How Does Mobile Favorites Work For You?

[Ed Hansberry]

Mobile Favorites in the Windows CE/Pocket PC/Windows Mobile world has never worked quite right. Its original intent around 10 years ago was to have Internet Explorer synchronize websites to your device when you docked so you could view them in offline mode. You could set the page depth so you could even click 1-2 levels down. This made sense as virtually no devices back then had any online access unless you had a modem card/attachment for it. The feature never worked right and most people used Avantgo instead, which also never worked quite right, but that is another story. "Sucked less" was my feeling on the matter. :wink: <br /><br />Now Mobile Favorites is best explained as a list of shortcuts in IE on your desktop in a folder called {drumroll please} <i>Mobile Favorites</i> that get synchronized to your device. In Vista using IE7, there is no offline capability that I can see, which is fine for two reasons. 1) Most devices can go online for themselves and 2) it never worked anyway, which I may have already mentioned.<br /><br />You'd think this would be simple and useful. It isn't. Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) on Vista apparently really dislikes Mobile Favorites. Almost every time I sync, it deletes random favorites from my device and PC. It is so irritating that I have copied the \Windows\Favorites folder on my device to my SD card and after every sync, I copy it back from the SD card to my device. Right now, my device has 10 subfolders and 61 shortcuts in Favorites. Mobile Favorites in IE7 on my Vista PC has 10 subfolders and 19 shortcuts. I don't know why. It used to have 61 shortcuts. It will after I sync next time - after most assuredly reducing my device to 19 or fewer shortcuts first. :roll: <br /><br />I know I am not alone in this either. How about you? Does it work for you at all?

[SteveHoward999]

I was never very excited by mobile favourites. My mobile browsing is much different form my desktop browsing. I long-ago selected around 10 mobile favourites, and I don't think I have altered them in about 3 years ... decades in computing terms!!!

Anyway - Mobile Favourites work fine for how I use them. If they had been better 3 or 4 years ago, my habit might well be different.

Ultimately the reality is, outside of my stored favourites, I have all the websites I need stored in the most convenient place possible - my head!

[Mark Larson]

I've never had any problems syncing Mobile Favorites with XP and AS...

Until the last time I synced my Q after hard resetting it a week ago, wherein I lost one of my Mobile Favorites. :|

[holtwm]

My solution has been to use del.icio.us so that my favorites are device independent. Not ideal but works OK. Windows Live Favorites would be even better but mobile devices were not supported last time I checked.

Will

[paschott]

Tried to use it with XP and my iPaq 2200 device, but it just didn't do what I expected/needed. I think I just gave up on it at that point and disabled it from ActiveSync. Of course, that was a pretty much offline-only device, so all of my connections were done through the ActiveSync passthrough - I couldn't justify a wireless card or similar.

I have a Wizard now, which works pretty well, but I don't bookmark many things even then. I just don't browse as much as I send e-mail, check my RSS Feeds, GMail, etc. The rest is pretty much standard PDA/Phone stuff - no real need for PIE. I do wish that alternative browsers worked better - trying Deepfish for some of its functions and it's not bad, but still no AJAX support, which really hurts when trying to use against modern sites.

-Pete

[dhpss]

You guys should try Sunnysoft World Offline. WOL is like RSS Reader on Steroid!

Sunnysoft Word Offline provides a little utility that allows to cache any web site (no RSS knowledge required) at a link depth level chosen by user. And make the contents available for offline browsing.

Read more HERE! (http://solsie.com/take-rss-reader-to-a-new-height-with-sunnysoft-world-offline-sow-and-get-free-license/)

[that_kid]

I thought it was just me, I usually keep all my favorites stored in mobile favorites so I have one list of favorites no matter what device i'm on. I've always noticed that some folders would be empty and I couldn't never seem to track down what was doing it. This happened when I was using XP and is still happening with Vista. It's annyoing as like you Ed I have a copy of my favorites on my sd card that I move back and forth. Still I also have to copy my favorites over to the pc as well :evil:

[Gerard]

I use a home page stored locally with about 30 of my most frequently used links, and have a bit over 900 URL files in the \Windows\Favorites folder. I tried Opera, a couple of versions, but as it won't import or browse to my URL files I've abandoned it as borderline useless. I just use too many links for them not to be available. So Pocket IE and NetFront for me, as both use the same links folder and home page easily.

And as I've been 'connected' since summer of 2000 (starting with a Casio CF dialup modem, then a Socket, then a couple of Wi-Fi CF cards, now the built-in Wi-Fi in my Toshiba e830) I just don't see the point of deliberately synching content from the PC. I hardly ever connect the PPC to the PC, as my PC has more of a media-feeder role for my PPC than anything else. Since I don't need a PC to go to websites, I just dont use it for that.

Tried once synching Mobile Favorites, before my Casio modem arrive in July 2000, and it cost me a bunch of links on the PC. Worse than useless. Never tried again.

[Jason Lee]

By "Mobile Favorites Feature" I guess that you mean the sync conduit on the desktop.

I tried to sync the favorites on my device long ago. Never offline pages, just the favorite links. However it would always delete random links which got very irritating.
So i stopped syncing favorites. I still use them on my mobile device but do not sync them. I have over 100 favorites on my device all nice and organized in folders. (Half of them are links to versions of google, LOL)

I copy the folder over to my storage card from time to time for an extra backup.
Syncing would be pointless any way as I ONLY use firefox now. I haven't used IE for years.
But i do have a nice way of getting my firefox favorites onto my phone. I simply export my firefox bookmarks. they are stored in a nice simple HTML document that renders nicely in PIE. I either set that file as my home page or have a favorite in PIE that takes me to the local file.

