Mozilla and Netscape wipe out each other's bookmarks

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Ken Seggerman - 29 Nov 2003 23:46 GMT

Greetings:

I have Mozilla 1.6a and Netscape 7.0 running under OS X 10.1.5.

I prefer Mozilla, my wife still likes using Netscape better. We use the
Mac under one Mac user name, but we have separate Netscape/Mozilla
profiles. Whenever we shut down one and use the other, the bookmarks in
our separate profiles are wiped out and revert to the default, and the
newly launched browser ignores the preferences and defaults to a welcome
page as if it has just been installed.

If we used one and not the other, it wouldn't be a problem. Mozilla is
much more fun, but Netscape 7.0 is more stable. As it is, I backup my
bookmarks file and pop it back into a folder in my profile called
lafpi3c.slt (how's that for user-friendly nomenclature?). If there is a
Known Fix to this, I would be very grateful to learn it.

Any suggestions?

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Torben - 01 Dec 2003 19:25 GMT

> Greetings:
>
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
> newly launched browser ignores the preferences and defaults to a welcome
> page as if it has just been installed.

Are you really sure they are using separate profiles? Just creating a
profile for each is not enough, you must specify wich profile to use on
every time you start Moz/NS. I do not know how to do this on Mac OS X,
but it is probably described somewhere on the 'net. Happy hunting :-)

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torben@despammed.com

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Ken Seggerman - 02 Dec 2003 16:55 GMT

> Ken Seggerman <suleyman@panix.com> wrote to the effect that Mozilla and
> Netscape wipe out each other's bookmarks when two people (his wife
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> every time you start Moz/NS. I do not know how to do this on Mac OS X,
> but it is probably described somewhere on the 'net. Happy hunting :-)

Ken Seggerman did further testing before replying:

Thank you for replying to my post.
I am quite sure that we are using separate profiles. We have it set so
that a dialogue box appears on startup asking which profile to use.

I opened Mozilla under my profile, quit Mozilla and opened under hers.
Then opened Netscpae under my profile, quit and then opened under hers.
I was not connected to the Internet at the time. Netscape tried to open:
"home.netscape.com/bookmark/7_0/startuppage.html" despite preferences
having been set to open to a blank page at startup but as I was not
connected it did not open the page. In all four cases our respective
bookmarks (the work of many months) were left untouched.

I tried this same routine again while connected to the Internet. This
time, opening and quitting Mozilla under each profile, respective
bookmarks were all there, but startup preferences were ignored and
Mozilla found "www.mozilla.org/start". Then opening Netscape under each
profile, Netscape went to
"home.netscape.com/bookmark/7_0/startuppage.html" and our bookmarks are
gone, replaced by the default bookmarks. Back to Mozilla, connected or
unconnected and our bookmarks are gone.

I guess my next move as good citizen and appreciative user of this
wonderful open-source software is to figure out Bugzilla, see if anyone
else has noticed this problem, and if not report it.

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Torben - 03 Dec 2003 18:45 GMT

> > Ken Seggerman <suleyman@panix.com> wrote to the effect that Mozilla and
> > Netscape wipe out each other's bookmarks when two people (his wife
> > and himself) go back and forth from Mozilla to Netscape.

> Ken Seggerman did further testing:

> I am quite sure that we are using separate profiles. We have it set so
> that a dialogue box appears on startup asking which profile to use.
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
> gone, replaced by the default bookmarks. Back to Mozilla, connected or
> unconnected and our bookmarks are gone.

Sharing the _same_ profile between Mozilla and NS - as you did in the
test described above - is known to cause trouble, but AIUI you do not
normally do this.

> I guess my next move as good citizen and appreciative user of this
> wonderful open-source software is to figure out Bugzilla, see if anyone
> else has noticed this problem, and if not report it.

Remember to include resolved etc. bugs when you query bugzilla (follow
the "Query Page" link from the Bugzilla front page and select everything
under "Status").

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torben@despammed.com

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Ken Seggerman - 03 Dec 2003 23:40 GMT

>>>Ken Seggerman <suleyman@panix.com> wrote to the effect that Mozilla and
>>>Netscape wipe out each other's bookmarks when two people (his wife
>>>and himself) go back and forth from Mozilla to Netscape.
>
>>Ken Seggerman did further testing and:

<snip...>

>>I guess my next move as good citizen and appreciative user of this
>>wonderful open-source software is to figure out Bugzilla, see if anyone
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>>to the effect that Mozilla does not support use of the same bookmark
>>files or even profiles by both Netscape and Mozilla.

Epilogue:
So if I want to use both apps, I need to create a separate set of
profiles for each app.

Thanks for your help everyone

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Mac Forum / Applications / Firefox / Mozilla / December 2003

Mozilla and Netscape wipe out each other's bookmarks