Organizing Firefox bookmarks with Freemind

Here’s how you can organize your Firefox, Camino, Mozilla, Netscape, and even Internet Explorer bookmarks (they all use the same file format) using Freemind.

Note that on my system, Freemind resides at ~/freemind and my bookmarks reside at ~/.mozilla/firefox/**default/bookmarks.html.

1. Install the necessary file conversion tools:

   sudo apt-get install xbel xbel-utils xsltproc
   

2. Netscape to XBEL conversion:

   ns_parse ~/.mozilla/firefox/**default/bookmarks.html bookmarks.xbel
   

3. XBEL to Freemind conversion:

   xsltproc -o bookmarks.mm ~/freemind/accessories/xbel2mm.xsl bookmarks.xbel
   

4. Organize your bookmarks using Freemind:

   freemind.sh bookmarks.mm
   

5. Freemind to XBEL conversion:

   xsltproc -o bookmarks_new.xbel ~/freemind/accessories/mm2xbel.xsl bookmarks.mm
   

6. XBEL to Netscape conversion:

   xbel_parse --netscape < bookmarks_new.xbel > bookmarks_new.html
   

7. Once you are satisfied with your newly organized bookmarks (bookmarks_new.html), you can overwrite the old ones:

   mv bookmarks_new.html ~/.mozilla/firefox/*default/bookmarks.html