Backup Your Firefox Profile Settings with FEBE

Mozilla Firefox has emerged as an extremely popular web browser for all the operating systems. It is always a good idea to keep a backup of Firefox settings in case you lose your data or your hard disk becomes corrupt. You can create a backup of all your Firefox settings using FEBE (Firefox Environment Backup Extension). FEBE is itself an add-on for Firefox using which you can create a backup of all your installed add-ons and other profile settings.

FEBE backs up your extensions, themes, bookmarks, preferences, passwords, cookies and just about everything else Firefox offers (it can even backup and restore your entire profile). You can selectively restore only the items you need. For instance, you may just want your bookmarks restored and leave everything else as it was.

Some of the features of the FEBE add-on are :

• Easily accessible from the Toolbar.
• You can schedule automatic backups.
• You can save backups in time-stamped folders to easily identify when the backups were created.
• It can show a backup reminder.
• Comprehensive results report with links to the author’s extension/theme homepages.
• Upload backups to your Box.net account automatically or with a single click.

To install the FEBE add-on you can visit the FEBE add-on webpage on Mozilla's web site at : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/febe/ in your Firefox browser. Then click on the green colored button labeled Add to Firefox as shown.

You will see a popup message box asking if you want to install FEBE add-on. Click on the button labeled Install Now to start the installation. Then you have to restart your browser to finish the installation.

After your Firefox browser restarts, you would be ready to use the FEBE add-on to create the backups. Before you can create the backup, you need to specify a directory for keeping the backups. To specifiy the directory, you have to make changes to the FEBE settings. You can access the FEBE settings from the Firefox menubar by selecting Tools → FEBE → FEBE Options.

In the options window, select the Directory tab and then click on the Browse button to select a directory where you want to keep the Firefox backups.

In the Options tab of the settings window, you can also select the type of backups. You can choose from Selective, Full Profile, Both and Atlernate backup types. The Selective backup is selected by default in which you can manually choose the items you want to include in the backups. In the Full Profile backup, everything in your default Firefox profile is backed up. If you are confused, then use the Selective backup type.

After selecting a directory of your choice and choosing a backup type, click on the OK button to save the settings. Now, you are ready to make the backups. You can access the FEBE Backup from the Firefox menubar by selecting Tools → FEBE → Perform Backup.

Depending on the backup type you hae selected, the backups would be created in your backup directory. A progress window will be shown in which you can see which different items are being backed up.

After the backup process is finished, you will be shown a detailed report of the backup. In the FEBE options, you can also choose to schedule and upload the backups to your Box.net account if you want.

The FEBE backup add-on for Firefox can really save your day in the case your hard disk becomes corrupt and you lose all your Firefox profile settings. You can also use it to synchronize the Firefox settings between two or more computers.