Backup Firefox and Thunderbird with MozBackup

If you are one of the many people out there who use either Firefox for web surfing or Thunderbird for email, then you definitely need to be using MozBackup.

Basically, MozBackup is an easy to use tool that lets you backup profiles and settings for Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite and even Netscape. It is available at http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/ and is free to use.

Why do you need this program? If you have ever had a computer crash and had to re-install Windows or had to re-install Firefox for any reason, you know how big of a pain it is to re-configure all of your Firefox settings from scratch. Replacing lost bookmarks, cookies, passwords and such can be extremely time consuming.

If you’re a Thunderbird user, chances are you’ve got quite a few emails archived on your machine. Having a backup copy of all of your emails, account information and settings can be a huge lifesaver when computer troubles pop up.

I recently had a hard drive fail in my laptop and had it replaced, but there are other, less extreme problems that can pop up in which a backup can be handy. Last week I tried out Firefox 3 beta 3 and found that it caused some weird problems with my normal installation of Firefox 2. Thankfully with a quick restore from MozBackup, I was up and running again in a matter of seconds.

The layout and interface is rather plain and very functional. After starting the program, you are quickly guided by the wizard through your options. The entire process is rather self explanatory and simple. Simply choose whether you want to backup or restore, what program you want to back up from a list of available options (Firefox or Thunderbird in my case), choose which profile (if you have more than one) and then finally choose which parts of the profile you want backed up.

You can choose which individual parts of the profile you want to include in the backup such as cookies, passwords, form history and several other options.

Restoring takes only a matter of seconds, just choose which file you wish to restore from and in seconds you are up and running.

I love this program and use it for backups on a daily basis. I have only needed the restore function twice, but in those instances it was invaluable. If you are a Firefox or Thunderbird user, this program is a must have in my opinion.

-Jeff

Using Multiple Google Accounts

I have two separate Google Gmail accounts. One I use for my close friends and important business and the other I use for everything else. Unfortunately, you can only be logged into one account at a time when using most Google services, like Blogger, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and many others.

Advanced Firefox users may have used Greasemonkey to run various scripts to make switching user accounts easy, but I didn’t care for this approach when I tried it. The various scripts available for download weren’t always up to date and were extremely temperamental and buggy. Here are a few other options available to you.

1. Use two different browsers

The simplest solution. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Flock, Opera and other browsers often store their cookies in different locations on your computer, allowing you to have different cookie profiles for each. If you open up IE and FF at the same time, you could be logged into two different Google accounts, one for each browser. If you use the same browser for each account (for instance my GoOrange profile for Firefox and my JeffK profile for Internet Explorer) you don’t have to worry about logging in and out repeatedly, simply use the browser set up for the appropriate account.

This method is extremely simple and only requires that you have two browsers installed on your machine. The downside, similarly, is that you will be opening two different programs at various times, or will have two browsers running at the same time instead of just one, which will use up more system resources. Still, for many novices, this may be the best approach. This method is limited to one account per browser. If you have three accounts, you’ll need to have three different browsers running, or else sign in and out with one of the browsers.

2. Use the IE Tab extension (for Firefox).

This is my method of choice. If you primarily use the Firefox browser, there is an extension called IE Tab that is available for download from the Mozilla site. What this extension does, is with a simple click of a button, it switches Firefox from the default Gecko rendering engine to an IE rendering engine. This is a very useful extension to have and it comes in handy with those few websites that only seem to display properly in IE. This extension enables you to view them in FF just as they would be displayed in IE.

The reason this works for multiple accounts is that the IE Tab extension, when activated, uses your Internet Explorer cookies rather than your Firefox cookies. Therefore, with the press of a button, a page is viewed with your IE cookies (set up for a different Google account) and with another click of a button, the page is viewed with your default FF cookies. This is a simple one-click way to alternate between two different accounts. You can have these open on two different tabs, or simply switch back and forth using the same tab.

This method is limited to two Google accounts, one for your IE cookie profile and one for your Firefox cookie profile.

