best way to back up and restore Firefox bookmarks and settings

With all its settings and add-ins, Firefox is a wonderfully configurable browser. Yet there's no obvious way to backup any of those configurations, or to move them to a new computer. There isn't even a clear way to save your bookmarks.

While there isn't a clear way, there is a reasonably easy one. You just have to know how. The trick is to back up one particular folder. I can't tell you the name of that folder, because the name is different on your computer than on mine, but I can tell you how to find it:

First, close Firefox. Doing this while the browser is running will be disastrous.

Once it's closed, select Start, then Run, type (with the percentage signs) and press Navigate the resulting Windows Explorer window to (in other words, open the Mozilla folder inside your current location, then the Firefox folder inside that, and so on).

Now that you're in the Profiles folder, you'll see another folder with a random name and the extension .default--something like 4hw0enat.default. That's what you have to back up--that folder and all the files and folders inside it. Copy it to a safe location.

Here's how to restore it after you've bought a new PC or reinstalled Windows:

First, you'll have to install, run, and close Firefox on your new or newly setup PC. Then use the instructions above to find your new Firefox installation Profiles folder. Copy your old .default folder from the backup into that new Profiles folder.

You'll now have two .default folders in Profiles. With the one you just copied selected, press to rename it, to copy the name, then to not rename it, after all.

Move up the folder tree to the containing folder, which is called Firefox. Double-click the profiles.ini (Configuration Settings) file to open it in Notepad.

The last line of this file begins with Path=Profiles/. Select the rest of that line (everything to the right of the slash), and press to insert the name of your restored folder. Save the file, then open Firefox and everything should come up the way you want it.

Source: washingtonpost.com

Why Doesn't AutoComplete Always Work in Firefox?

If you're the type of person that always allows Firefox to save your login credentials for the sites you visit, you might be very frustrated when you come across a site that doesn't even prompt you to save the credentials. We've got the lowdown on what's going on here.

Here's that awful form I have to type into almost every day… I'm really getting tired of it.

So I take a look into the source for the page, and here's the culprit: the AUTOCOMPLETE="off" on the form will tell Firefox to disable auto completing for that form. The form elements themselves also have the same tag on them.

You'll find this happens quite often on corporate vpns, banks, and other sites where they are worried about security and don't want you to save your passwords, so they use this tag in their pages to prevent your browser from saving the credentials.

Your Best Option: Greasemonkey it!

You can use a greasemonkey script to re-enable the autocomplete on the form elements. You can find a number of them at userscripts.org:

http://userscripts.org/scripts/search?q=autocomplete

Or you can write your own if you feel like it… for some reason the other scripts did not work on my screwy corporate vpn at work, so I created a new script that manually set the attributes of each.

var frm = document.forms[0];
frm.setAttribute('autocomplete', 'on');
frm.elements[0].setAttribute('autocomplete', 'on');
frm.elements[1].setAttribute('autocomplete', 'on');

Hint: the Firebug extension is a great way to figure out what the elements are if you are writing a script.

Computer Repair and Computer Technical Support will always be provided by Microsoft certified techs 24x7.

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Automate Filling in Wordpress Comment Fields

Change Update Interval of Live Bookmarks in Firefox

If you are a fan of the Live Bookmarks feature, you might wonder how to make them update quicker since the default update time is once per hour, and there isn't a place in the interface to configure this.

You can always manually right-click on the bookmark and choose Reload Live Bookmark, but that's hardly efficient if you have dozens of feeds bookmarked.

You can change the default interval for all live bookmarks with a config setting. Just type about:config into the address bar, and then filter by the following key:

browser.bookmarks.livemark_refresh_seconds

If it doesn't exist, which is most likely the case, then right-click in the blank area and choose New \ Integer.

Copy in the key from above as the name, and then set the default value to 1800, which is 30 minutes in seconds.

The default value used internally is 3600 if the setting does not exist. You should be careful about not setting this value too low, as you might get banned by the server you are trying to connect to if you have the browser updating too often. The minimum value accepted is 60 seconds, but you should never set it that low.

