Jan 02

Add Folders to the Mac Menu Bar

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on January 21, 2011 by CyberNet.

folder menubar.png

I’ve always added some of my most used folders to the Mac OS X Dock, but at the same time my menu bar has remained fairly empty. I came across a pretty nice app called XMenu that will let you add up to 6 different icons to the menu bar, and each one represents a different folder on your machine.

As you can see in the screenshot above there are some nice settings you can configure, but the focus is basically on selecting the directories you want to include. Unfortunately you can’t create an unlimited number of icons pointing to whatever directories you want, but the pre-defined directories should be sufficient for a lot of your needs. For myself having the Applications, Home, and Documents folders will cover most of the files I need to access on any given day.

There are also some tricks based on whether you’re holding down a “modifier” key when selecting an item. Here’s a list of what the various keys do:

  • None – Open file or launch application
  • Control – Show item (open parent folder in Finder and select file)
  • Shift – Show original (open parent folder of original in Finder). If the select item is not an alias, this reveals the item.
  • Option – Show original and hide current application
  • Command – Show info in Finder

It took me a minute to realize what the field was for next to each of the folders listed in the preferences. It’s actually for those of you who choose to display text in the menu bar rather than the icon, and those names will be what shows up.

XMenu Homepage (Mac only; Freeware)
Note: A readme file is included with the download that explains some of the features

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

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Jan 02

CyberNotes: Powerful Free Backup Software

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on April 15, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

A few weeks ago we demonstrated an extremely simple backup solution called IdleBackup. It was nothing too fancy, and this time around we wanted to go to the other extreme with a freeware Windows backup application that will really knock your socks off. The program is called Cobian Backup, and I wouldn’t have found it without Leland’s help.

Cobian Backup is one of the most full-featured backup utilities that I’ve seen, and the best thing about it is that it’s completely free. I’ve been a proud owner of SyncBackSE for quite some time now, but Cobian Backup includes almost all of the same features in it’s latest version 9 Beta release. The interface is well designed, creating and scheduling backups is simple, and it is busting at the seams with customization!

cobian main
(Click to Enlarge)

–Features–

Now I could have just listed off the features that the developer had put together, but I actually think the developer is rather modest of what the program is truly capable of. So I put together my own set of features highlighting all of the things that I find to be the most useful in Cobian:

  • Can be installed as a service, which means it is able to run even when a user isn’t logged into the computer
  • 3 different types of backups are available:
    • Full backups: Every single file in the source will be copied or compressed. If you are overwriting, every file will be replaced. If Overwrite is unchecked, you will have several copies of the same source.
    • Incremental:  The program will check if the source has been changed from the last backup. If there is no need to copy the file, it will be skipped, saving backup time. The incremental procedure checks the Archive bit attribute of the file. You may want to manually reset the attribute to force a full backup: use the “Set the archive attributes” on the Task menu.
    • Differential: The program will check if the source has been changed from the last FULL backup. If there is no need to copy the file, it will be skipped, saving backup time. The differential procedure checks the Archive bit attribute of the file. You may want to manually reset the attribute to force a full backup: use the “Set the archive attributes” on the Task menu.
    • Dummy task: This backup doesn’t need a source or a destination. It is useful to use the task just as an scheduler to execute applications, close services, reboot the computer, etc.
  • Remotely connect to and manage your backups (Cobian will need to be installed on both the host and client machine to do this). Go to Tools -> Remote Client in Cobian to access this feature.
  • Backup to or from a network or FTP location
  • Compress your backups using 7-Zip or regular ZIP
    • Split the compressed files up into multiple files according to a maximum size that you specify
  • You can have multiple source and/or destinations
  • You can have a timestamp added to backup filenames so that existing backups are not overwritten
  • Perform a variety of actions before and/or after a backup starts:
    • Pause for a specified duration
    • Start or close a program
    • Start or stop a service
    • Restart or shutdown the computer
  • If you choose to perform an incremental or differential backup you can set Cobian to automatically do a full backup every X backups, where “X” is any number you want.
  • It will retrieve files from the Volume Shadow Copy (on XP and Vista) if a file is locked by another application
  • You can provide a list of files and/or folders to exclude
  • UNICODE support

–Creating a Backup–

When making a decision on which backup application to use it is pretty critical to see first-hand whether it is going to do what you want it to. And that’s what this screenshot gallery is for!

