Switching From Internet Explorer to Firefox

Posted on: April 20th, 2010

I’ve been advocating the use of Firefox (FF) instead of Internet Explorer (IE). There are two main reasons, and a lot of minor ones:
1. It’s proven by actual statistics that people using Firefox have a much smaller incidence of infections. Any security vulnerabilities discovered in Firefox are fixed really quickly. With IE (which is a product of Microsoft) that process is longer.
2. There’s a very useful plug in for FF called Adblock Plus which can filter out 99% of ads on pages. It makes pages load faster and gives you distraction free browsing.

So, many have been making the change from IE to FF.

But, as with every change, there are possibilities of trouble. The most common request that people have had is how to transfer their Favorites from Internet Explorer to Firefox (they are called bookmarks there). Usually the user gets prompted to import the settings from Internet Explorer when Firefox is first started. Trouble is when a computer had an old version of Firefox installed on it and perhaps it was uninstalled, or forgotten, there are no prompts asking about importing. However this can be done with a few extra steps.

(NOTE: These screen shots are minimized to facilitate reading but if you click on them they will be displayed in full size.)

1. Start Firefox

2. In the menu click Bookmarks and then Organize Bookmarks

3. In the window that pops up, click on Import and Backup and then Import HTML (not very well named, unfortunately)

4. The Import Wizard will come up. And on the first screen select Microsoft Internet Explorer, and then click Next:

5. Now the Import Wizard will go through and import the Internet Explorer favorites. When it’s done, then click on the Finish button. You are almost done!

6. You’ll need to go back to the organize bookmarks window. Here you will now see a From Internet Explorer folder on the left side. Click on that.

7. Click on one of the items on the right side. And then press CTRL+A (hold down the CTRL button and then press A and then let both go). This will highlight all items in that folder:

8. Now, drag and drop these items onto the Bookmarks Menu line. (drag and drop = press down the left mouse button over one item, while holding down that mouse button move the mouse to the destination and then let the mouse button go):

9. Now, everything is easily accessible. The only thing left is to delete the folder named From Internet Explorer. To do that, simply right click on it and then select Delete.

That’s it. This way, if you click on Bookmarks in the menu then you’ll see the same list as you did in IE.

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