Fix broken Firefox bookmarks icons!
Our favorite web browser, Firefox, does not always update bookmark icons when a site’s icon changes, or it saves the icon of Google News next to CNN’s icon.
This can be a wee bit annoying, so, with a little tweaking, you can erase the old icon and let Firefox update your browser with the new icon.
First you need to find the bookmarks.html folder for your Firefox.
In Windows XP for me, it’s on a torturous thrill ride through the following folders: Documents and Settings - username - ApplicationData - Mozilla - Firefox - Profiles–a gobbledygook folder.
Make sure your browser is not running, then open the bookmarks.html folder in your favorite text editor.
My problems are in the Toolbar folder, so I find that section of the bookmarks.
I find the entry I’m looking for, in my case CNET Intranet, and find the term ICON with the = sign after it. The text after ICON is the offending image.
Highlight everything between the quotes and delete it.
Now save the bookmarks document.
When you relaunch the browser the offending icon should be gone.
To restore the proper icon, just click on the bookmark. The site should add it right back.
Thanks to Tom Merritt at CNetTV for this tip - Fix broken icons in Firefox bookmarks!
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Another great tip, I have a host of icons wrongly attributed - on my home PC my email has the paypal icon(?) and on my work PC, Paypal has the yahoo Icon…
I’m gonna try it right now…
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Let me know how it works for you!
hmmm, I couldn’t find the file to edit…. my XP is set up different to you… I thought you had gone over to the dark side now (VISTA)
Yeah, I have Vista now. But I also work on an XP machine at work and at school.
In XP, when you go into the profile folder, look for bookmarks.html. Do not open in Firefox or IE; instead, right click and open in a text editor like WordPad or Notepad.
Then, you can scroll through and see the links individually, with the icon information saved. It is REALLY LONG.
When I get back home, I can take some screenshots.
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I found bookmarks.html, but it only had Firefox.com links, no fav’s that I recognised…
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Hm. Maybe you have your profile saved elsewhere? Are you still using Fx 2 or did you upgrade?
Great tips, but I seldom notice the icons on my bookmarking menu as I seldom use my bookmarking features. Going to try this anyway. Thanks for the tips.
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