Saving settings / extensions in Firefox (was: Firefox SUCKS when you reformat!)

[mcvickj]

As some people mentioned a little reasearch would have gone a long ways. A quick search on Mozilla forums shows several posts that would have given you the information you was looking for.

Firefox stores your profile under C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

If you use Thunderbird it is stored under C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles

It is possible to move your profile to your D drive Go to the run command and type in firefox -P. This will open up the profile manager. Then go ahead and create a new profile under the Firefox directory on the D drive. Then run the command again and delete the old profile if you choose to do so.

OBTW There are several new games that do save game data under the C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\ directory. The most recent one I had to deal with is Need for Speed: Underground.

 

[beatle]

Originally posted by: Kilrsat
So you're right, no *real* company would use the user's profile folder to store settings. These must all be small, no-name businesses doing taking this radical approach.

Who said no real company does, or only no-name companies do? Don't put words in my mouth. I said that most of my evidence pointed towards non-MS programs using their own directories. The majority of programs that I use that have their settings saved in their own directory. Opera is the only other non-MS browser that I use and its settings are in its own directory. I thought Mozilla would follow this trend and I was wrong.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: beatle

Originally posted by: Kilrsat
So you're right, no *real* company would use the user's profile folder to store settings. These must all be small, no-name businesses doing taking this radical approach.

Who said no real company does, or only no-name companies do? Don't put words in my mouth. I said that most of my evidence pointed towards non-MS programs using their own directories. The majority of programs that I use that have their settings saved in their own directory. Opera is the only other non-MS browser that I use and its settings are in its own directory. I thought Mozilla would follow this trend and I was wrong.

This "trend" is legacy from the 1980's. Move on.

 

[Sid59]

unless you explicitly changed the file path to your PROFILE from C:\Documents and Settings\XXXXXXX\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles, when you installed firefox, then you deleted your profile.

For a while, i would set my profile as the same directory as Firefox files but that was stupid because when i upgraded versions, i'd delete the folder and my profile. Now, it has it's own path seperate from the Firefox directory. In an event where you delete your Firefox directory, your profile is safe.

 

[Kilrsat]

Originally posted by: beatle

Originally posted by: Kilrsat
So you're right, no *real* company would use the user's profile folder to store settings. These must all be small, no-name businesses doing taking this radical approach.

Who said no real company does, or only no-name companies do? Don't put words in my mouth. I said that most of my evidence pointed towards non-MS programs using their own directories. The majority of programs that I use that have their settings saved in their own directory. Opera is the only other non-MS browser that I use and its settings are in its own directory. I thought Mozilla would follow this trend and I was wrong.

Microsoft gave the world the documents and settings folder with Windows 2000 (they even hacked in user profiles to Win98/Me, although it didn't work quite right), and have changed their best practices Windows programming guidelines to use the user profile folder for storage of all user settings.

So the Mozilla development team is evil because they follow the instructions from the creators of the OS.

Somehow I think its all the other programs that you use that fail to follow the best practices for development in a windows environment that are bad.

Incidently, you, as a user, have the power to change your user profile folder. So if you wish for it to remain after formatting drive C:, it is in your power to move the whole thing permanently to drive D:

 

[beatle]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
This "trend" is legacy from the 1980's. Move on.

I guess this is why I also start several processes with the command line instead of using shortcuts.

I hate putting things in Documents & Settings. I still have my own folder on D: that I use for personal documents. It's situations like these that keep me set in my ways. I do find it easy to make smaller programs like mIRC portable. I can zip the folder up (relatively small) and put it on any other computer and it will work just as it did before.

If you upgrade Firefox and you've configured it to put your Firefox profile in your Firefox directory, will it still retain your settings if you don't delete the whole directory prior to upgrading?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: beatle

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
This "trend" is legacy from the 1980's. Move on.

I guess this is why I also start several processes with the command line instead of using shortcuts.

That's still common. Unix isn't legacy.

I hate putting things in Documents & Settings. I still have my own folder on D: that I use for personal documents. It's situations like these that keep me set in my ways. I do find it easy to make smaller programs like mIRC portable. I can zip the folder up (relatively small) and put it on any other computer and it will work just as it did before.

Why bother when there are good alternatives like Iamc?

If you upgrade Firefox and you've configured it to put your Firefox profile in your Firefox directory, will it still retain your settings if you don't delete the whole directory prior to upgrading?

Put it in your personal folder on the D: drive, instead of in the firefox folder. That solves the problem without having to worry about the consequences.

 

[Nothinman]

Microsoft gave the world the documents and settings folder with Windows 2000

There were profiles in NT 4 as well, they were just in the WINNT\PROFILES directory which made it a real pain to secure properly. All they really did was move it up so proper permissions could be maintained easily but then they screwed it up by putting spaces in all of the filenames so that scripts were more of a PITA to write.

Opera is the only other non-MS browser that I use and its settings are in its own directory. I thought Mozilla would follow this trend and I was wrong.

You can put it wherever you want, you just didn't move it so you can't blame anyone but yourself.

I can zip the folder up (relatively small) and put it on any other computer and it will work just as it did before.

And you can't share that installation with other users on the same machine because everyone has to use the same settings and the program folder has to be writable to save the settings, so that application is basically unusable for anything but a single user home machine.

 

[erikistired]

being informed != god complex.

