Firefox: Bookmarks on my own server? - firefox

I don't trust other servers (even Firefox's ;-)) and would like to store my bookmarks on my own server in order to synchronize them on different devices/PCs. So, similar to the "Sync" function within Firefox.
In the best case, there would also be a web interface to browse/manage bookmarks on my own server.
I think there is no add-on or extension for this, only different providers who store bookmarks on their servers.
How would be the best way to get this done?

This sounds the best case for wallabag. You can even have it in a docker container.
wallabag is a self hostable application for saving web pages: Save and classify articles. Read them later. Freely.
There is also an addon, wallabagger which you can link it to your own server.
References:
https://github.com/wallabag
https://wallabag.org/en/news/wallabagger-howto

This post is your answer:
https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run-sync-1.5.html
I wrote a post some time ago, about this theme (in Spanish), when the Addon "Xmarks", still permit configure a custom server. It was very easy, you only need a webdav server, and you can sync Bookmars between this, and your devices with Firefox. All right. But "Xmarks", removed the option. Thank you guys!, and now, I think we don't have any addon with this feature.
I'll try to do it with the tutorial of top answer, but its more complicated than older option.

Related

Firefox Extension - Database access

I want to make a Firefox extension that can store and retrieve data from a database. However I've only been finding solutions that would work locally for each user. I'd like every user to have access to the same database.
Is that possible?
It is possible to access remote SQL databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL with node.js modules, but it is more sensible to create REST API front ends to your databases and call them from the extension. Exposing the SQL calls directly in your web extension is not a good idea. It is basically bad security practice and will expose your database to hackers.
You will also need your addon to pass Mozilla's approval process if you are going to distribute publicly and I doubt the reviewers will be pleased to see raw SQL calls in your extension's code.
The more sensible way is to update the database is through a REST API front end.
A simple example on how to create a REST API for a Postgres database can be found at Node.js, Express.js, and PostgreSQL: CRUD REST API example - LogRocket Blog and this playlist show how to create a REST interface in a Firefox extension - Build a Firefox Extension from Scratch that integrates with Node.js - DEV Community
The above database example is quite simple. For real world use you will need a more advanced REST framework for your API which sanitizes the data before inserting it into the databasse. You have more reading to do here.
However if you need to make SQL calls directly from your extension which I still don't advise, you can include some packages from node.js in your web extension, and use browserify which extracts and packages the modules needed into your extension. Your addons though had better be for private or in-house use, not for public distribution.
Some nodejs modules for database access are - https://github.com/mysqljs/mysql, https://node-postgres.com/ and https://www.npmjs.com/package/pg.
Just a little advice. Feel free to ignore it if you have nothing to do with it. Your question sounds quiet generic. You should learn and doing it by yourself first and only ask here when there are specific issues you're stuck with.
By "locally", I think you mean via Web SQL or IndexedDB. They're called local database and their behaviors are totally different from what you're looking for.
I should haven't need to tell you to do this. Just in case. Of course first thing first you need to know how website is working for both front end and back end, not just local stuff, especially how they're communicating between each other. So you should know about HTTP request, Javascript, and AJAX.
What has it to do with Firefox extension?. Not just Firefox, browser extension is just another type of web page that overlaying the opened web page in all kind of browser. In Firefox the opened page is called activeTabs. The only difference from regular web page is you need to signup your account first, manifest.json file as your project root file, and it compile from command line with web-ext tools. In case if you're facing Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) restriction, follow instructions HERE and allow the URL on server side.

phpBB forum, self hosting or not?

I want to set up a forum using phpbb.
I've done that in the past by using websites that host it for you, for example:
http://www.phpbbweb.com/ , http://www.free-phpbb-forum.com/ or http://www.prophpbb.com/
These kind of websites are using the phpBB software.
I do not direcly want to register hosting and domainname because I'm not sure if people will actually sign-up, so I was thinking about making a free forum first on one of the above websites (or similar), and if people like it I want to export all the content(users, posts, maybe the theme) to a self hosted site wich I can build a website around and stuff.
Would this be possible ?(apart from the fact that it might be confising for members searching the forum)
Also I would like to know if it is possible to make your own themes(/styles?) for the free hosted ones.
Maybe this is a really stupid question but I'm wondering because at WordPress you have a big diffrence between wordpress.com and wordpress.org, for example the theme design.
For others that are also searching for this:
I made a forum at http://www.prophpbb.com/
It is NOT possible to use ftp on your forum, however, there are a lot of themes avalible for use wich you can customise by changing the css sheet.
As a free user it is possible to send an email to the admins of the prophpbb website to ask for a backup of your forum.
This way you can incluse that when you 'move' your forum.
As a premium member, you can backup the database yourself.