In Cobian there are seven different areas that you can configure for each backup task that you create. Below you’ll find a screenshot of each different area so that you can appropriately decide whether Cobian will be able to perform the backups in the way that you want it to.

(Click to Enlarge)
cobian backup 1 cobian backup 2 cobian backup 3 cobian backup 4 cobian backup 5 cobian backup 6 cobian backup 7

–Overview–

Cobian Backup is a tremendous application that will likely have much, if not all of what you’re looking for. It might take some time to get the backups setup just the way you want, but once you’re done the end result could save you days of frustration. Believe me, in the last two years I’ve had two different hard drives fail on me. If it wasn’t for the regular backups that I performed there could have been a lot of unrecoverable settings, pictures, and documents. Software like Cobian Backup can really come through in a pinch!

Cobian Backup Homepage
Note: In this review I was using Cobian Backup 9 Beta.

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

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Jan 01

CyberNotes: My Favorite Free Flickr Tools

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on July 22, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

Flickr is a photo sharing service that has around for over four years, and in that time it has grown at an astounding pace. Thousands of images are uploaded to Flickr every minute, and it was just last year that they had over two billion photos uploaded to their site. The good news is that with the increase in popularity also comes an increase in the number of free tools available.

Personally I’ve been a Flickr Pro subscriber for a little over a year now, and the amount of features you get for the $2 per month is well worth the money. I currently have over 6,000 images uploaded on my account that I share with friends and family, and I’m always looking for tools that make the job even easier. So what I’ve got for you today are my favorite free applications that help me upload photos to my Flickr account.

–iPhoto Plugin (Homepage)–

Flickr makes an application for Mac OS X that is easy to use, but the problem is that it doesn’t integrate into Apple’s flagship photo management application called iPhoto. This is a big deal because many Mac users will probably be using iPhoto, and using the standard Flickr uploader means that you’ll need to add tags, descriptions, and titles to all of your photos twice: once in iPhoto and again on Flickr. Yuck!

No problem. The Free Flickr eXporter iPhoto plugin works inside of iPhoto, and preserves all of your descriptions, tags/keywords, and titles while uploading your images. You can also adjust privacy settings, resize images before uploading them, and choose which set(s) you’d like the images placed in.

iphoto flickr-1.jpg

–Windows Live Photo Gallery (Homepage)–

Windows Live Photo Gallery is one of the best ways to not only manage your photos, but also to upload images to the Yahoo-owned Flickr. What’s interesting is that Microsoft ships Windows Live Photo Gallery with Flickr support, and that means there’s even less you have to do to get it running.

To upload images to Flickr all you have to do is go to Publish -> More Services -> Publish on Flickr to have the wizard walk you through the steps needed. After authorizing the application you’ll be able to choose which set your photos should be uploaded to, select a maximum image size, and also change the permissions. The application will automatically grab any tags and descriptions you’ve added to the photos and include those with what gets uploaded.

One of the things that is rather unique with Windows Live Photo Gallery’s implementation is that you can queue multiple uploads. After you get one set of photos uploading just switch back to Photo Gallery to start uploading more. The program prevents multiple uploads from going on simultaneously, and will add any other batches to a queue. Most Flickr uploading apps will just block you from trying to upload more than one batch at a time, which can be a pain if you just want to walk away from your computer while the uploading is going on.

Here is a step-by-step walkthrough of the Flickr support in Windows LIve Photo Gallery.

Windows Live Photo Gallery Flickr

–Picasa Plugin (Homepage)–

Google’s Picasa application is an excellent way to manage your photos, and all hope isn’t lost if you don’t want to use it with Google’s online photo services. There’s a handy plugin called Picasa2Flickr that adds a “Send To Flickr” button to the Picasa toolbar near the bottom of the window. When you click on the button it will add the selected photos to Flickr Uploadr 3.0 where you can then finish the upload process.

It’s a bummer that in order for this to work you need to have both Picasa and the Flickr Uploadr installed, but it is more convenient this way. The button keeps you from having to find your photos on your computer, and then drag them into the Flickr Uploadr.

picasa flickr button.jpg

–Send To Flickr (Homepage)–

send to flickr.jpgI’m thinking this has to be one of the fastest and easiest ways to get your photos on Flickr. After you get it installed you’ll be able to select any photos from Windows Explorer, right-click on them, and in the “Send To” menu you’ll see a Flickr option (pictured to the right). The images will immediately start uploading themselves to your account, and you’ll see a preview window that includes the status of your upload.