Much nicer than randomly loosing favorites every sync. :(

[alese]

I have tried the offline feature of Mobile Favorites in 2000 with my Jornada 545 but it didn't really work...
Then I used them as "normal" bookmarks on my phone editions last couple of years and for the most part I didn't have any problems. But lately my Mobile Favorites folder is different after every sync, it's just unusable.
I'm trying to find a good online sollution for storing all my bookmarks, so that I won't need to sync bookmarks between all my machines...

[MitchellO]

Well Mobile Favourites worked great for me since my Jornada in 2003, and those favourites synced to every device I had since then up till about 2006 when I changed what I had in there :P

[Goonie]

I have never really bothered with mobile favorites as viewing the websites I view offline isn't much use to me.
I carry all of my IE favorites with me. I sync a copy of my favorites to my devices "my documents" folder. I then sync these to my device through ActiveSync. This system updates my favorites daily. For more details check out this (http://www.inspectmygadget.com/2007/04/30/how-to-syncronise-your-ie-favorites-with-your-windows-mobile-pocket-pc-wm5-2/)site.
It's a bit of a work around but it is the only worthwhile solution I have found.

[Steve Jordan]

I never browse with my PDA, nor read offline content... I use Firefox, not IE, so no Favorites to sync... and I still drive Win2K.

(Why am I here? I feel so old and tired.)

[Steven Cedrone]

Gave up on it a LONG time ago! :(

[emuelle1]

I tried to use the Mobile Favorites feature, but it never worked right for me. ActiveSuck was constantly telling me about syncing conflicts, but in typical MS fashion, it wouldn't tell me which favorites were causing the conflict. I finally gave up on it in order to avoid unnecessary sync conflicts.

[miterb]

I havn't had a problem in over 6 months. Then last night I made one change in my Dell x50v 2003se device and this morning the Synch replaced all of them from my desktop. How about dropping this topic :evil:

Brad

[normanjd]

I had this problem too... Seems to me that as long as I didn't use Sub Folders in my Mobile Fav dir, it would sync... Just because I don't like clutter, I probably didn't have more than 15 items in the list at any one time when I stopped being able to organize by Sub Folder...

I only finally got rid of Avantgo last month... I was keeping it only until I was sure my RSS reader and PIE would handle all my needs, then just never deleted it... When I reflashed my Roms last month, I just never reinstalled it, andf am not missing it..

Lates... 0X

[mightymission]

Well at least your contacts and appointments aren't getting randomly deleted....gee, $500 bucks for a organizer that doesn't work...terrific.

I'll say this..... if someone came out tomorrow with a PDA phone that had a stable PIM I would throw this POS Micro$oft phone in the nearest dumpster after smashing it against a wall.

[Sheena]

Although I voted for ActiveSuck (love that!) working ok, I must clarify that I keep only a few links in it, with a bigger bunch on AvantGo. With those limitations, both of those work ok. Now, for the hundreds of links I have on my favorites, I keep those on my portable drive, all of my computers synchronized, &amp; a partial list on Yahoo Bookmarks (there's a limit in # there).

Hopefully I'll find something online that works, but so far every service has a limit of around 200 links. I haven't tried del.icio.us yet, but I rather keep my folders rather than tags, I don't like having to type searches when just clicking on a couple of folders works faster. Suggestions welcome, please.

Rosie

[TOCA]

Found out long ago, that the offline browsing bit, only worked for my Laptop, so I only use the Fav's as a link collection.

For offline reading AG has been my favorite, for a long time, and now I eaven have a good RSS reader form Spb, giving me enough to read for my dayli commuting. For long trips, i use Webaroo, to storre some interresting pages, on the SD card, like Wiki articles, if I could just get my hands on a 10GB storrage card, I could have the entire Wikipedia in my pocket 8)

[ipaq_wannabe]

I know I am not alone in this either. How about you
? Does it work for you at all?

Funny as this suddenly became a problem for me, as I just posted something at another WinMobile forum:

I really dont know what is happening here, but ever so and then whenever I sync my HTC Hermes, I soon find out that some URLs dont get synced (it is still in Mobile Favorites but the "check" in AS just got turned OFF). Or worst (most of the cases) - the URLs just disappears.

My entire Mobile Favorites is quite static - at the moment I rarely add nor delete anything from it; but as days passed, AS seems to be randomly deleting some URLs.

Has anyone experienced this before? Can anyone at least explain what is going on?

Thanks!!!

And it is driving me nuts!!! I will really never know if the URL that I need at that moment would be in my Mobile Favorites.

Crazy thing is that this never happened before! Im using AS 4.2 in WinXP SP2, with an HTC Hermes...

Ill read through the thread and see what I can dig up...

[buzzard]

I use maybe 30 url's consistently and have several of them in folders to limit the length of the favorites list. I rarely have a sync problem with them although I did yesterday. For whatever reason I opened a favorites folder on my PPC and found one url instead of the 7-8 normally there. I looked on the PC and it also had one. What the #$@!%! I had synced my PC to both my PPC and my Motorola Q but when I looked at the Q, everything was fine, what the heck happened to the other two? :roll:. The fix was easy, just copy the Q files back to the PC and onto the PPC, everything is back to normal. But how do you explain syncing 100's of times and then all of a sudden, poof....but poof only on 2 of 3 devices. Activesync will always mystify.

[ipaq_wannabe]

Activesync will always mystify.

Definitely! Even after years of revision (hey, when was the first AS released? 1995? 1996?) - AS is always a problem, always a mystery...

I always wonder why Micro$oft can never get it to work correctly...

[TOCA]

Definitely! Even after years of revision (hey, when was the first AS released? 1995? 1996?) - AS is always a problem, always a mystery...

And the new one "WMDC" is eaven harder to (con)figure, but when it works, it's nice to be able to open the documents directly on the PC, without having to transfer them first :D