I am responsible for 2 computer labs with a total of 43 computers and students are forever messing up their bookmarks. It would be a tedious job to delete the additions and return the others to their correct place bookmark by bookmark. The quickest way I have found to return the bookmarks to the way I want them is to use Xmarks.
This free software (a pro version will sync on smartphones too) will synchronize the bookmarks on Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari. Works on Widows, Linux and Mac and most smartphones. It does it automatically, depending on your preferences. A change made to one browser will change the cloud version and appear in the others as you open them up. Great for personal machines. but as soon as I installed it on the computers in the lab I quickly found the drawback to instant synching. Because no machine is supreme, any change a student made to their bookmarks soon rippled through all of them! Chaos. The solution is to disable all automatic synching and updating. As long as the cloud version is OK you can go to any computer that has been messed up and just download the latest version, overwriting the offending bookmarks.
It would be great if the bookmarks could be set to automatically download an untampered cloud version each night rather than the current synching which just scrambles all the bookmarks – that would then make keeping the bookmarks in labs up to date a real breeze!
