Was just running the free version of Spyware Doctor to check up the hard drive as I usually do. Although Firefox is my main browser just now, I still do use IE for Windows Update and some sites that just don't display properly with Firefox or Opera. That's when the odd spyware registry entries and files manage to slip through.

Found the usual tracking cookies which I don't mind having since it's just ad companies tailoring their internet ads but, it also reported some of the 2ch pages I bookmarked in Firefox as "bad links". Upon removing them, I was dismayed to find all my bookmarks containing Asian characters had lost their names. Only a blank space was left next to their icons so that I could no longer tell which site was which.

Fortunately, Firefox makes daily backups of bookmarks for the past 5 days so they were easily restored. If you're ever in this situation, you can go through the following steps:

1. Bring up Windows Explorer by pressing the Windows key and 'e' together or just via the Start Menu.
2. Type in the address bar "%appdata%" without the quotes.
3. Browse to Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles and then in one of the folders you should find another folder called "bookmarkbackups".
4. Rename the "bookmarks" file to something such as "bookmarks.old".
5. Copy the backup you want to restore to where the bookmarks file was and then rename the backup file to "bookmarks".

Or if you prefer the official instructions, you can find the full details on the Mozilla site.

Speaking of Firefox, version 3 (code name "Gran Paradiso") should enter beta status by the end of this year and it appears it'll have a new download manager.

What I really want to see though, is a feature that allows you to search through the browser's cache of websites. Firefox only lets you search through your history of URLs and site names whereas IE actually lets you search through the contents of sites you've browsed before. Say for example, you remember browsing a certain site with the words "5cm draft novel" but didn't bookmark it at the time. If the site was still in your cache, IE would find it again for you if you try searching under History. A very handy feature.

I should probably try the new Safari browser sometime too but maybe after it's smoothed out the coding and interface a little more.