Facebook Connect XFBML not working

I'm making a website using Facebook Connect and decided to use Facebook's XFBML tags like "fb:profile-pic" since they are so easy to use.
I haven't been able to make them work no matter how hard I look online but then I noticed that it worked on all the browser's instead of Firefox.
I also realized that even on Facebook's own "The Run Around" sample app they don't work!! You can check it out here: http://www.somethingtoputhere.com/therunaround/index.php
If you log in with Firefox your picture is not shown, but if you use another browser it is shown. This happens with the fb:profile-pic tag or any other tag like fb:name.
I haven't found any information online so I'm asking other people that have worked with this: Are these tags simply not compatible with Firefox ? Do they have outages or something like that ? Has this happened to anyone before ? Any ideas on how to resolve this ?
I guess they do have "outages". I've spent the whole weekend trying to resolve this and now they post they had a problem and have resolved it.
From the Platform Live Status website:
http://developers.facebook.com/live_status.php#msg_497
We are experiencing a possible config
problem with api.connect.facebook.com.
If you are including Connect JS
library through
http://static.ak.connect.facebook.com/js/api_lib/v0.4/FeatureLoader.js.php,
all API requests through JavaScript
would fail. This affects rendering of
XFBML tags (such as fb:name and
fb:profile-pic) as well. While we are
fixing this issue, you can work around
the problem by changing
http://static.ak.connect.facebook.com/js/api_lib/v0.4/FeatureLoader.js.php
to
http://static.ak.facebook.com/js/api_lib/v0.4/FeatureLoader.js.php.
It's also safe to keep url change
permanently because
connect.facebook.com is just an alias
to facebook.com.
I wish they had updated that sooner, now I'm looking for a place to find out about this stuff before I spend days working on something before realizing it's not a problem with my code!
Open up Firefox > Preferences > Privacy and make sure "Accept third party cookies" is checked. This is needed for Facebook Connect to work. Also, when using Connect, make sure all your tags are fully closed, i.e. <fb:profile-pic></fb:profile-pic> and not <fb:profile-pic/>. From the docs:
The user's browser must be set to
accept 3rd Party Cookies in order for
it to stay connected between clicks.
Source: http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Logging_In_And_Connecting
FWIW, I wouldn't use "the run around" as a sample app. That thing has been the same since they introduced Connect and is pretty hacky.
do check in connect section under the canvas option.
there should be a link of your physical file.

open source/free web based proxy project

is there any open source or free "web based proxy" server project that I can look into? I looking for one that don't required configuring browser sock..etc and having web basad interface. Does squid able to do that?
I used to need that several yeas ago. I don't think any supports SSL:
PHProxy - Supports javascript and cookies, but not AJAX or Flash that loads external content (such as youtube)
PHP-Proxy - I don't remember much about this one, but I remember it not playing well with images.
glype - This is a new one for me, I've never tried it.

When trying to integrate one website with another what is the way to go? Iframe or pulling content?

My company has multiple vendors that all have their own websites. I am creating a website that acts as a dashboard where customers can access all of the vendor's sites. I wanted to know what is the best option for doing this?
Here's what I have so far:
Iframe
Can bring in the entire website
Seems secure enough (not sure if I'm missing any information on security issues for this)
Users can interact with the vendor's website through our site
Our website cannot fully interact with the vendor's website (Also may be missing info here)
Pulling in the content
Can bring in the entire website
Not very secure from what I hear (Some websites actually say that pulling another website in is a voilation of security and will alert the user of this or something similar...
Users can interact with their website through our site
Our website can fully interact with the vendor's website
Anyone have any other options...?
What are some of the downsides to bringing in a site with an iframe and is this really our only option for doing something like this?
Optimally, we would like to pull in their site to ours without using an iframe- What options do we have on this level? Is there anything better than an iframe?
Please add in as much information as you can about iframes, pulling content, security, and website interactions like this. Anything to add in is appreciated.
Thanks,
Matt
As far as "pulling content" is concerned I wouldn't advise it as it can break. All it takes is a simple HTML change on their end and your bot will break. Also, it's more work than you think to do this for one site, let alone the many that you speak of. However, there are 3rd party apps that can do this for you if you have the budget.
You could use an iframe/frames, however, many sites might try to bust out of them and it can ruin the user experience of the site within the frame.
My advice is to use the following HTML for each link in your dashboard.
Vendor Site Link
If you can have the sites that you are embedding add some client-side script, then you could use easyXSS. It allows for easy transferring of data, and also calling javascript methods across the domain boundry.
I would recommend iFrames. Whilst not the most glamorous of elements, many payment service providers use iFrames for the Verified by Visa/Mastercard Secure Code integration.

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