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Import bookmarks from Firefox to Google Chrome

Bookmarks are widely used nowadays to save the websites and pages people like to visit frequently. I have read in many forums that users who are switiching from Firefox to Google Chrome are experiencing problems in importing the bookmarks.

In this article i will explain how we can import bookmarks from Firefox to Google Chrome. First of all lets look at the Firefox bookmarks. There are two places where a user can store bookmarks in Firefox. First one is the “Bookmarks toolbar” and the second one is known as “Bookmarks menu”. Bookmarks toolbar is what we see on the front of a page. Bookmarks menu can be located by clicking the “Bookmarks” button on the menu bar and it shows the list of all the bookmarked pages. If we open the bookmarks organizer for Firefox (CTRL+SHIFT+B), we can see the bookmarks divided among the two above mentioned categories.

Lets import the bookmarks now to Chrome. Click the settings button, there we see “import bookmarks & settings”. Select Firefox from the list , tick mark the Favorite/Bookmarks and you can mark the other three two if you want to import search engines, saved passwords and browsing history. If you have Firefox running at this point, Chrome will notify that settings can not be imported and Firefox needs to be shutdown. After we have closed the Firefox click continue, and you should see the green tick marks for a second after which the box disappears which means that we have successfully imported bookmarks from Firefox to Chrome. On the Google Chrome window, if bookmarks are not currently visible they can be turned on by pressing the shortcut key CTRL+B or you can open the settings and click “ Always show bookmarks bar”. Now we see a new button on our menu bar, “other bookmarks”, some times Chromes fails to load this and this button is faded like in an empty box and then chrome suddenly crashes and when you reload you should see the button working and it should show “imported from firefox” menu below this. (this happened in my case).

Now we have all the bookmarks imported from Firefox, with the folders and everything. Simply drag and drop the folders from the menu to the bookmark bar you see on the front page under the URL address bar. That’s it you are done, i would recommend you organize your bookmarks first on Firefox using its bookmark organizer if you have not created bookmarks folders before and you have tons of uncategorized bookmarks.

Do you want Chrome to save your password?

Google Chrome automatically checks for post forms which are sending usernames and passwords and asks the user whether to save the password or not.

You will not like to select “save password” when you are not using your own home pc, for example a public computer. If you click “never for this site” , Google Chrome will not bother you again with this yellow tab asking for your answer only for a given website, means for each website you enter your credentials Google Chrome will ask you individually. If you completely want to disable this option that can be done by opening the options , selecting “minor tweaks” tab and tick marking “never save passwords”.

That was all basic, now comes the real part for which i have written this article. What if you  select one of the options “save password” or “never for this site” for a website and you change your decision later and want Google Chrome to start asking again the same question for a given website. I tried finding a decent way of doing this but i failed :-). All that can be done to solve this issue is clear your passwords that are stored by Google Chrome. Go to clear browsing data and only select the last option “clear saved passwords”. Selecting the period depends on when a given website was saved with your selected option , you may have to select “everything”. This hopefully solves the problem and now Chrome will ask you again for saving password for the websites.

Google Chrome vs Firefox: Memory test

Google Chrome is a lite browser. It loads faster and smoother then Firefox. Firefox is a heavy browser with lot of features that beats Google Chrome for sure. In this test i am going to compare Google Chrome with Firefox in terms of memory consumption, how much memory each one of them takes when you open a new tab or a new window, behaviour of the processes in the Windows task manager and finally the conclusion i.e Which one is better..Google Chrome or Firefox?.

Google Chrome version: 0.2.149.30

Firefox : 3.0.1 (All addons are disabled for Firefox in this test).

1. Google Chrome and Firefox on 1 tab.

If we look at the task manager, Google Chrome currently has two processes that are handling the browser at this time. On the other hand Firefox is using a single thread to manage the whole browser.

Google Chrome’s 1st process takes 10,712K . Second process consumes 19,776K. Total memory consumed by Google Chrome at this time is 30,488K.

Firefox has a single process which takes 33,012K of memory at this time.

Not a big difference in the values. Latest computers usually have at least 1GB memory and differences like these do not count. Lets open some more tabs in Google Chrome and Firefox for a better overview.

2. Google Chrome and Firefox on 2 tabs.

The above screen shot of Windows Task Manager tell us clearly the process behaviour between Google Chrome and Firefox. Google Chrome creates a new process every time we open a new tab while Firefox is using the same process no matter how many tabs you open.  I will explain the reason and logic behind this at the end of this article. Lets add up the total memory consumed by Google Chrome and Firefox.

Google Chrome 1 = 10,772 + Google Chome 2 = 24,820 + Google Chrome 3 = 10,712 = Total = 46,304K

Firefox = 36,928K

Firefox is winning! :)?

3. Google Chrome and Firefox on 3 tabs.

Google Chrome’s total consumtion= 17,484 + 10,772 + 27,720+ 10,728 + 15,528= 82,232K

Firefox = 51,132K

At this time, Google Chrome has created two more processes. Google Chrome has total of 5 processes in order to handle three tabs. The third website i opened was www.youtube.com on both Google Chrome and Firefox. Google Chrome will create a new process in order to load a website which has a flash object.

