with Firefox.

Sometimes you just have to make sacrifices and not try the work around plugin de jour. I would very much like to see MindManager provide Firefox support not only for running the MindManager Viewer from Firefox but also putting a hot button in Firefox so that I can zap a web link from firefox with the title right into MindManager.  I’ve been asking for that functionality since about this time last year back when Firefox only had about 25% of the US web market.  It now is pushing 50%.

Note to Mindjet, there is a new trend on the internet.  Its called Firefox.  Its created by the same folks that invented the first browser, Netscape.  Its better and safer than Internet Explorer 6 or 7.  Check it out sometime.

Side note, those nifty hot buttons in Internet Explorer 6 that allowed me to zap links into MindManager at the push of the icon seem to be completely missing form Internet Explorer 7.

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Some Firefox zealots are prompting visitors to their websites to fight against Microsoft and Internet Explorer by downloading and using the new Mozilla browser called Firefox (available from this site as well.)

This group is promoting Firefox’s heavier level of security which can stop Spyware, Viruses, and in the words of the authors of ‘explorerdestroyer.com’ helps to end Microsoft’s monopoly.

They are seizing on Google’s incentive to web publishers and providing code that checks visitors web browsers to identify explorer users and prompt them to switch or at least try Firefox.

If you want to see what all the hype is about you can try Firefox by downloading it from Google here. (Note Google benefits because their toolbar is installed with Firefox.)

iTWire - Firefox zealots offer users money to switch from IE

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