3. Install Greasemonkey and appropriate scripts into Firefox.

This is a popular option for many people and has a more flexibility in certain areas. Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to download and run various user scripts that alter the way Firefox works with certain webpages. I won’t go into a detailed explanation between scripts and extensions, but they are very similar in the results they produce.

The pros of this method is that you can switch between any number of Google accounts, using a drop down menu on the web page. If you have more than two accounts that you use frequently, this method will be more convenient than the previous two.

The downside is that these scripts can be extremely buggy, and don’t work on all Google pages. Depending on your patience and frustration levels you may find these to be too much of a headache.

While the IE Tab extension has been around a while and thoroughly tested by many people in the community, many of the scripts available for Greasemonkey are fairly new and untested. For security reasons, novice users should be very cautious when running scripts from an unknown source.

Web Browser Comparison

When it comes to web browsers, there certainly are plenty of options out there. Internet Explorer has two main versions seeing popular use, IE6 and IE7. Personally, I find IE6 to be a decent no-frills browser. IE7 by itself adds tabbed browsing, but implements it poorly. The default layout in IE7, like many of the latest Microsoft projects, is slightly different than past versions, which feels a bit odd to me. Without the customization of Firefox, IE7 just doesn’t cut it for me. Most addons available for IE7 are commercial, which in my case means I’ll never try them. There is one notable exception, IE7Pro - a freeware addon that adds a great deal of customizability and functionality to IE7, including a spellchecker a greasemonkey-like scripting interface, customizable tabbed browsing, adblocking and many others. If you are going to use IE7 as your main browser, you need this addon. It can be downloaded from http://www.ie7pro.com/

Firefox is the number one alternative to Internet Explorer. It is hands down the most customizable browser on the market if you consider the numerous addons available. The basic package is fairly customizable out of the box, but there are several addons that are practically indispensable. Just about any addon you can think of is out there. Some people complain that the latest version of Firefox is a system resource hog, but I personally don’t notice it on my 3 year old laptop. My informal tests show it to be just as fast as IE and others. If you are looking for an alternative to Internet Explorer, this is probably your best bet, and is my personal favorite.

The third most common browser in use is Opera. I want to like Opera, I really do, but there are a few niggling things that really get me. Firstly, for novice users it’s not necessarily intuitive to set up. I’ve got a very bright friend who loves the browser but even after using it for a few months still asks me how to configure certain settings. The folks at Opera claim that it’s the fastest of the major browsers, but I honestly can’t tell the difference. The layout of the browser is probably the most customizable of any out of the box, but Firefox can be further tweaked with various addons. I’ve run into a few bugs with Opera, such as extremely slow loading of MSNBC.com, and a hang-up when trying to go to any Google page (turned out to be due to cookie handling, but the fact that the page wouldn’t load at all even to give me an error was disturbing). Although these bugs are few and far between, they happened to me with two very popular web pages. I’m hesitant now to fully embrace the browser for all of my important business. The number of widgets or addons available for Opera is impressive, although a bit tricky to find exactly what you are looking for. I think Opera could be a viable alternative to IE, and worth a try, but the few bugs I’ve discovered make me suggest you take it for a test run before fully switching over.

Flock is a new browser that is based on the Gecko/Firefox engine. It is similar to Firefox in many ways, with a few notable changes. The focus of Flock is to integrate with various social networking websites. There is a friends sidebar which provides updates for your friends status. The browser nicely integrates with things like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and various blogging platforms. This blog post is being composed from Flock using the special blog editor function (which opens a window with various blogging tool buttons and options). Flock is fairly new and only time will tell if it takes off. Because of it’s Firefox origins, it seems to do the basics fairly well. If you use social networking sites and applications frequently, you should definitely check out Flock.

The last browser worth mentioning is K-meleon. It’s a stripped down, no frills browser based on the Mozilla/Gecko engine. There isn’t a whole lot to it, and there aren’t many addons or special features, but it may appeal to those with simple needs who are looking for a low-profile browser.