Advanced Options

Profiles

All of your SyncPlaces settings are stored together in a profile. You can export this profile, and add or import other profiles and quickly change between them. For example you may have different profiles pointing at different servers, or pointing at different sets of bookmarks (maybe for synchronising two different folders e.g. one for work bookmarks, one for home bookmarks):

Click on the 'Add' button to create a new profile with a default name. As the list of profiles is editable, you can change the default name that appears to something more meaningful. Once you have finished editing a name move the cursor out of the drop down for it to permanently change. Note: You cannot have two profiles with the same name. New profiles automatically inherit all the settings of the last profile in use to make it quicker to set up new profiles.

To change between profiles simply select the one you want from the drop down and all the associated settings will be loaded. Depending on the differences with the profile you are replacing, the timestamps used for merging and the hashes used for send/receive may be reset affecting any merging when next synchronising (see the first merging tip for more info). Also if you use any of the automation options, then you may have to restart Firefox for them to take affect.

Use the 'Move up' and 'Move down' buttons to change the order of your profiles in the list.

To delete a profile just select it from the drop down and then click the 'Delete' button.

You can export the currently selected profile using the 'Export' button. This will save all of your settings in an external file with the exception of the '...folder to backup to', as this is O/S dependant. Note that your SyncPlaces passwords are stored in plain text in this file, so ensure you keep it safe.

When you import a profile with a new name this name will be added to the drop down just like the others. But if the profile's name is already in the list, all the settings of that profile will be overwritten by the ones imported.

Merging

Without merging the bookmarks in your local browser would be replaced by the ones on the server when you click the 'Receive' button. Use the 'Merge received' option on the Merging tab to merge the server bookmarks with your local ones instead, so that you do not lose any new bookmarks or local changes. This option also works with the 'Select folder ...' option if you wish to synchronise on just a single folder.

Merging can be a complicated process, so it is recommended that you also read the How to use SyncPlaces page for information on how best to use this option and what pitfalls to avoid.

Merging occurs as follows:

• Folders: If you already have a folder in the same parent folder with the same name as a folder on the server, then the contents of the server folder are merged into the local folder.
• Duplicate Folders: If you have two folders in the same parent folder with the same name, then the position of these folders in the parent folder is used to determine how to merge folders with the same name from the server. If the positions are the same then the folders are merged together as you would expect, but if they are different the received folder(s) are added.
• Bookmarks/Livemarks: If there are two bookmarks/livemarks in the same folder with the same name and URL then the one with the most recent 'last modified' timestamp is preserved and the other is ignored.
• Queries/Searches: If there are two queries/searches in the same folder with the same title and search parameters then the one with the youngest 'date added' timestamp is preserved and the other is ignored. Note that the 'date added' is an annotation added by SyncPlaces for this purpose.
• Separators: By default separators received from the server are added, unless this would mean that you would end up with two separators next to each other, in which case they are ignored.
• Local deletes: If you have deleted something since the last time you sent your bookmarks then this will not be re-added. Also see notes below.
• Remote deletes: If something is deleted on the server, then when receiving it the local item will be deleted (unless it has been modified locally since the last time a send was performed). Also see notes below.
• Renaming/Moving: In most cases these are equivalent to an add followed by a delete.
• Default: In all other cases the remote item is added to the bookmarks on your local browser and new tags are added if required. Also the position (index) of items within folders as stored on the server take precedence.

Deciding what to do about duplicates by using the 'last modified' timestamp may not be what you want as it relies on the clocks on each browser being roughly in sync (timezones don't matter because UTC is used throughout). Instead you can choose to always keep your browser's version: 'Use local', or always keep your server's version: 'Use remote'.

With items locally or remotely deleted/renamed/moved since the last physical send, a comparison with backup taken when the last send occurred is used to determine what to do. If this backup is missing (first time use, changing the server settings, restoring a backup, changing the folder to synchronise, and changing profiles will normally cause this) then the 'last modified' timestamp is used to determine whether something should be deleted or re-added. Queries do not have any timestamps, so SyncPlaces adds an annotation with a nominal 'date added' timestamp, but as there is no 'modified' timestamp then any changes to a query's properties (i.e. uri or title) will never be propagated to each browser.

XBEL Note: XBEL does not allow properties for separators so they are always restored if locally or remotely deleted unless they clash with other separators. If you receive XBEL without the SyncPlaces annotations, deleted queries will also be restored because their timestamps will also be lost. Merging of deletes/renames/moves is disabled when importing.

If you wish to ignore all deletes, whether remote or local, then simply uncheck the 'Merge deletes' option and nothing will be deleted, but you may end up with duplicates if you move or rename anything.

By default everything received from the server is merged in. However, by unchecking the 'Merge everything' option you can select what to consider when merging. In particular you can choose to only merge in items on the toolbar, in the unsorted folder, in the main bookmarks menu, or a combination of all three using the radio buttons provided. You can also decide what type of things to merge in using the checkboxes provided. For example you may not wish to merge in separators, or only merge in livemarks. Note that ignoring any item effectively means ignore the received item altogether.

XBEL

On this tab you can enter styling tags that will be added to the top of the XBEL file when exported or sent to the server. Then when you open the XBEL file with your browser it will be transformed and styled as described by these tags and displayed appropriately. This is great for remotely accessing your bookmarks.

As an example, first enter the following tag into SyncPlaces: <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="xbel.xsl"?>

Then download this zipped package of files, unzip them into the same folder as your XBEL file, open up the XBEL file in Firefox and they will be nicely styled. Note: The files originally come from one of the old Bookmark Synchronizer extensions, were given away freely, but do not contain any copyright message and the associated sites are now dead (even the wayback machine couldn't help), and the authors uncontactable. So if you know who the original author(s) were please let me know so I can credit them here.

The 'Export/Send small XBEL' option gets rid of all the extra XML that is used to store keywords, tags, annotation etc. when synchronising. The XBEL file produced is much smaller and ideal for transforming using XSL or importing into non-Firefox browsers. This option is only available if you synchronise using JSON and choose to 'Send XBEL' as well

Encryption

The first item on this tab is the password required to encrypt/decrypt passwords/bookmarks that are synchronised and when backing up/restoring passwords. This must be entered or the synchronisation/backup/restore will fail.

You can choose between two different encryption systems when encrypting your passwords or bookmarks. AES or TEA. TEA is much faster than AES and is the default. But even TEA is quite slow with large files as it is all being done in Javascript (newer Firefox releases should help with this).

If you are encrypting your bookmarks using AES, then you can select the level of this encryption using the 'Bits for encryption' option. The greater the number of bits used, the harder it will be to decrypt them. However, it will take much longer to encrypt and decrypt when using 192 or 256 bits.

Workarounds

Warning: The options on this tab are only normally of use if you are having problems. Using them when you do not have any problems may cause SyncPlaces to stop working or side-effects to occur.

Details of what these options mean are provided in the appropriate places on the Support page.