Backing up bookmarks is a good practice. As time goes on, you acculmate hundreds of bookmarks, maybe thousands. Counting bookmarks isn’t very hard either, it’s actually pretty fun knowing.
Firefox, Chrome and Safari
Well, backing up in Firefox is easy as long as they keep the Export as HTML feature in the Organize Bookmarks window, accessible from Bookmarks on the menubar. Just export your bookmarks as HTML.
Bookmarks
Google Chrome also works the same way, go to the Bookmarks Manager, Tools and finally export. Safari doesn’t follow Chrome’s lead, instead, you can find export bookmarks under File on the menubar.
Opera
Opera isn’t that much different but I felt like mentioning that Opera has so many different export/import options that it’s completely ridiculous. Simply go to Bookmarks, Manage Bookmarks, Tools, Save as HTML. Can it be any easier?
Internet Explorer
So then there’s the black duck. Or brown duck? Internet Explorer requires more effort. First, go favorites, then using the arrow next to the add to favorites button, then import/export. Following through annoying wizard, you’ll get a menu to export it as a file, do that, and you’ll get your file soon enough.
Conclusion
Now that you’ve saved all of your bookmarks, I suggest you email them all inside of a zip file to yourself. That way, they are saved forever. In addition to backing up your bookmarks, you can count them too.
As long as you exported your bookmarks as HTML, you can use this little javascript snippet.
javascript:alert("You have about " + document.getElementsByTagName("dt").length + " bookmarks.");
Happy bookmarking.
I instructed you to save your bookmarks as HTML. If your browser permits you to tag your bookmarks, you’ll probably loose those tags. If you save as JSON instead of HTML, those tags should be preserved.