Firefox 3 ate your bookmarks? Think again! I’ve got the fix. (aka why I’m smarter than Mozilla)

So I didn’t get the memo that you have to back up your bookmarks when you “upgrade” your browser. You’d think if that steaming pile of bullyware is barraging you with requests to upgrade to FF3 that it would take care of that crap for you. Not so much.

So finally I caved in and installed this thing, and let me tell you. Whatever assclown thought it was a good idea to fuck with the URL bar and include that extra unneeded information should get out of project management and into grocery bagging. But, back to my point. When I started up FF3 for the first time I couldn’t help but notice something wasn’t write. The thing felt strangely sparse. Wait! My bookmarks! I looked and indeed they were gone. Completely gone.

It started to dawn on me that rather than actually upgrading, the dim-bulb application had completely re-installed the browser with no concern for user data. It just hadn’t occurred to me given all the updates I’d downloaded up to that point that such a thing would happen. Well, I was pretty pissed. So in an act of pure symbolism, I deleted the entire “defaults” folder as it was full of absolutely nothing I’d created. The folder would serve as an avatar and effigy of a void. By bringing life to a void, I could bring death to it. Such was the symbolism.

Except by sheer luck, the death was not just symbolic. I brought death to the void in reality, apparently. I signed in to Firefox hoping the program would protest the lack of these files I’d deleted. No such thing happened but something was different. Some old buttons were there. And the bookmarks! They were there in full force.

So long story short, if you just installed FireFox3 and forgot to back up your files, just delete the “defaults” folder from your new installation and somewhere on your hard drive, your old bookmarks are still sitting, waiting to be accessed. I honestly have no idea where they are so I am just going to re-save them elsewhere. But let this be a lesson to you all. As a matter of fact, if there is information you value in your bookmarks, it’s best for you to not just save the bookmarks, but download the information in them. After all, those links are no good if something happens to the web pages themselves.