How to Import Firefox Bookmarks into Safari 4 Beta in Windows

While Firefox is my mainstay browser, I pretty much use all current browsers from time to time both to test my various websites for compatibility and to keep current with what’s new in the browser wars.

I recently installed the Safari 4 beta. In earlier versions of Safari, there was always an option to import bookmarks from IE or Firefox during the installation process. Not-so with the Safari 4 beta install.

Note: I purposely uninstalled Safari 3 before installing Safari 4. My hope was to get a fresh import of my most current Firefox bookmarks in the process. That didn’t work.

I use xmarks (formerly foxmarks)  to synchronize my bookmarks between computers. While there is an xmarks beta client for use on the Mac, so far there is none for the PC.

Here’s the easiest way I could find to import Firefox bookmarks into the Safari 4 beta:

In Firefox:

• Click on Bookmarks
• Click on ‘Organize Bookmarks’ (Ctrl-Shift-B)
• Click on ‘Export HTML…’ under the ‘Import and Backup’ pull-down menu

• Firefox will generate a ‘bookmarks.html’ file and ask you where to save it
• Save it to the Desktop

In Safari 4 Beta:

• If your menu bar is hidden, click on the ‘preferences cog’  on the top right and select ‘Show Menu Bar’
• Click File
• Click ‘Import Bookmarks…’
• Select the ‘bookmarks.html’ file from your Desktop
• The Firefox bookmarks will then import into Safari
• Click on the ‘Bookmarks’ icon on the top left of Safari to see the imported bookmarks. They will listed under the heading called ‘imported [date]’ where date is the date you imported them on. You can rename this as you see fit.

Bookmarks Toolbar Issue:

If, as I do, you access bookmarks and bookmark folders from your Firefox bookmark toolbar, the Safari 4 Beta’s bookmarks toolbar will not, unfortunately, be populated with the contents of your Firefox bookmark toolbar from this import process.

The Firefox bookmark toolbar is still imported, however. You’ll find it at the bottom of your imported bookmarks list under the heading ‘Bookmarks Toolbar’.

You can drag and drop each item in the ‘Bookmarks Toolbar’ heading to Safari’s bookmark toolbar. This works for individual links as well as bookmark folders. Within minutes you’ll be able to reconstruct a working bookmark toolbar just as it appears in Firefox.

Bookmarks Will be Static:

Until xmarks comes out with a Safari 4 plugin for Windows, the imported bookmarks will, of course, be static. But, the process is simple. I’ll likely use this manual import process every few months to keep my bookmarks manually synced.

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