Reloaded Software

Thanks to the suggestion made against the original ChromeDump posting, I have reworked the code slightly so that it runs as a console application, therefore making the application somewhat useful again.

Set it up to run on a schedule, and your bookmarks are exported for you, with no prompt and no interaction necessary. In fact, the application takes but one argument; the name of the output bookmark html file. Provide no arguments and a bookmarks.html file is generated by default.

Like most things that are actually useful, it’s kind of hard to make it sound exciting. What it is though is a command-line, or console, application. There is no GUI. There is only the one option to it. It is so simple, that I felt bad for having to deploy a half-dozen files just to make it work.

As for anything new, the code has been updated to account for a revised bookmark storage format found with the latest Chrome version. That is about it.

So, to pad this posting out a bit…, just download and extract to a folder of your choice. Run the ChromeDumpConsole.exe file – alongside it will be generated a bookmark.html file containing your Chrome bookmarks. Feeling adventurous? Drop to a command prompt, or add a scheduled task, and specify /O:<filename> and that filename is where your bookmarks are written.

Enjoy

Loosely Chrome-related, more about getting Windows 7 up and running

The Vista 2.0 Windows 7 beta successfully installed, I was immediately shot down on the two non-work critical apps that I use: Chrome and Skype.

While I am still working on getting Skype working, I have found the following to make Chrome work:

Find the shortcut for Chrome and add the following after the quoted binary path

–in-process-plugins

While this modifies the start menu (or taskbar) shortcut for direct launch, I still have some issues when launching the browser via a document or Url handler.

A registry change to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ChromeHTML\shell\open\command where the command line is made the same as for the shortcut seems to take care of all other use and Chrome therefore acts correctly as the system default browser.

The number of comments posted after the last update that fell in to the negative column was unexpected. While I hope that these still represent the minority of those who have tried this program, I am suspicious. My testing is limited to two generic systems, and I could have easily missed something. So, I went ahead and turned on some really basic logging so that I could get some idea (better than none) of what might be happening for those who say that this application has failed for them.

Logging is enabled only during the export step. If you have a problem, send me your log file (named BookmarkExportLog.txt) via email – it may help. If you are having a problem outside of the export steps, you really need to send me a screenshot of the dialog which describes the error.

I also made a few changes so that your bookmarks will export correctly even when they contain non-English characters (in response to the comments about Russian language support, as well as others). I did some testing with Chinese, Russian, and some other languages and all went well.

The bookmarks file generated is easily imported in to Firefox, but it will not import in to Explorer. I was concerned about this for all of 10 seconds, as Explorer wont even export bookmarks that it creates itself if they happen to contain these foreign characters. I am about done on this subject, but I would assume that if you have a (for example) Russian native version of Windows, then the file will import and of course you can export – but I am not adventurous enough tonight to try it myself. Someone, feel free to let me know how things turn out.