Most of us own more than one computer, but tend to use the same browser across every machine. This is one of the reasons Firefox grew in popularity. If you own a Mac laptop, but use Windows at work, you can use the same browser across the two machines. Problem is, when we work at home, we might add a web link to our bookmarks, go to access the link at work and realise it’s not available on your work machine. Not a particularly ideal situation if you were adding bookmarks for reference purposes, perhaps to show a colleague at work.

There’s an easy way around this and that is to use a bookmark synchronisation tool that enables you to keep your bookmarks in sync, irrespective of the operating system. There are two Firefox based bookmark synchronisation add-ons, Mozilla Weave and the other Xmarks, which is also available for other browsers. We’ll get back to Xmarks, later.

Mozilla Weave is an official add-on that’s matured over the last year. It will enable you to keep your bookmarks, preferences, open tabs (at the time of closing your browser) and even your passwords, in sync. Keeping passwords in sync is made even easier when Firefox knows which passwords are allocated to each site. Use Firefox all day at work, get home and you’ll find that that you have instant access to the same sites without having to remember your passwords.

The big disadvantage of using Mozilla Weave is that it only works with Firefox. Xmarks is slightly different in that it will enable you to synchronise bookmarks between Internet Explorer and Firefox or Firefox and Safari. This is ideal if you are stuck with a work-based PC where you are unable to install Firefox or a work laptop which only has Safari installed. Make your own choice between Mozilla Weave and Xmarks, although we found Xmarks to be more problematic than Weave.