Computer Repair and Computer Technical Support will always be provided by Microsoft certified techs 24x7.

More on Bookmarking in Firefox>

Expand the Add Bookmark Dialog in Firefox by Default

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Conserve Space in Firefox by Combining Toolbars

I'm not a fan of wasted space in user interfaces, so any time I can consolidate down to only useful functionality I'm happy about it. The subject today is how to consolidate the Firefox toolbars down to just the items we actually use, to save space for the 45 tabs I like to have open.

Hide the Menu Toolbar with Personal Menu Extension

There are a number of ways to hide the Menu toolbar, but I prefer using the Personal Menu extension. Once you've installed the extension, you'll be able to hide the menus toolbar:

To show the menu toolbar again you can use the Alt key. You'll also notice that some new items will be added to your menu, which can be customized or just removed.

Computer Repair and Computer Technical Support will always be provided by Microsoft certified techs 24x7.

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Make Trillian on Vista Open Links in Firefox

When I switched to Vista, one of the biggest annoyances was that Trillian started opening links in Internet Explorer instead of Firefox, even though Firefox is set as my default browser and works everywhere else.

Turns out it's an extremely simple setting. Just open Trillian Preferences and click on Text Conversations.

In this dialog, uncheck the option for "Open links in a new browser window"

I have to assume that Trillian uses some sort of built-in "new browser" mechanism that isn't compatible with Vista.

Computer Help and Computer Technical Support will always be provided by the Microsoft Certified Technicians 24x7.

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Add Sticky Notes to Any Page with Internote for Firefox

How many times have you wanted to put a sticky note on a page to remind you of something? For instance, you could put a sticky note on digg.com so the next time you visit it tells you that you should really be doing something more productive. =)

The Internote extension for Firefox lets you put sticky notes on any page you visit, and they will be there when you return to the page. Since it's an extension, it won't work across computers, but it's still quite useful.

Once you install the extension, you'll notice the little yellow icon in the status bar. You can also add a bigger icon to the toolbar if you want. Clicking once will give you a new sticky note, and right-clicking will give you the menu where you can get to the manager.

In the Internote manager, you can see the list of all the sticky notes that you've left, and change/export them.

Really a quite useful extension, and it even has a little eye candy.

Source-howtogeek

Scan Files for Viruses Before You Download With Dr.Web

If you frequently download files from suspicious sites, it's probably worth it to check for viruses Before you download, instead of waiting to see if your regular anti-virus software will catch it after you download.

The solution? You can use the Dr.Web plugin, which will add an item to the right-click menu to allow you to scan any web page or download link using their online virus checker.

Let's take it for a test drive… I decided to scan the Dr.Web Firefox plugin with Dr.Web, just to see what it would say.

Looks like it's clean! (shocker)

Keep in mind that no anti-virus software is absolutely perfect or will catch every virus, so this isn't a substitute for using a proper anti-virus software. You should also still be careful where you download files from.

This plugin will also not work for webmail attachments. I tested this on Gmail and it didn't work, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it means your attachments are private.

Add Simple POP3 Mail Client and Notifier to Firefox

If you like to have your entire computing experience within your Firefox window, you might be interested in accessing your POP email accounts directly in Firefox. The Simple Mail extension gives you this functionality, and true to the name it's very simple.

After installation, you should notice the little mail icon in the status bar, which will highlight and display an unread count if there are new messages, but first you'll want to right-click it and open the preferences to add your new account.

Here you can add a new account or import from Thunderbird (a feature I did not test)

Left-clicking on the mail icon will open the mail client interface, nothing more than a two-paned display of the messages sitting on your server. You can choose to delete the individual message through the right-click menu.

The new or reply up options bring the new email dialog, which is also really simple.

source-howtogeek

Add Simple POP3 Mail Client and Notifier to Firefox

If you like to have your entire computing experience within your Firefox window, you might be interested in accessing your POP email accounts directly in Firefox. The Simple Mail extension gives you this functionality, and true to the name it's very simple.

