firefox

I’m embarking on a little experiment with netbook operating systems; there’s a lot of interesting activity in the lightweight OS world–Ubuntu, Jolicloud, Chrome, Android, etc.–and I’m curious how the different systems stack up. Each weekend from last weekend until I run out of operating systems, patience, or time (or land on the ideal OS paradise and never want to leave), I’ll be installing a new platform on my Dell Mini and rating it on usability, stability, features, and other criteria specific to the netbook space.

One of the things that has kept me from making big OS changes on my netbook in the past is that getting Firefox reconfigured is such a hassle. While I’ve been using the Xmarks plugin for bookmark and password synchronization between home, work, and my netbook since the plugin was called Foxmarks, getting all of the other plugins installed and configured after wiping out the netbook has been a tedious chore. About 90% of what I use the netbook for is browser-based, so this is a relatively big deal for a little computer.

The solution that I’ve landed on is actually pretty simple, and uses two nice utilities in concert.

First, there’s FEBE, the “Firefox Environment Backup Extension,” a nice Firefox plugin. FEBE will create backups of whatever Firefox components you choose–plugins, themes, bookmarks, cookies, etc.–and restore them. You can set it up to do scheduled backups, restore settings into a new profile, and manage selective backup configurations.

And then there’s Dropbox, an online file storage and synchronization service. I’ve been using it to easily synchronize writing projects between my Windows PC and netbook, and it works like a charm: silently synchronizes the files that I place into its directories, and seamlessly integrates with the file systems on both my Windows and Linux computers.

Before I uninstalled Ubuntu on my netbook, I ran a full backup of Firefox from FEBE to a directory under Dropbox’s control. Then when I installed Jolicloud, I added the FEBE plugin and installed Dropbox. In just a few clicks, I had all of my other plugins plus bookmarks, passwords, and other browser settings back in place.

I admit, it was a little disconcerting to be suddenly confronted with more than a dozen Firefox tabs for each installed plugin after the FEBE restore ran. But it was a lot easier to close tabs than it would have been to reinstall all of those plugins.

The same concept could, of course, be used with other combinations of tools. FEBE natively supports Box.net, for example, and there are some other tools for doing Firefox backups (I’ve used MozBackup before, which handles the whole Mozilla suite, but it’s a Windows-only utility and therefore not terribly helpful on my netbook).

When I move on from Jolicloud in a few days, I’ll be going through the same steps again, perhaps with a few refinements. Simple is good.

As I noted earlier, some ongoing problems with the Diigo Firefox add-on and general annoyance at the graffiti public annotations feature prompted me to switch my transient bookmarking to Delicious. Some great support from the Diigo team resolved the add-on problem, at least for now, so I may be giving the service a second chance.

If you’re having the problem I was having with the Diigo add-on–a missing “Add to a List” menu option when bookmarking a page–these steps may save you some grief:

1. Right click on the firefox toolbar area
2. Click Customize…
3. Click Restore default set.
4. Sign out of Diigo and sign-in again

You may have to repeat these steps; I had to do it twice for the change to stick. But it’s a lot easier than the earlier troubleshooting steps, which involved creating a fresh Firefox profile and adding, one at a time, the dozen or so add-ins I use to see if there were conflicts with the Diigo toolbar.

Note that this does not, as I had feared it might, reset your Firefox to its default settings. But it’s not a bad idea to back up your Firefox settings, especially if you’ve made a lot of tweaks; take a look at the MozBackup tool for a nice and easy way to do this.

I’ve turned off the public annotations–from the Diigo button, choose “Show all annotations” and toggle to “Don’t show annotation”–to banish the yellow sticky notes left on Google, Wikipedia, and other sites by a handful of vandals. For the next few days I’ll be alternating between Diigo and Delicious before making a final decision on which service I’ll stick with long term.

A big thanks again to the Diigo support team; their prompt assistance certainly helps their service in my weighing of options. There’s no overestimating the value of solid technical support, whether a problem is big or small.