https://web.archive.org/*/addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/10897
https://web.archive.org/*/www.andyhalford.com/checkplaces/index.html

An add-on which helps deal with bookmarks. It has three features which I really appreciate:

1. It checks for duplicate bookmarks.
2. It checks for dead links.

3. It re-downloads Favicons

—

• Abandoned

No longer in development ∞

The developer, sick of Mozilla, stopped development and removed his addons.

So long Mozilla, and thanks for all the fish* – June 2012

If you are here looking for any of my add-ons (SyncPlaces, SortPlaces, CheckPlaces or SearchPlaces) then I’m sad to inform you that these are no longer available.

Unfortunately I do not have the time or the motivation to continue to support these in light of the organisation that Mozilla has become. Apparently spending 1000’s of hours promoting their products and providing add-ons to fill the gaps in their product and repair bookmarks destroyed by Firefox Sync, counts for little and does not deserve any flexibility or support from them. Whatever they may claim, add-on developers are actually second-class citizens that are seen as obstructing the development of Firefox. Surprising, as many like myself believe that add-ons are the main USP of Firefox. I’ve seen many popular and useful add-ons die as authors give up trying to keep up with their constant changes or just get hacked-off with their holier than thou treatment. The stats appear to reflect this misjudgement as the use of Firefox is in decline, no doubt driven in part by users moving away as their favourite add-ons disappear, or former add-on authors suggest alternatives to family, friends, and colleagues.

My decision was taken after a series of problems with them the last one being the final straw. I will not be answering any further emails on this matter as I do not wish to waste any more of my time on this. Also, as I no longer wish in any way to promote Mozilla’s products, I will not be hosting or providing these extensions to anyone.

Thanks for all the emails of support. Unfortunately, too many to respond to individually. Thanks also for the many positive suggestions as to where my time and effort may be more appreciated and I am already investigating several of these.

*This is a reference to what the dolphins said to the humans just before the humans were wiped out. From my favourite book: HHGG

Duplicate bookmarks ∞

Its duplicate bookmark checking is like the earlier version of fdupes is on files. It checks and it displays all the duplicates but it leaves the deletion entirely in the hands of the user. Thankfully fdupes has a pre-release that automates the deletion. I hope one day CheckPlaces will do the same.

I was forced to go through many hundreds of bookmarks to delete duplicates by hand. Sigh.

Dead links ∞

This is another fantastic feature. It presents three screens separating out the different classifications of link. I didn’t particularly want any automation for processing these links, but I could see an argument for it.

It’s interesting to see that some websites spit out invalid responses even though the web pages come up just fine.

I’m also shocked at how fast CheckPlaces was at checking thousands of links.

Unfortunately, it chokes on invalid SSH certificates, requiring the user to click ‘cancel’. It does seem to continue working on other links in the background though. I guess after its timeout it would assume those links are invalid, but I just cancelled out of the certificate warning.

Favicons ∞

The wonderful bleachbit helps remove space-wasting stuff. Unfortunately it also killed the favicons from all of my bookmarks.

CheckPlaces was able to recover all of them. Sweet.

Alternatives? ∞

• Bookmark Duplicate Detector might be interesting to try

  • It won’t install on Firefox 3.5b99.