There aren’t any of the advanced options that you might be used to, but if you’re not concerned with how your photos are organized this is probably one of the best Flickr solutions.

–Overview–

I’ve only begun to scratch the surface with the tools that you can use to upload photos to Flickr, but I only wanted to cover the ones that I’ve used. Let us know in the comments how you get your photos on Flickr!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

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Dec 29

Facebook is Headed for the Classroom

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on September 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

stanford facebook class Facebook is already in college classrooms these days when students become "bored" with the lecture going on, or "multi-task" by typing their notes and then catching up with Facebook at the same time.  While it may already be in the classrooms, it’s being used a bit differently in a Stanford classroom this semester as the focus of a new course. The course is called "Create Engaging Web Applications Using Metrics and Learning on Facebook" and will be offered primarily to computer science majors.

Essentially the Facebook site itself falls under what’s needed for course materials and according to the instructor, students will use it to "learn how to build and market user-friendly software." For someone who is interested in social media and software development, this is an ideal course to prep them for what they’ll experience when they leave college. They’ll also have the chance to make money as well because at the end of the quarter, students we’ll have the opportunity to show-off their project to investors.

There are two main projects that students (who will work in groups of three) will need to accomplish. First, students will develop any application that they feel will appeal to "most" Facebook users. The second project involves developing another application that would be focused on using Facebook for education purposes. I know, it’s hard to imagine Facebook could be used for educational purposes, but the example that Venture Beat gave was an application that could be used by students to share class notes with each other which would be extremely useful.

And of course with most any other class you take in college, the students will get graded.  This is the only part of the course that I’d say is questionable.  Students will be graded upon how many users they can get using their applications. To me, it sounds like it has the potential to turn into a popularity contest, however, I could be wrong.  The one way that I could see it as a great way to grade is if students take the time to actually "market" their application. One lesson I’m sure they could/should learn is not to underestimate the power of a blog.  If the groups making the applications are able to get some high-profiler blogs writing about them with genuine interest, I’d say that they’ve got an awesome shot at getting a great grade.

Considering that this course is focused around Facebook, it’s no surprise that they’ve created a Facebook group for class. You can check it out here.

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

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Dec 11

CyberNotes: Disk Usage & Hard Drive Visualization

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on August 26, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

One of the things that’s always nice to know is what you can remove from your hard drive to quickly regain hard drive space. Maybe there are some enormous games on your computer that you don’t play anymore, or files you’ve downloaded that have never gotten deleted? By using hard drive visualization tools you’ll be able to pinpoint exactly what is eating up your hard drive storage.

There are a lot of different programs that can be used for this purpose, and we thought it would be better to put together a more comprehensive list instead of just covering one or two of our favorites. We’ve broken them up according to operating system below, and for each one we provide a brief description accompanied by a screenshot. That way you’ll be able to figure out which free app is right for you.

Note: You can click on a screenshot for a full-size version.

–Windows Hard Drive Visualization–

  • JDiskReport [Homepage]
    This is a Java-based tool that gives you a few different options for visualizing your hard drive. The screenshot below shows the typical pie graph, but you can also switch to a distribution graph. As you drill into folders it will update the graph accordingly.
    jdiskreportwin.png
  • WinDirStat [Homepage] [Full Review]
    This free program is pretty cool because of how it breaks up your hard drive into chunks so that you can see at a glance where the large space-hogging chunks are. The various types of files are also color-coded for easy identification.
    WinDirStat
  • SpaceMonger [Homepage]
    This definitely isn’t the most glamorous application we’ve seen, but the way it breaks up the view of your hard drive is very intuitive. Just like with WinDirStat the boxes are proportionally sized to the percent of the hard drive they consume, but what’s nice about this is that some of the files and folders are clearly labeled on the diagram.
    spacemonger.png
  • TreeSize Free [Homepage]
    TreeSize is a more Windows Explorer-like interface for finding those large folders on your computer. As you can see in the screenshot below it puts the largest folders at the top of the list, and you can continue to expand them to see the largest files and folders inside each of those.
    treesize.png
  • OverDisk [Homepage]
    What really makes OverDisk unique is that it’s visualization method looks more like a pie chart that has exploded. You can use the navigator along the left side of the window to traverse through the directories on your PC, and the chart will adjust accordingly.
    overdisk.png

–Mac Hard Drive Visualization–

  • Disk Inventory X [Homepage]
    Look at this the same way as the WinDirStat application for Windows above. It has the same visualization technique, and color-codes the files based upon their type.
    disk inventory x.png
  • GrandPerspective [Homepage]
    Yet another block visualization tool. It’s very similar to Disk Inventory X, and both have nearly the same features and interface.
    grandperspective.png
  • JDiskReport [Homepage]
    That’s right, you saw this program in the Windows section above as well. Since it’s made using Java it’s available on multiple platforms which is a nice benefit. It uses standard pie graphs and distribution charts to plot the data on your hard drive.

