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Google might not be actively working on
the Google Browser Sync extension for Firefox, but that doesn’t mean
you can’t sync your bookmarks, tabs, passwords, and more! Mozilla just released Weave 0.2,
which is a major milestone for their homegrown extension. The new
version contains all sorts of enhancements like a simplified setup
process, intelligent scheduler for determining when to synchronize
data, and much more.
The setup process is pretty straightforward, and it took just a minute for me to go through all eight steps.
The nice thing with Weave is that you can have it synchronize
bookmarks, browsing history, cookies, passwords, saved form data, and
tabs with multiple computers. This is excellent news for anyone that
uses multiple computers on a regular basis, or in my case, someone that
just wants a thorough backup of important data (like bookmarks). Plus
it looks like in the future they will support the synchronization of
extensions, themes, search plugins, and microformats.
How often does Weave synchronize your data? The FAQ’s says that it’s at least every 20 minutes if any data has changed:
After the initial data transfer is completed during initial setup,
Weave connects to the server periodically when it accumulates enough
changes that need syncing or when enough time has passed since the last
sync (at least once every 20 minutes if any data has changed). Weave
also syncs when you start Firefox, when you quit it, and when you click
on the “Sync Now” button in the Weave menu or the preferences.
Once you have completed the setup process you can always go back and
adjust what gets synchronized by pulling up the Firefox preferences:
All-in-all Weave is a terrific extension that is blossoming into
something great. The main thing that I would like to get next is an
online interface for managing bookmarks, but I haven’t seen any
indication that they are working on this.
The Fine Print:
If you do decide to give Weave a whirl it does have some current incompatibilities.
It doesn’t support OS X on Power PC, there’s no 64-bit Linux support,
and some versions of Linux don’t always work. Plus Weave doesn’t work
if you have the NoScript extension enabled.
Get Weave 0.2 for Firefox [via jkOnTheRun]
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