Favsync

favsync is a small software to keep your Internet Explorer favorites synchronized from one PC to the other. Any changes in your favorites is automatically detected and automatically uploaded via HTTP to your web server (you can use any free web hosting service that supports CGI scripts). Next time you log on your other computer (home or work or whatever) your favorites will automatically be downloaded and updated!!!

This service used to be freely available from bookmarksync but it is not free anymore. All the software that do exist do not automatically detect changes and you have to manually export your favorites, upload them and download them from your other computer. What a pain!!

To use favsync you need to have access to a web server that supports scripts and uploads via HTTP (I guess most do). Why HTTP instead of FTP? Because often in a work environment FTP acces is not allowed whereas HTTP acces will always be. You need to install a script that will allow the upload for you. Included in the installation is a PHP3 script that does this for you but you can write this in any other language. If you know how to write such a script in another language then you'll probably find out the variable names in the provided PHP script.

Setting up favsync is quite simple. First time you run favsync, you will be allowed to enter all the parameters. If you don't succeed then sorry but I might not help everyone. If you have work specific favorites you do no not want to share between your computers, you can add them in the exclude paths like I did for Linux\Misc for instance. Of course this exclude rules can be different on each computer. On the first computer you run favsync select the option of updating the server with the local favorites. Check for the icon in the system tray. It should go to a brighter version showing favsync is transfering your favorites and then go back to a dark icon. If the icon goes all red, it indicates an error during the uplaod: check your settings and your web server to see if everything is okay and then retry to upload your favorites by right-clicking on the icon and choose Force update > Server by local. On the other computers, select update local by server or merge depending on whether you want to keep your local favorites or not. If you selected Merge, then the resulting favorites will automatically be uploaded. That's it! Now keep favsync running on your computers and as soon as you modify your favorites, favsync will upload them to your server. Next time you use another computer, favsync will download and merge the new favorites!

If you've written an upload script in any other language do not hesitate to mail it to me. I will include it in the installation package!!!

You can also securize the part of your webserver where your favorites are stored as favsync supports basic HTTP password based authentification.

You can take a look at your favorites from any place: install the favsee.php3 script (included in the installation package) along with the jpeg files on your webserver and then load the script with http://..../favsee.php3?id=<your_id> (of course replace <your_id> with appropriate text).

If you have a server and some bandwith and want to set up a favorites synchronization service based on favsync do not hesitate to mail me!!

Lastly, I must advise you to backup your favorites on all computers where you plan to use favsync. favsync has been successfully tested and used but there can still be bugs and I would not want you to lose your favorites!