Migrate Net Snippets to Firefox

As title, I will focus on "How to Migrate (Port) NetSnippets to Firefox".

This post is translated from part of my previous post about my Firefox Extension List (http://eucaly61.blogspot.com/2008/01/firefox-addons-list.html, in Chinese).

中文讀者請移駕到 火狐上場主投 -- 我的 Firefox Addons List

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NetSnippets is a software to Save and Organize your interested web contains.

• Features : http://www.netsnippets.com/basic/index.htm.
• Comparison - Free, Standard, and Professional Editions : http://www.netsnippets.com/compare.htm

NetSnippets' database is a simple directory structure contains web clips in "non-proprietary storage formats" -- web links as Windows native internet shortcut, and web pages as html files and separate image/photo files. This is very different from most other notes organizers such as Keynote, Evernote and Firefox Scrapbook extension.

Although discontinue the development and marketing since March 2007, NetSnippets is still my first choice for web snippets. Being a fan of NetSnippets for years, it even stocked me from switching to Firefox because I need a solution to migrate NetSnippets to Firefox. After 2 months study, I make it 90% perfect (with the help of some Firefox addons, PlainOldFavorites, IE Tab, Net Snippets Toolbar, plus NetSnippets Desktop Bar) and switch to Firefox in Jan 2008.

Thanks to the hint about the "drag and drop" capability of NetSnippets from Indroneel Das. Now I found it's 95% perfect in Firefox with NetSnippets Desktop Bar alone (5% for not integrated as Firefox side bar). Please see below for more details.

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- Net Snippets Toolbar 1.0.5 and Net Snippets Desktop Bar

The integration of NetSnippets in Firefox is "far from perfect" as compared to that in IE (Internet Explorer). NetSnippets cannot work as a side bar in Firefox, you should launch NetSnippets Desktop Bar (a separated program window) instead. In such mode, only "Entire Page" and "Link to Page" (the link to current page) can be clipped by clicking the menu item of NetSnippets Desktop Bar. But the "drag and drop" capability of NetSnippets enables you to drag and drop "a link" within a Firefox web page to any folder in NetSnippets Desktop Bar, and " drag and drop" also works for "Selected text and images". Below is quoted from NepSnippets official page :

Capture text and graphics from anywhere into one location.

* Select text and images from a web page.

* Capture entire web pages.

* Simple drag-and-drop operation.

** NetSnippets discontinue the development and marketing since March 2007, but below links are still valid to download the main program and Firefox extension. Please notice that NetSnippets extension only works with Firefox 1.5, but there is a "workaround" as described below, or please try "Nightly Tester Tools". NetSnippets extension for Firefox provides a menu button to launch NetSnippets Desktop Bar directly from Firefox, and context menu (mouse right click) for clipping "Entire Page" or "Link to Page" to NetSnippets.

• http://www.netsnippets.com/basic/
• http://www.netsnippets.com/mozilla/install.asp
• http://www.netsnippets.com/compare.htm

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** workaround for NetSnippets extension to work with Firefox 2.0 or above

• Modify install.rdf within netsnippets.xpi by below means
• Rename *.xpi to *.zip and UNZIP files
• find below in install.rdf

  <em:maxVersion>1.5.0.*</em:maxVersion>
  

• change to
  

  <em:maxVersion>3.0.*</em:maxVersion>
  

• ZIP files and Rename *.zip to *.xpi

More information about XPI, install.rdf as below :

• http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Updating_extensions_for_Firefox_3
• Firefox 3 no longer supports install.js scripts in XPI files.
• http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/XPInstall
• http://developer.mozilla.org/cn/docs/XPInstall

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- PlainOldFavorites 1.0

PlainOldFavorites is a Mozilla Firefox extension that allows you to use the Internet Explorer and Windows Favorites (IE My Favorites) directly from Firefox. This means, "IE My Favorites", "Firefox My Favorites", "NetSnippets" can be exactly the same thing (by setting NetSnippets Location to the same path as My Favorite.) This is very useful for those who switch between IE and Firefox frequently. However, "My favorites" can only work as menu item as Firefox but not a sidebar. In addition either "Firefox bookmark" or "ScrapBook" is still a different database from "My favorites".

FavoriteSync Firefox Extension could be an alternative, while it's official forum now recommended to use PlainOldFavorites instead.

• FavoriteSync official forum (favoritesync.com, 2007-08-11)

They both enable you to access the same set of Favorites in both browsers. The difference is that while the FS FF extension syncs Favorites with Bookmarks, PlainOldFavorites makes the Favorites available as an extra menu in Firefox. The latter method is technically much less resource demanding due to the significant difference in underlying implementation of Favorites and Bookmarks. This fact has shown up to be so important that the FavoriteSync extension will not longer be supported and instead the PlainOldFavorites extension is strongly recommended.

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- IE Tab

In a addition to open some IE only pages, IE Tab also help to enable NetSnippets context menu (right click) in nearly full capability (if the reload time for switching pages to IE Tab does not bother you too much). In other words, under IE Tab, you can use those IE-specific context menu (right click).

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