Example: A Daily Synchronization (Leopard version)

To schedule a daily bilateral migration between two browsers,

  1. Make sure you are using Mac OS 10.4 or later, have installed Bookdog 4.0.0 or later, and licensed Bookdog (so that Bookdog can save your bookmarks after doing the migration).
  2. Navigate in your /Applications folder to the Automator application and launch it. 
  3. Apple decided that this would be easier for you in Leopard if they added an extra step.  Doubleclick "Custom".

  4. Automator wll open a new untitled document which is called a workflow.
  5. The left pane of the document shows your library of action categories.  Click "Internet".  (Except, if your Bookdog version is 5.0.3 or earlier, click "Other".)
  6. In the middle pane you will see the actions available in Bookdog. Select Migrate Bilaterally and drag it to the empty workflow sequence on the right.

  7. In the Migrate Bilaterally action, select the two browsers that you would like to be synchronized.

  8. In the main menu, click File > Save As Plug In.

  9. In the Save dialog, give a name to your document.
  10. After Plug-In For:, select iCal Alarm.

  11. Click Save.  iCal will launch and select your alarm.
  12. In iCal, if the Inspector bubble is not visible on the right, right-click or control-click your alarm.

  13. Click the Edit button.

  14. In the Inspector bubble, change the from time to the time when you want the daily migration to run.  You want it to run, but not disturb you.  Probably you'll want a time when your Mac is usually on, but you are not actively using it.

  15. Right below that, set repeat to daily.

  16. That's all.  Quit iCal, quit Automator.  Your daily migration is now scheduled.

For Power Surfers: Synchronize Three Browsers

If you want to synchronize three browsers (say Safari, Camino and Firefox) synchronized, you could do this by putting three actions in your Automator workflow:

Note that all three actions are necessary.  Without the third action, for example, new bookmarks from Camino would not get into Firefox, and vice versa.

Now, if you're a real power surfer and want to sync four browsers, it will take six actions.  Contact Sheep Systems support to suggest an enhancement, and in the meantime we'll help you do the math.

Viewing Results

Bookdog's Migrate Bilaterally action returns a paragraph of text telling you how many bookmarks were copied, etc.  If you want to see these numbers, you can drag Automator's View Results action

and drop it after Bookdog's Migrate Bilaterally in your workflow.