4. Google Chrome vs Firefox: 4 separate windows

Google Chrome takes about 10,800K of memory for each of the window opened for the same website. Note that there are total of five processes for Google Chrome.

Google Chrome’s total memory consumption= about 52,000K

Firefox= 36,000K

5. Conclusion

The results are clear from the above tests. Google Chrome takes about 1.5x more RAM then Firefox. There is an explanation for this. Google Chrome is all about stability. It has a crash control feature, which prevents the browser from crashing. Each tab runs in its own private environment which creates a new process everytime a new tab or new page is opened in Google Chrome.  Google Chrome always has one more process then the number of windows or tabs opened because there is one main process which controls rest of the tabs and pages.

1.5x is not a big difference and it is worth the stability of Google Chrome. If Firefox uses 150,000K of memory , Google Chrome will use about 225,000K for the same pages. Computers which have lack of memory may prefer to use Firefox instead of Google Chrome. If there is enough memory which is mostly the case these days such difference doesnot really matters.

Google Chrome incognito mode allows private browsing

Google Chrome has a special feature known as “incognito mode” meaning “private browsing”. This feature in Google Chrome helps user browse the web without keeping any web history in the records. This does not mean that cookies are disabled, they are cleared away as soon as the incognito tab is closed which guarantees no record and traces of the visited websites or any information related to them.

Watch the video on “Google Chrome incognito mode“.

The websites the user visits still may have the record but the user’s computer does not have any record. Any files that are downloaded during incognito mode still remain on the computer. In more simpler words, Google Chrome incognito mode is browsing the web if there was no concept of history records in the web browsers.

Google Chrome incognito mode is specially used when user wants to visit private websites containing sensitive information on a public computer. At that time incognito mode is very helpful and promising.

Google Chrome crash control

Google Chrome’s crash control feature unlike other browsers decreases the possibility of browser crash. Each tab runs in its own “sandbox” completely separate from the other tabs. If a tab stops responding towards an application it will not effect the other opened tabs thus preventing crash.

Google Chrome’s task manager can be used to monitor and manage the opened tabs. It shows memory, CPU and Network traffic for each of the opened tab. If a tab is not responding it can be killed without crashing the browser by selecting it and clicking “end process” button in the task manager.

New Tab in Google Chrome browser

New tab in Google Chrome web browser can be opened by clicking the “+” button , which shows up at end of every tab page.

Watch the video on “New Tab in Google Chrome browser“.

1. Most visited.

Every new tab page shows screenshots and links to the web pages that user has visited the most. Click on the image takes you to that website making it very easy to open your favorite web pages without typing the URL.

2. History.

At the end of a new tab page, you will see a link to “show full history” which shows the full history of the web browser organised by Date. History tab helps you search pages with the help of search box at the top of the page. History for each day can be deleted by clicking the “Delete history for this day” at the right side of each day’s list.

3. Searches, recent bookmarks and recently closed tabs.

The right side of a new tab page contains three boxes: “searches”, “recent bookmarks” and “recently closed tabs”.

Search box lets you search within your history. It matches the URL’s and the content inside the web page too to give the best results.

Recent bookmarks displays the pages which have been bookmarked recently.

Recently closed tabs shows the list of pages you have just closed. This helps to go on a page which you have closed accidentally.

4. Dynamic Tabs

Google Chrome web browser lets you manage the opened tabs in many ways. By dragging the tabs you can change their locations inside the browser. Simply drag a tab and move it within the queue of your opened tabs. Apart from this, a tab can be converted in to a new Google Chrome window. Drag a tab out of the “tab list” and it should disappear from the top panel and convert itself in to a new Google Chrome small window. Upon release it will finally be converted into a new Google Chrome window. A Google Chrome window can be converted back into a tab of another Google Chrome window by dragging the tab to the other window’s tab bar.

For more information watch the video on “Dynamic Tabs in Google Chrome web browser“.

Google Chrome Address bar

1.Google Suggest

The address bar of Google Chrome broswer is quite different from the other browsers. If you type any keyword in the address bar , it automatically suggests you the related websites and google search query for that “keyword”.

The address bar is using a Google’s automatic suggestion service known as “Google Suggest“.  This service has been intergrated inside the Google Chrome web broswer’s address bar by default. This helps to refine your search queries at the spot and make quick searches.

Watch the video on “How to use Google Chrome address bar“.

2. Easy Bookmarking

Creating a bookmark is very easy and simple in Google Chrome web browser. The star icon at the start of the address bar helps bookmark the page with a one click. Folder selection and managing the bookmarks can be done by clicking the edit button.

3. Security: SSL connections

If you visit a page which is using a secure SSL connection for the data transmission then Google Chrome address bar shows a change in background color of the address bar from white to golden. Apart from that the url changes to “https” and a “lock” icon appears at the end of the address bar.

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