The Live Bookmark feature in Firefox is really cool. The Live Bookmarks feature automatically tells you when the content of a bookmarked site has been updated - you don't have to go to the site to see if there is anything new, the new content comes to you.

Live Bookmarks are based on RSS feeds, so they only work on sites that provide RSS feeds. To determine if a site is eligible for a Live Bookmark, look in the lower right corner of the browser window. If you see the RSS icon, if you see it, you can click on it to subscribe to the feed which is how a Live Bookmark is created. See the image below for an example of how it looks once you click on the RSS icon.

Creation of a Live Bookmark

Once the Live Bookmark is created, it will be checked once an hour for new content. If you want, there is a hack that allows you to adjust this interval, you can check Live Bookmarks more often or less often if you like. To adjust this interval go to the address bar in your browser and type: about:config. Scroll down and look for an entry with a Preference Name of browser.bookmarks.livemark_refresh_seconds. It's likely you won't have such an entry, but if you do double click on it and enter a new interval. The value entered is in seconds.

If you don't have a browser.bookmarks.livemark_refresh_seconds entry, right click in the lower part of the screen and select the New, then Integer options. You will be asked to enter the preference name. Enter browser.bookmarks.livemark_refresh_seconds. You will then be asked to enter a value, in seconds.

When entering a new value for the browser.bookmarks.livemark_refresh_seconds field, be careful not to set the interval too low. Your browser will be going and hitting sites at this interval, and some sites don't like it if you hammer them every couple minutes and they will ban you. Anything over 15 minutes (900 seconds) should be pretty safe.