–Linux Hard Drive Visualization–

  • KDirStat [Homepage]
    This is the original application that used the block-like view many of the different programs mentioned above now incorporate. It also comes with some cleanup utilities to help reclaim the disk space.
    kdirstat.png
  • Baobab [Homepage]
    Baobab has a clean and intuitive interface for navigating through the folders on your computer. For each line it has a color-coded bar that indicates how much space it is taking up, or you can always switch over to one of the more graphical views. The best part is that this is already included with the GNOME desktop, and is referred to as the Disk Usage Analyzer.
    baobab.png

–Overview–

So those are the best hard drive visualization tools that we’ve come across throughout the years. Let us know in the comments what you use to find the pesky files and folders taking up all of your precious hard drive space.

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

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Dec 05

Growl Becoming a Must-have App on Windows?

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on November 19, 2009 by CyberNet.

windows 7 growl.pngHaving bought my first Mac about a year and a half ago one app that I quickly started to love was Growl. It brought a universal notification system to the operating system that any application could make use of, and the cross-program uniformity made the OS experience that much better.

Then came along Growl for Windows, which was something I took a quick liking to once the Prowl iPhone app was released. I wasn’t sure what kind of future Growl had on Windows since we had already seen other apps like Snarl start to fade out despite being updated regularly. It just didn’t catch on for me.

Growl, however, has become something I’ve installed on all my Windows machines. The notifications are clean and prominent, which can be a combination that is tough to come by. Not to mention the fact that there are also a variety of themes available. My favorite is definitely the Smokestack theme pictured above.

The new version 2.0 that was just released supports images in the notifications, can tell an app when a notification is clicked, can forward of notifications to an email address, and much more. And, of course, we can’t forget about the rapidly growing list of supported apps:

  • Autotest – Get informed when your tests pass or fail.
  • Emacs – Send and receive Growl notifications from within emacs.
  • Firefox – Alerts you when Firefox has started, finished, or failed downloading a file.
  • Feed Monitor – Alerts you when RSS and Atom feeds are updated.
  • Foobar2000 – Get notified when playing starts, stops, or is paused.
  • Gmail – Gmail Growl keeps you updated on new mails in your Gmail Inbox in a fancy way.
  • Google Reader – Get notified of new feed items in Google Reader.
  • Google Voice – Alerts you to new voicemails, text messages, call recordings, and more.
  • Google Wave – Get notified of new Waves.
  • Growlbook for Facebook – Get notifications for friend requests, messages, pokes, invites, and more.
  • iTunes – Alerts you to the currently playing track in iTunes.
  • Irssi – Alerts you when your name is highlighted, you receive a private message, and when someone joins/leaves a conversation.
  • jWeatherWatch – Get the current weather and forecasts for multiple locations.
  • Last.fm – Alerts you to the currently playing track on the Last.fm website.
  • MediaMonkey – Alerts you to the currently playing track in MediaMonkey.
  • Outlook – Get notified of appointment reminders and when new mail arrives.
  • OWATray (Outlook Web Access) – Get notified of new Exchange mail without having to keep an OWA browser constantly open.
  • Pandora AIR – Alerts you to the currently playing track in the Pandora AIR application.
  • Pandora Website – Alerts you to the currently playing track on the Pandora website.
  • Pidgin – Get Growl notifications for all kinds of Pidgin notifications.
  • Postbox – Alerts you when Postbox receives new mail or RSS updates.
  • Powershell – Send Growl notifications from your Powershell scripts.
  • SageAlert for SageTV – Get notified for all kinds of SageTV events.
  • SkypeToGrowl – Get notified of incoming Skype calls.
  • Songbird – Pops up a notification when the currently playing track changes.
  • System Monitor – Get notified of system-type events like low disk space, battery life, USB devices inserted & removed and more.
  • Thunderbird – Alerts you when Thunderbird receives new mail or RSS updates.
  • TV Browser – Get reminded when your favorite TV shows are starting.
  • Trowl (Twitter) – Get notified of Twitter mentions, DM’s, and friends’ tweets.
  • Twitulater – Get notified of new tweets and much more.
  • uGrowl (uTorrent) – Get notified when torrents are added, start, or finish.
  • Visual Studio – Get notified of success or failure when builds complete.
  • Vuze (Azureus) – Notifies you of completed downloads.
  • Witty (Twitter) – Get of new tweets, @replies, and direct messages. Sends summary notifications if you get too many updates at once.
  • Yawcam (Motion Detection) – Get notified when your webcam detects motion, and then view streaming video of the activity.
  • Yip – Transform any Fluid or Prism notifications into Growl notifications.

