Every so often, you might need to find your Firefox profile folder to do some tweaking or maintenance of your own.  In the past, this has lead to diving through your operating system’s folders and after twenty clicks, finding the information you need.  Since Firefox 3.6 there is a much easier way to open your profile folder, with no additional extensions installed.

To open your Firefox profile folder, go to Help in the menu bar:

Next, click on Troubleshooting Information.  This will take you to the about:support information page.  If you can remember, you can also visit this page by typing about:support into the Firefox address bar too.

Under Application Basics, click on the button that reads, "Open Containing Folder" next to Profile Directory, and there you go. Your Firefox profile directory should be opened up.  Going to the profile location by following the folder path to it via your computer still works, but this is a much easier way to get the job done.

Hope this comes in handy next time you want to backup, tweak or change something in your Firefox profile folder.

Want to clear any stored information about one web site in particular, without clearing out all of your browser’s history files?  Hidden deep within the Firefox browser, there is a way to clear Firefox’s history for just one single web site.  You just have to know where to look.

From the Firefox menu bar, click on History and then Show All History. This should pull up the Library window.  Now, in the Library’s search box (located in the top-right corner) type in the name of the web site you want to forget. 

Scroll through your results, till you find the web site you wish to forget and select it.  Now, right-click on the entry and click, “Forget About This Site”.  All history items (browsing and download history, cookies, cache, active logins, passwords, saved form data, exceptions for cookies, images, pop-ups) will be removed only for that site. So be careful with using this choice and only use it if you really want Firefox to forget everything.

Now your browser history is cleared of that one annoying web site.

With that in mind, I thought it might be handy to guide you through the process when it comes to adding a new Persona theme to your browser, removing a Persona theme from your browser, and how to chance through Persona themes – once you have several saved to your system.

How Do You Install a Firefox Persona?

If you are using Firefox 3.6 or above, the options for Personas should be built into the browser.  Here is how you can grab your own Firefox Persona to use in Firefox.

Go to the Personas page on the Firefox Add-ons web site or the Personas Gallery.

Next, browser around the web site until you find a Persona you would like to use in your own Firefox browser.  Notice that as you hover over the thumbnail previews, your Firefox browser will change to show you what that Persona would look like.

Click on the Persona you would like to use, and go check out the official page for that specific Persona.  For example, here is the page for the Superman logo Persona shown above:

• Superman Logo Firefox Persona

To install that specific Persona for Firefox, click the orange, “Wear this Persona” button.

Once you do so, the Persona will be installed – and you will get a message come up in the browser telling you it has been installed, and giving you the option to undo or go to your manage themes settings.

You are now done.  Your new Persona for Firefox has been installed and is ready to decorate your browser till you change it again.

How Can You Uninstall a Firefox Persona?

Uninstalling Firefox Personas is as easy as installing them.  From Firefox’s Menu Bar, select Tools and then Add-ons.  Once that comes up, you want to go to the “Themes” tab. Both Firefox themes and Personas will now be displayed here.

Click on the Firefox Persona you wish to uninstall, and click the “Uninstall” button. You will be asked to verify the uninstall, and then it will be gone for good.  You can also switch to a different Persona you have downloaded by clicking on that Persona from this screen, and selecting “Use Theme”.

Get More Personas Help: Other Personas Tips, Articles and Tutorials!

I’ll share with you though how I have my browser setup to clear some un-important data each time I close the browser.

Mitch’s Clear History When Firefox Closes Settings

Go to Tools, and then click on Options.

Next, go to the Privacy tab and select “Use custom settings for history” from the drop down menu.

Put a check mark in the box for, “Clear history when Firefox closes” and then click on the button labeled, Settings.

Make sure you add a check mark for only the following boxes:

• Browsing History
• Download History
• Forms & Search History
• Cache

Then hit the button labeled, “OK” to continue.  On the Options window, also click the button labeled, “OK” and you are all set.

This way I have Firefox setup to clear everything except for my saved passwords and login sessions that are enabled by cookies.  Your setup might be different, and if it is – feel free to share in the comments. 

