Talk about good timing. I was in the middle of writing a very long post about a method I had created to allow you to use the same Firefox profile on any computer you own. (If you are not familiar with Firefox profiles, go here.) I had perfected a process that allowed you to carry the same look and feel, the same add-ons and bookmarks across many computers. The explanation on how to do this was long and involved having you download a few Firefox add-ons and pieces of software to get the job done. Once set up, though, it worked great. Today thanks to the magic of Twitter, I learn that MozBackup beta 1.4.9 is released. Now, I am not so enamored of the method I pioneered to be oblivious to a better situation. MozBackup is a little piece of software designed to do the same thing, and it simplifies the process considerably. So I get to scrap the long instructional post, and point you instead to this software instead.
I downloaded it and tried it out, and it worked perfectly for me. It is a simple and straightforward way to back up and restore your Firefox profile. However, from what I can tell, this is still only a way to backup profiles on a single computer. If you want to carry your profile with you between home and work, or anywhere else you would like to have the identical Firefox profile, you still need a way to transport it. MozBackup does not offer this, but luckily there is a simple workaround. Actually, there are any number of workarounds (usb drive, attaching to email), but for me, I told MozBackup to put my profile backups into a specially created folder within my Dropbox. Now, if I am finishing up at work, I tell MozBackup to backup my profile, it drops it into Dropbox for me, and when I get home, there is my profile waiting for me, and I simply use MozBackup to restore that profile on my home installation of Firefox, and there is everything I was working on, like I never left it.
Have a better way of accomplishing this? Need more explanation? Anything to add? Drop me a line in the comments.
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