It’s tough to say how this app will pan out in the end, but I think it has a really bright future. Let us know in the comments whether you’ve given it a whirl, and how you feel about it.

Growl for Windows Homepage (Freeware)

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

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Nov 30

CyberNotes: TrayDevil goes Beyond Minimizing to the System Tray

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on January 23, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

TrayDevil Last week I wrote an article on freeware applications that let you arrange your windows in a more organized, and productive fashion. Then in the comments Everton mentioned an application that he found that lets you minimize windows to the System Tray. The only problem was that the link he posted vanished, and he didn’t mention what the name of the program was.

I’ve done a post before about minimizing applications to the System Tray and the popular one was 4t Tray Minimizer. There is both a paid and free version of that application. I also brought up other alternatives like Opera’s built-in Ctrl+H shortcut to minimize the browser to Tray…and you don’t have to install a thing to do that.

Then there is TrayDevil (download mirror): a freeware application that does more than just minimize windows to the System Tray. I’m not sure if this is the application that Everton was talking about in his comment, but when a friend of mine told me about it I couldn’t pass it up. Now that I have had some time to explore the program I thought I would share all of the things that it can do.

–Minimizing Windows–

The primary purpose of TrayDevil is to let you minimize applications to the System Tray that normally couldn’t be. There are all kinds of applications I find this useful for, like Web browsers and file explorers, but if you completely understand how TrayDevil works it will become an amazing tool.

To minimize a window you can do one of two things:

  • While holding Ctrl, Shift, or Alt just left-click on the titlebar of the window you want to minimize.
  • My favorite way is to simultaneously left-click and right-click on the titlebar which is a one-handed way of minimizing a window.

I would say the most unique thing happens when you have a window minimized to the System Tray. Unlike other tray applications that I have used, TrayDevil will keep the application’s icon in the System Tray even after clicking to maximize it. Of course, that’s only if you single-click because if you double-click it will remove the icon.

If you right-click on a minimized window you will receive the following options:

TrayDevil

The Min, Max, and Close button options will disable those buttons on a given window. I haven’t really found this to be too useful quite yet, but I guess it could be if you wanted to make sure you didn’t accidentally close a window.

Then there is the Restore button (TrayDevil Restore ) which is equivalent to double-clicking on the icon…it restores the window and removes the icon from the tray.

The bottom option that has the up arrow (TrayDevil System Tray ) is equivalent to single-clicking on an icon…it restores the window but leaves the icon in the tray. After a window has been restored the right-click menu option changes to a down arrow (TrayDevil Minimize ) which will minimize the window back to the System Tray. 

 

–Shutdown, Restart, and More–

So what happens when you right-click on the TrayDevil icon? It provides you with all sorts of options like turning your monitor off or restarting your computer. It isn’t the end of the world if you accidentally click on one of those options while you were on your way to the settings…TrayDevil gives you 10-seconds (or more/less if you customize it) to cancel any of the operations.

TrayDevil Power Management

 

–Customization and Settings–

Options, options, options…TrayDevil has them! There are all sorts of things you can finetune with my favorite being the application’s tray icon. Instead of adding another worthless icon to the System Tray (I currently have 16), it lets you completely turn it off or display what day of the month it is. Thank goodness that there are some developers in the world who think outside the box. 😀

There are several other options that can be customized, so I thought I would take screenshots of all the things you can configure (many of which pertain to hotkeys):

General  System Tray  Power  Run Program  Minimize to Tray  Restore / Close  Transparency  Hotkeys 

 

–Overview–

As you can see this is one powerful freeware application that offers a wealth of customizability. It handles so smoothly that it is now one of my favorite programs, where I previously used 4t Tray Minimizer (free). The program is very light weight so you don’t have to worry about it taking up resources…go on now, it’s calling your name:

Download TrayDevil from their homepage
Download TrayDevil from our mirror

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

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Nov 21

Adobe Photoshop CS4 Cracked Already

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on October 28, 2008 by CyberNet.

adobe photoshop cs4 keygen.png

Adobe has presented hackers with yet another challenge thanks to their new breed of Creative Suite 4 (CS4) applications that were released less than two weeks ago. They try do everything they can to stop software pirates from stealing their programs, but it’s inevitable that someone somewhere will find a workaround.