After installation, you should notice the little mail icon in the status bar, which will highlight and display an unread count if there are new messages, but first you'll want to right-click it and open the preferences to add your new account.

Here you can add a new account or import from Thunderbird (a feature I did not test)

Left-clicking on the mail icon will open the mail client interface, nothing more than a two-paned display of the messages sitting on your server. You can choose to delete the individual message through the right-click menu.

The new or reply up options bring the new email dialog, which is also really simple.

source-howtogeek

Backup and Restore Firefox Passwords List

Backup and Restore Firefox Passwords List

Somebody recently wrote in asking how to backup the list of saved passwords in Firefox into a spreadsheet, so I'm writing the solution here for everybody: All you need is the Password Exporter extension.

Open up the Add-ons screen and find Password Exporter in the list, where you can click the Options button to bring up the Import/Export Passwords dialog.

You can either import or export your passwords using this dialog, and you can choose to encrypt them if you want.

You can export in either XML or CSV format. If you are trying to create a spreadsheet with all your passwords the CSV file would be a better choice.

Just be very careful with the list of passwords you exported.

Make Firefox Display Large Images Full Size

Firefox resizes large images by default to fit in the browser window. This can get really annoying if you are browsing a lot of large images.

To see this in action, you can click the link to the really nice Ubuntu wallpaper. You'll notice that you have to click on the image to show the full size version.

1280×1024 Ubuntu Wallpaper

To change this setting, follow these steps:

• Type about:config into the address bar in firefox.
• Type in browser.enable in the Filter bar and hit enter
• When you see "browser.enable_automatic_image_resizing", double click it and the value should change to false, as shown.

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Expand the Add Bookmark Dialog in Firefox by Default

If you are reading this article you are probably annoyed that every single time you add a bookmark in Firefox you have to click on the expand button to show the folder list before you can actually locate the folder to put the bookmark in.

There are two solutions that I've found to make Firefox expand this dialog by default, one is an extension and the other is a Stylish script, so we'll go over both solutions.

Using the OpenBook Extension

Download and install the OpenBook extension from Mozilla Add-ons, and after rebooting Firefox you'll see that the bookmark dialog is now open by default:

There are also a bunch more useful options available in the ridiculously tall Options window:

The most interesting thing here is that you can set Firefox to automatically bookmark into a particular folder by selecting the "Add bookmark to folder below" option.

Using Stylish Tweak Method

If you're a fan of the Stylish extension you'd probably prefer to just add another user style instead of a separate extension. You won't get the extra features, but it does save you some extension bloat.

It's as simple as installing the Add Bookmark Dialog user style… click the button to load into Stylish:

And now you'll see that the default dialog is changed. You can customize the width / height in the script if you'd like, which is something you can't do with the OpenBook extension.

Disabling The Stylish Tweak

Because this user style is for the user interface, it won't show up in the regular Stylish popup, so you'll have to go into Manage Styles.

You should see the "Add Bookmark Dialog" style in the list, and just remove the check from the left of it.

Don't forget that you can just drag bookmarks straight off the address bar and onto the bookmarks bar, which is really the simplest option.

More on Firefox Bookmarks-

Change Update Interval of Live Bookmarks in Firefox

Automate Adding Bookmarks to del.icio.us

Upgrade Your Live Bookmarks With LiveClick

Edit Your Firefox Bookmarks With Flat Bookmark Editor

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Change Update Interval of Live Bookmarks in Firefox

If you are a fan of the Live Bookmarks feature, you might wonder how to make them update quicker since the default update time is once per hour, and there isn't a place in the interface to configure this.

You can always manually right-click on the bookmark and choose Reload Live Bookmark, but that's hardly efficient if you have dozens of feeds bookmarked.

