Once again this week I had occasion to use the amazingly handy FEBE (Firefox Environment Backup Extension). Once installed, you can backup part or all of your Firefox environment, one-time or on a regular schedule. And if you grab everything, you can pull it over to a new instance, follow a few easy steps, and you won’t be able to tell it’s any different from your old one. It even worked fine going from Linux to Windows platforms!
This article helpfully explains how to go about the restoration process, which you wouldn’t necessarily be able to guess (at least I wouldn’t) without doing it once. Basically you make a new Firefox profile (a feature that you might never have had occasion to touch before now), restore your backup to that, and then switch to using that profile. And it can restore everything: all extensions, themes, remembered passwords, bookmarks, even form history.
For migration, it takes what used to be a long, error-prone process of finding and installing extensions, copying and restoring the bookmark directory, and still missing a number of useful things into a quick process that faithfully clones your friendly Firefox. And even when not migrating, just have it back things up once a day, include that folder in your normal backups of your machine, and sleep better that night.
[EDIT, 2008-11-30]: If your are migrating across OSes, or have a different user on the same OS, you may run into an issue with your Downloads directory. See this post for more information.
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