The second part of this awesome addition to Firefox is that you never have to click on anything to get it going.  All you have to do is pause on the menu item you want, and that action is taken.  From BianaryTurf.com – here are the five things this addon gets right:

1. It will optimize your context menu and show only the bare essential items.
2. It will allow you to see the unwanted items on the fly by clicking "Show All". You can again collapse it to bare essentials on the fly.
3. All disabled items are taken out by default. What will one do with the "paste" item when you haven’t copied anything?
4. Ease of use – all changes happen on the fly.
5. It is contextually sensitive. It knows and respects the context in which you use it. For e.g. context menu items relating to links or images etc. will only show when you right click on a link or an image etc.

You can get more information about the add-on for Firefox (and download it for yourself) at BianaryTurf.com.  FfChrome might just change the way (or at least make it a heck of a lot simpler) you get through the context menus.

What if you just want to do a regular Google search? 

There is an easy way to turn your address bar into a Google search box.  You want to type into your address bar about:config.  Next, type into the filter keyword.URL. Once you have found it there, modify the string in there and replace it with:

http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q=

From now on, when you type in a word or phrase into the address bar and hit enter, it will launch a Google search for it rather than giving you Google’s top result for that word or phrase.

For most people, I would suggest trying to run Firefox in Safe Mode first.  You can use the command line:  firefox -safe-mode to get there (for Windows users).

On Linux, you can go to your Terminal and run (for Firefox): /path/to/firefox/firefox -safe-mode

On Mac OS X, go to Utilities (in the Applications folder) and open Terminal, then run (for Firefox): /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -safe-mode

From there you can disable add-ons, reset toolbars and controls, reset bookmarks to Firefox defaults, reset all user preferences to Firefox defaults and restore the default search engines.

What if Safe Mode Does Not Help?

If that does not do the trick for you, you might want to try opening up a clean profile to see if you are still getting the problem.  Check out this previous post to fine out how to launch the profile manager to do so.

Key thing to remember here is if it is a problem with all of your Firefox profiles (your current one or a new one) then you might want to backup and do a clean install of Firefox.  If not, then you might be able to cure you problem by creating a new profile for yourself to use from now on.

Step 1: Enter about:config into your address bar

Step 2: In the filter box, type in this string:

gfx.color_management.enabled

Step 3: Now toggle that from false to true, and then restart (or close, and then open back up) Firefox.  Your done!  Now where is the catch?  Here is the explanation from Lifehacker:

From there on in, your photo colors will be richer than they were. Why isn’t this value true by default? Well, according to Mozilla, you’ll see a 10-15% performance hit using this setting, but if you’ve got a reasonably fast machine, it’ll be worth the better-looking photos. Hit the link below for an extended explanation of Firefox’s color profile support.

So, the clift notes version would be if you have a slower machine, you may not want to enable this setting.  If you have a powerhouse though, go at it.

When add-on authors publish their add-on they declare the compatibility range for an add-on. It typically looks like “2.0 to 3.0.*” – meaning that at minimum, this add-on requires Firefox 2.0 and works with any maintenance release of Firefox 3.0. (End of the compatibility range is also called the maxVersion).

Some add-on authors have erroneously used “3.0″ as their maxVersion so when users with these add-ons upgrade from Firefox 3.0 to Firefox 3.0.1, the add-on gets disabled. We encourage these add-on authors to use “3.0.*” as their maxVersion.

So shoot your favorite extension authors an e-mail and ask them to get this fixed, or check to see if this might be the problem.  Another suggestion for people with lots of problems would be to try running Firefox with a new profile or Safe Mode.  In Safe Mode, you can reset some settings or disable extensions and themes that might be the source of the issue. By comparing Firefox behavior in normal mode to its behavior in Safe Mode with various items disabled, you may be able to diagnose issues.

If you’d like to power it up some, you need to pick up CyberSearch.  This extension allow you to perform various Google searches right from the address bar.  The fun doesn’t stop there.  It also displays the results in the awesome bar format along with your history.

You can do a number of special searches too, depending on the keywords that you use. You can do a Web Search, Local Search, Video Search, Blog Search, News Search, Book Search, Image Search, or Patent Search.

If you still need help wrapping your mind around this tool, be sure to check out the video tutorial on it they have put together for you.

Pick up this Firefox add-on on the Firefox Add-ons site or from CyberNet News.  Also big congrats to Ryan and Ashley for putting out such an awesome Firefox extension!  Great job!