Comment 3 for bug 301578

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.8) Gecko/2009032711 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.8) Gecko/2009032711 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.8

Forwarded from https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bug/301578

Opening the bookmark backups in file:///home/you/.mozilla/firefox/v3r1s3kr3t.default/bookmarkbackups/bookmarks-2008-11-20.json in the browser shows the beginning a single long line and a horizontal scroll bar. It would be nice if this could be displayed in a somewhat more human-readable format for quick inspection. I believe the JSON format should have some tolerance for adding newlines and indentation in order to make it palatable for humans.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. In the location bar, type in file:///home and navigate to your own home directory, its .mozilla subdirectory, the firefox subdirectory within that, the subdirectory for your profile (usually with .default at the end of the name) and finally the bookmarkbackups subdirectory within that.
2. Click on one of the files.
3. Try to read it.

Actual Results:
A long line, from which the following is visible:

{"title":"","id":1,"dateAdded":1226491072760742,"lastModified":1226645650728289,"type":"text/x-moz-place-container",

Horizontal scroll bar, very coarse, easily scrolls more than a screenful per pixel once the line grows long enough.

Expected Results:
Easily see the structure of the file, find the JavaScript code for a particular complex bookmarklet, search for a particular keyword to see whether it's already in use, etc.

I don't expect a full-fledged browser for this format (that would be nice too, of course, but it's clearly something one could write an extension for, rather than bloat the default Firefox code base with), I just want the on-disk JSON to have some newlines and indentation to make it somewhat human-readable.

I am the original submitter of the Ubuntu bug.