firefox: important files and useful tweaks

this is probably more of a “memo to self”-sort of post that saves me the time of searching, next time firefox decides to cause problems.
still, you might find some of it interesting:

save / backup / transfer saved passwords

You need to save 2 files from your profile folder, key3.db and signons3.txt
If you ever restore the passwords you need to copy both files back, they need to be kept together for passwords to work.
On WinXP, the profile folder is located here:
C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\

from support.mozilla.com
 

Export bookmarks to HTML automatically

Firefox 3 stores bookmarks in places.sqlite and uses JSON as the format for backups stored in the bookmarkbackups folder so, by default, bookmarks are no longer saved in HTML format. To allow bookmarks to be exported at shutdown to the Firefox profile folder as bookmarks.html, set browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML to true.

from kb.mozillazine.org
 

Open bookmark groups in new tabs

If you open a group of bookmarks at once, Firefox’s default behavior is to replace any existing tabs with the newly opened pages. Set browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace (Boolean) to false, and opening groups of bookmarks will append new tabs to the existing window instead of overwriting existing ones.

from www.computerworld.com
 

Select just a word

The Boolean preference layout.word_select.eat_space_to_next_word governs one of Firefox’s tiny, but for me incredibly annoying, little behaviors. When you double-click on a word in a Web page to select it, Firefox automatically includes the space after the word. Most of the time I don’t want that; I just want the selection to stop at the end of the word. Setting this to false will defeat that behavior.

from www.computerworld.com
 

and of course: adblock plus one-click activation/deactivation

there are some more tweaks at maketecheasier.com

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