A compressed .jsonlz4 backup is created at startup if there is some idle time detected.

You can make Firefox create an automatic HTML backup (bookmarks.html) when you exit Firefox if you set the browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML pref to true on the about:config page.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML

This backup is created by default in the profile folder as bookmarks.html every time you close Firefox, but you can set the path and file name via the browser.bookmarks.file pref on the about:config page.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/browser.bookmarks.file

Note: an HTML backup doesn't preserve tags and annotations, so you lose those if you need to import the HTML backup.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Export_bookmarks

Thanks for that answer - While I can see that being useful, I was hoping we could cause FF to back up to the bookmarkbackups folder in a json, the same type of backup it does automatically at startup.

Firefox does certain things automatically with a json that it will not do with an html backup. For example, if your places.sqlite file is gone, Firefox will restore your bookmarks from the most recent bookmarkbackups json file. This allows us to replace a damaged or overloaded firefox profile with a generic one that has no places.sqlite, and Firefox will restore that users bookmarks when they start firefox. The problem is if the backup isn't made everytime the user exits, the json will not include the most recent bookmarks.

I could use your solution and train my end users to restore their bookmarks if they are missing, but I was hoping to automate the process using the FF behavior described above.

We also want to use this to enhance the usefulness of Firefox in a Windows Server environment with roaming profiles and folder redirection to provide a roaming user with access to their most recent bookmarks while simultaneously preventing cache from being stored in the user's appdata path on the server (causing a traffic issue), but rather on whichever local workstation they happen to be on. I can discuss that in more detail if you like, but it is complicated. If we could only solve this one problem it would allow our other solutions to work much better.

I played around with your solution - Firefox is now creating bookmarks.html in the user's folder on exit. However, I noticed that if the places.sqlite file is deleted, it appears to restore from the bookmarks.html automatically.

Let me explain a little further : I replaced the bookmarkbackups folder in the profile with a symbolic link pointing to U:\BOOKMARKBACKUPS. U: is defined based on the currently logged in user so that path resolves to the current user's folder. Firefox therefore stores all json backups in the appropriate user's folder. When you start Firefox without a places.sqlite, it restores from the most recent json backup, but it also appears to take the bookmarks.html file if that is all that is available.

Now I am confused on which it will use and how it will choose if both are there. If I can get it to restore from the bookmarks.html file exclusively, or alternate turn off all bookmarkbackups.json creation, I have a solution.

Yes, If there is a bookmarks.html file in the root level of the profile folder then this file is used instead of a JSON backup in the bookmarkbackups folder, so you need to move the file to another folder or at least change its name by using the browser.bookmarks.file. The value of this pref can be a full path to the backup file, so you can specify a path to a folder (c:\xxx\bookmarks-backup.html) or specify a different file name in the current profile folder.

I am very grateful for your help, and very excited about the results. I Set the following : browser.bookmarks.max_backups = 0, browser.bookmarks.file = U:\BOOKMARKBACKUPS\BOOKMARKS.HTML, BROWSER.BOOKMARKS.AUTOEXPORTHTML=True

FF creates the bookmarks.html on exit. I used the profiles.ini to make firefox look on the local drive for its profile (FIREFOX.DEFAULT). I replaced Bookmarkbackups with a symbolic link pointing to U:\BOOKMARKBACKUPS where U: is mapped to the %username% folder. Then I used Group Policy Object to delete the local places.sqlite file on login so FF automatically restores from the bookmarks.html in the currently logged in user's bookmarkbackups folder.

The result is that a roaming user doesn't have to wait for the firefox profile to download, thus speeding up login times; Firefox doesn't store its cache on the server anymore, thus reducing traffic. Each user gets their bookmarks wherever they log in; Bookmarks are stored on the server where they get backed up. Lastly, I can use a group policy to replace every single firefox profile in the company, eliminating bloat (and training users not to depend on memorized passwords).

Now the question is - Shouldn't Firefox support more of this type of stuff natively or through configuration options? How does one suggest such a thing to the development team?

Thank you Jay