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.

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. 

Password Synchronization is an optional feature for the newest version of Foxmarks that allows you to simply and securely synchronize your saved passwords. 

Since this feature is turned off by default, how do you activate it? 

1. Open the Foxmarks Settings dialog (located in Tools > Foxmarks > Settings…).
2. Click on the “Sync” tab.
3. Select the checkbox labeled “Passwords”. You will be guided through a quick and easy password synchronization setup flow.

Big congrats goes out to Foxmarks for making a damn good add-on even better.

Backup the Firefox files called:

• signons.txt
• signons2.txt
• key3.db

Copy and past them into the place you want to back them up to, and you are done.  To restore them, make sure you don’t have Firefox running and then go into your current profile folder and copy and move them in.  They should replace the ones in there currently.

Now to backup your Firefox 2 boomarks, dive back into your profile folder and look for a file called “bookmarkbackups”.  Double-click that folder, and there you have some of your saved bookmarks that you thought you had lost waiting for you to restore them.

To restore your bookmarks in Firefox 3, go to Bookmarks and then Organize Bookmarks.  In the Library, click on Import and Backup and click on “Import HTML”.  The on screen wizard should walk you through the rest of the steps.

You can now search through your saved password information.  This is great for those of us who often forget what login we used with what web site and don’t want to go scroll happy going down the list to maybe find the right result.

To check it out, go to Tools, Options and then the Security Tab.  Then click on the “Saved Passwords…” button under the Passwords section. 

The rest of it is pretty self explanatory.  Type the phrase your looking for in the search box, and the list will get shorter. 

First, navigate yourself to your profiles folder and then you want to copy three files, they are named:

• signons.txt
• signons2.txt
• key3.db

Copy and past them into the place you want to back them up to, and you are done.  You can also move these three files to a new Firefox profile (say on a new computer, for example) if you wanted to have the same password information on your laptop.

Where Did My Passwords Go?!

I screwed up somewhere though, and all my saved passwords were not there. Before I freaked out (ok, I might have freaked out just a little ‘bit) I remembered about the Password Exporter extension for Firefox.

Here is a little more information about it from the developer:

This extension allows you to export and import your saved passwords and rejected sites between computers. Your passwords will be exported to an XML or CSV file and can be encrypted.

Did Password Exporter Do the Job?

I installed it on both the old machine and the new machine – then moved the exported backup (simple .xml file) from the old PC to my new PC. It worked! My passwords were not lost and I didn’t have to spend hours trying to set that whole mess back up.

So if your in a pinch and you need your passwords backed up – give the Password Exporter extension a shot. Might also not hurt to have it up and running 24/7 – so you can make a backup of your password list and store it somewhere safe.

Today, Mozilla made public bug #360493, which exposes Firefox’s Password Manager on many public sites. The flaw derives from Firefox’s willingness to supply the username and password stored on one page on a domain to another page on a domain. For example, username/password input tags on a Myspace user’s site will be unhelpfully propagated with the visitor’s Myspace.com credentials.

+ Read More About the New Bug in Firefox 2′s Password Manager!

Go to the Firefox “Preferences” click on “Privacy” and then on the “Passwords” tab. Click on the button in the bottom left saying “View Saved Passwords”. Then a new window pops up and there is another button, saying “Show Passwords” and another dialog box asking for confirmation. But that’s about it. There you go! All passwords can be seen in blank text!

+ Read More About Revealing Your Passwords in Firefox!

[Learn More About Password Exporter!]