FEBE 10 and Pale Moon 28

[BackerUpper]

The upcoming v28 version of Pale Moon (currently in Alpha - announcement here) is a fairly major upgrade. FEBE seems to work normally.

The only issue I've found is that Search Plugins are not being restored. There's no apparent error message. My current searchPlugins.fbu file was created with Pale Moon 27.

[cbaker_admin]

Does PM v28 have a searchplugins folder in its profile directory? FEBE zips this folder to create the searchPlugins{profileName}.fbu backup file. And when restoring, it unzips the file into that folder.

[BackerUpper]

I created a new profile, added a new search engine to the default ones and no, that folder is not there. There is a search.json.mozlz4 file which I think is related to search plugins.

[cbaker_admin]

Mozilla made that change with Fx v44. They also changed cookies and permissions. Before I update FEBE, I'll wait until PM v28 is out of alpha to see if there are any other changes.

[BackerUpper]

Pale Moon 28 beta and preliminary release plans

FEBE seems ok, except for the Search Plugins mentioned above.

[cbaker_admin]

Thanks for the update. I will wait until the v28 stable release is out before I update FEBE. If I were to fix the search engine issue now, it would be broken in v27.

[BackerUpper]

A positive thing I've noticed when restoring the search.json.mozlz4 file, is that this time search engine keywords are also restored. Unfortunately, the search engine order is again not restored - that info probably resides somewhere else.

[BackerUpper]

Final version is out. Indeed, it looks like some further changes were made.

The "search.json.mozlz4" file is no longer present. I see "search.json" and "search-metadata.json".

[cbaker_admin]

I ran some tests and FEBE v10.2 seems to work fine with PM v28. The search plugins are stored the same way PM v27 did it. I went ahead and uploaded FEBE 10.3 with only a version compatibility to Pale Moon v28.

To your knowledge, is everything else backing up/restoring ok in PM v28?

[BackerUpper]

Yes, everything I tried works fine.

[BackerUpper]

Forgot to mention that with the final, stable release of Pale Moon 28 the search plugins are now properly backed up (they weren't in the pre-release versions) but their keywords are not being backed up/restored.

I assume this is related to the search.json.mozlz4 file which was implemented in the pre-release versions of PM28 but is now gone from the final, current versions. As previously mentioned, backing up and restoring search.json.mozlz4 took care of both the search engines and their keywords.

Would it be possible for FEBE to also back up the search engine keywords with the current 'system'? I am not sure where they are stored/located.

I remember you said in the past that the only way to restore the search engines order, would be to restore the entire profile. Perhaps it's the same situation with the keywords?

[cbaker_admin]

If you are referring to the function "Add a Keyword for this Search..." when you right-click on a search field, that information appears to be stored in a table named "moz_keywords" located in the [profile]/places.sqlite file. You could set up a FEBE user-defined backup for places.sqlite, but restoring it would also restore bookmarks, favicons, visit history and other items along with the keywords.

[BackerUpper]

Thank you, "Add a Keyword for this Search..." is pretty cool. Didn't know about it - I think those are stored as regular bookmarks and should be straightforward to backup/restore.

I wasn't referring to that though, but rather the "Manage Search Engines..." section which can be accessed from the search bar on the top right and takes you to the "Manage Search Engine List". You can add keywords there ("Edit Keyword..." button) for the currently installed search engines. It works similarly to the "Add a Keyword for this Search..." you mentioned but I can't see a way to backup/restore these keywords.

[cbaker_admin]

The keywords for search engines are located in the file search-metadata.json in your profile directory. You can create a FEBE user-defined backup for that file to restore the keywords.

[BackerUpper]

Perfect, thanks very much.