 

[erikistired]

Originally posted by: beatle

Originally posted by: Kilrsat
So you're right, no *real* company would use the user's profile folder to store settings. These must all be small, no-name businesses doing taking this radical approach.

Who said no real company does, or only no-name companies do? Don't put words in my mouth. I said that most of my evidence pointed towards non-MS programs using their own directories. The majority of programs that I use that have their settings saved in their own directory. Opera is the only other non-MS browser that I use and its settings are in its own directory. I thought Mozilla would follow this trend and I was wrong.

where you do you think the My Documents directory is? and how about outlook express info? doh, documents and settings.

 

[Todd33]

Originally posted by: fisher
being informed != god complex.

Cleanliness = God complex, so I hear.

uninformed = FIREFOX SUCKS!

 

[otispunkmeyer]

reformattin sucks full stop

 

[imported_obsidian]

Sorry, but you didn't do very much research if you didn't even figure out how to export your bookmarks. And no, this isn't hindsight. I've reformatted countless times and exporting my bookmarks is the first thing I do whether it is IE or firefox.

In case you are wondering why Firefox does this, it is because Firefox is a linux program. Linux is, and always has been, a multi-user OS. Generally, users only have write access to their own home directory (part of the reason linux is more secure). So just like in linux, the windows version of firefox also saves its settings in what is the equivalent to the home directory. Once firefox is installed, the directory and the files are not changed unless updating the original program. This is the way programs should work.

 

[beatle]

Originally posted by: obsidian
This is the way programs should work.

Hey, everyone's got their opinion.

I mention God-complex as many people who give "advice" in a condescending manner. This is a bit off topic, but attitudes like that are what have kept me away from attempting to learn Linux and the like.

 

[Wigwam]

okay so that is how you can export the bookmarks.
i have made changes to about:config to speed FF up and also made a change to the user.chrome file to increase the size of the google box.
i'd like to be able to transport these settings into a new install of FF on a different machine - how can i do this short of doing it all induvidually again?

 

[Nothinman]

but attitudes like that are what have kept me away from attempting to learn Linux and the like.

If people scare you away from trying new things, you must not leave the house much.

 

[beatle]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

but attitudes like that are what have kept me away from attempting to learn Linux and the like.

If people scare you away from trying new things, you must not leave the house much.

If every question's answer is prefaced with "oh you don't know where THAT is?" or "oh my gawd, I don't believe you did THAT," I wouldn't say it's fear, but disgust.

 

[Nothinman]

And even if it is, so what? As long as you get the answer what do you care?

Most of the replies were extremely civil even after you started a thread saying firefox sucks because you were uninformed, you start a thread with an inflamatory title and you expect everyone to hold your hand? And I'm even more surprised that noone made a comment about how formatting and reinstalling is utterly stupid in this day and age for 6 and a half hours.

 

[beatle]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
And even if it is, so what? As long as you get the answer what do you care?

Most of the replies were extremely civil even after you started a thread saying firefox sucks because you were uninformed, you start a thread with an inflamatory title and you expect everyone to hold your hand? And I'm even more surprised that noone made a comment about how formatting and reinstalling is utterly stupid in this day and age for 6 and a half hours.

Nevermind, you've missed my whole point. I'm done here.

 

[n0cmonkey]

You had a flame bait title, you got flamed. Mission accomplished. You won the game. Yay.

 

[imported_obsidian]

Originally posted by: beatle

Originally posted by: obsidian
This is the way programs should work.

Hey, everyone's got their opinion.

I mention God-complex as many people who give "advice" in a condescending manner. This is a bit off topic, but attitudes like that are what have kept me away from attempting to learn Linux and the like.

I wasn't giving advice. I was explaining WHY firefox worked the way it did and then concluded that this is how programs should go. It has nothing to do with linux, windows, or any other OS. Quite a few windows programs follow the same principle of keeping settings seperate from the program files. Most of MS' own included. I didn't know having an opinion is a God-complex.

Also, while Windows didn't originate as a multi-user OS, it is adopting many of the qualities of one.

 

[Nothinman]

Nevermind, you've missed my whole point. I'm done here.

No I havn't, I just don't see why you care.

 

[theinsen1]

Originally posted by: klah

Originally posted by: theinsen1

also is there any third party uitlity for saving the bookmarks??

None is needed.

Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks -> File -> Export

thanks klah.
well this is the problem
i had mozilla firefox installed(0.8).
but suddenly out of the blue it stopped working.
i mean whenever i would run it , it would open minimized and would stay there blinking.
i would have kill it via task manager.
now i tried installing the newer versions, but they too behave the same.
i have currently IE which i don't use. and netscape navigator.
i tried importing the bookmarks.html, but it can't import the bookmarks from mozilla.
i have some important bookmarks in firefox which i want to reclaim.
so some help here people

 

[Nothinman]

and netscape navigator.
i tried importing the bookmarks.html, but it can't import the bookmarks from mozilla.

How old of a version of Netscape? Mozilla is a fork of the Netscape 5 codebase and everything from Netscape 6 is just rebranded Mozilla.

 

[drag]

Worst case scenerio is that you just have to open up your bookmarks.html page in your browser, click on a link, hit ctrl-D (or whatever is the keyboard shortcut for "make bookmark"), and hit back. Rinse and repeat till you have your bookmarks.

if that is to much work then just make bookmarks.html your homepage. That way you can go back to using IE at no sweat.

For future reference don't forget this page:
http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/