You can change the default interval for all live bookmarks with a config setting. Just type about:config into the address bar, and then filter by the following key:

browser.bookmarks.livemark_refresh_seconds

If it doesn't exist, which is most likely the case, then right-click in the blank area and choose New \ Integer.

Copy in the key from above as the name, and then set the default value to 1800, which is 30 minutes in seconds.

The default value used internally is 3600 if the setting does not exist. You should be careful about not setting this value too low, as you might get banned by the server you are trying to connect to if you have the browser updating too often. The minimum value accepted is 60 seconds, but you should never set it that low.

source-howtogeek

More for on Firefox Bookmarks-

Automate Adding Bookmarks to del.icio.us

Upgrade Your Live Bookmarks With LiveClick

Edit Your Firefox Bookmarks With Flat Bookmark Editor

Automatically Copy to Clipboard While Selecting Text in Firefox

When you spend a lot of time in front of your computer, many small actions performed repeatedly can add up to a lot of wasted time. The worst of these small offenders is the copy and paste… so how can we simplify this in Firefox?

The AutoCopy extension will automatically copy to the clipboard any text you select, and allow you to paste it with a middle click anywhere in Firefox.

All you have to do is select the text you want to copy, and it will be copied to the clipboard right away.

You'll notice the new icon in the status bar, which will let you change a few options or open up the full options panel.

There's lots more options in the options panel… you'll notice the keyboard shortcut options as well.

Once you get used to this extension, you'll wonder how you lived without it



Source-howtogeek

Automate Adding Bookmarks to del.icio.us

I use del.icio.us to store all of my infrequently used bookmarks, but I've found that browsing by tag just isn't very efficient for me. I always use a full text search through my bookmarks to find what I'm looking for, so what I'm really looking for is a single-click save solution similar to the star button on the Flock browser.

Greasemonkey comes to the rescue with the del.icio.us autotag user script, but the problem is that you can't edit the bookmarks by clicking on the del.icio.us tag button, because that script always immediately submits the form, and also duplicates the tags.

I've created an upgrade to the script that fixes those problems. Just like the first script, it will automatically add the popular and recommended tags:

Here's the details:

• Automatically enters in popular or recommended tags, submits the form and closes the pop-up window.
• If the bookmark has already been saved, it will leave the edit window as is.
• Doesn't duplicate the tags if you use the tag button more than once.

And here's the source code, in case you are interested:

var poptags = unsafeWindow['tagPop'];
if (poptags) { // test to make sure we're on the post page
if (poptags == "") {
var rectags = unsafeWindow['tagRec'];
var finaltags = rectags.toString();
} else {
var finaltags = poptags.toString();
}
if(document.getElementById('tags').value.length > 4){
editmode = 1;
}else{
editmode = 0;
var myarray = finaltags.split(",");
for (var tag in myarray) {
if (document.getElementById('tags').value.search(/myarray[tag]/) == -1) {
document.getElementById('tags').value += myarray[tag] + " ";
}
}
}
if(finaltags.length > 4 && editmode == 0){
document.getElementById('delForm').submit();
}
}

I simply couldn't live without this script, but I wouldn't recommend using it if you like to browse by tag.

For more information on Bookmarks in FIREFOX>>>>>

Edit Your Firefox Bookmarks With Flat Bookmark Editor

Upgrade Your Live Bookmarks With LiveClick

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Add Search Forms to the Firefox Search Bar

Wouldn't it be cool if you could add search plugins for any search form to the Firefox Search Bar, instead of having to create the plugin yourself or wait for the site owner to stop being lazy and make one?

It's good that there's an extension for Firefox called Add to Search Bar that will add a new context menu item to let you create your own search plugins on the fly.

For instance, you can right-click on the search box here and then choose Add to Search Bar…

You'll be prompted to give it a name, I chose to shorten the site title down a bit.

And there we go, now I can search anything from Firefox.

I've tested this on a number of sites, seems to work pretty well… at some point I'll stop being lazy and make an official search plugin.

Source-how-to-geek.com