Dealing with the Netscape 4.7 Bookmarklet Bug

A bug in some versions of Netscape 4.7 may prevent bookmarklets kept with earlier versions from carrying over correctly to 4.7, and may prevent certain bookmarklets from working at all from the Bookmarks menu or from a folder in the Personal Toolbar. The bookmarklets still work from the Edit Bookmarks window. This page describes ways to workaround the bug:

If none of your bookmarklets are working

You will need to keep your bookmarklets a second time. To do this, open your Bookmarks file as a webpage. That is, choose "Open Page" from the File menu, then locate your bookmarks file. On Windows, the file is located in
C:\Program Files\Netscape\Users\[username or "default"]\
On Macintosh, the Bookmarks file is located in
System Folder >> Preferences >> Netscape

After opening your bookmarks as a webpage you will have your bookmarklets in front of you in the browser window. Now you can delete your bookmarklets and replace them again by dragging them from that page. To delete a bookmarklet: choose
Communicator >> Bookmarks >> Edit Bookmarks
Click on the bookmarklet once to select it, then choose "Delete" from the Edit menu.

After deleting your old bookmarklets, keep them again from your Bookmarks webpage. The easiest way to do this is to create a new folder in your Personal Toolbar folder (in your Edit Bookmarks window) by selecting the Personal Toolbar folder and choosing "New Folder" from the File menu - this will create a new button on your browser's Personal Toolbar. Then drag each bookmarklet from your bookmarks webpage up to the new button on your Personal Toolbar, dropping the bookmarklet where you want it.

If some bookmarklets work, but some don't

Open your Bookmarks for editing and drag the bookmarklets which don't work into the Personal Toolbar, but outside of any folder in the Personal Toolbar. This should get them working again. Unfortunately this won't leave you much room on your Personal Toolbar.

 

This is all quite messy, and this regrettable lapse of quality assurance is a disservice by Netscape to its customers. Please fill out a Netscape bug report in order to encourage Netscape to fix this problem quickly.


October 14, 1999
Bookmarklets.com
ns47bug@bookmarklets.com