Unfortunately for Adobe that time came way too soon with CS4. It didn’t take long for the bulky downloads to get transformed into torrents, and then shared across networks worldwide. The Windows version of the Adobe CS4 Master Suite weighs in at 5.6GB, while the Mac version is nearly 7GB. It’s not exactly something you’d want to download via dial-up.

The catch… most downloads being posted merely contain trial versions of each Adobe CS4 application. Working cracks and key generators are available separately though. Some cracks are designed to actually patch the executable files for various programs (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc…), while others take a more interesting approach. In fact one version doesn’t have to modify any of the files.

The first workaround that was found uses a key generator that spits out keys for both Windows and Mac versions of the Master Suite. Once the software tries to contact Adobe, however, the keys will get deactivated and you’ll have until the end of the year before Photoshop and the other apps will stop working. Ingeniously someone came up with a way to get around this by modifying the operating system’s HOSTS file (available on both Mac and Windows) so that any requests to Adobe’s server’s never leave the comfort of your machine. If it can’t contact Adobe then it can’t deactivate the software.

Your activation system was a valiant effort Adobe, but it looks like it will be another 18-months (or whenever CS5 is released) before you’ll get another shot at stopping the pirates.

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

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Nov 19

ClickZap – The Double Right-Click

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on November 07, 2007 by CyberNet.

ClickZap Have you ever thought to yourself that it should be possible to do a double right-click the same way that you can do a normal double click? No? Me neither, but it turns out that it can be pretty useful.

A tiny free app called ClickZap (does require installation) will let you choose from a variety of commands to assign to the double right-click. You can set it to:

  • Lock the computer
  • Logoff the computer
  • Shutdown the computer
  • Minimize active window
  • Minimize all windows
  • Close active window
  • Close all windows
  • Mute the sound

One of the options I was hoping that this would have is the ability to perform a middle-click, but it doesn’t. Guess I still have to use the AutoHotKey script that I made to simulate the middle-click action. I’ve actually decided to set ClickZap to close the active window which seems to be saving me quite a bit of time, and to my surprise I haven’t accidentally closed a window yet. 🙂

ClickZap Homepage
Source: Shell City

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

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Nov 14

CyberNotes: Firefox Profile Backup Solutions

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on January 02, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday

There’s no doubt that your browser stores a lot of important information that could leave you in quite a bind should it disappear all of a sudden. The Firefox users out there probably have a bunch of extensions installed and configured, settings tweaked just the way they like them, obscure passwords stored that no human could possibly memorize, and enough bookmarks saved to make even a hardcore geek nauseous.

I don’t find much joy in the fact that a hard drive can crash at anytime for any number of reasons. We’ve had it happen twice this year, but fortunately for us we had backups of all our most important information. You shouldn’t even think twice about backing up your browser’s profile, and that’s why today we’re going to show you two easy and free Firefox profile backup solutions!

–MozBackup (Homepage)–

This is a small program that you can download, and on the website you’re given the choice between an installable version or a no-install ZIP version. I opted for the ZIP version because I can always keep it on my USB drive, which conveniently happens to be the place where I store my Firefox profile backup.

MozBackup is not restricted just to Firefox profiles either. It can also backup profiles for Thunderbird, Seamonkey, Mozilla Suite, and Netscape. Don’t worry, you’ll be prompted early on in MozBackup to select specifically what application and profile you want to backup.

You’ll then be able to pick exactly what you want to backup, such as bookmarks, history, extensions, passwords, cookies, and more. I’ve documented the entire process in screenshots:

(Click to Enlarge)
MozBackup Welcome MozBackup Select Application MozBackup Profile Selection MozBackup Settings MozBackup Saving MozBackup Finished

Once you’ve got the backup done it will create a single file that can be used to restore everything that you backed up. To perform a restoration just go back through the wizard, and on the second screen just choose the Restore a profile option instead of Backup a profile.

Tip: Close Firefox before using MozBackup, otherwise it will prompt you to do so in the middle of the wizard.

–FEBE (Homepage)–

I find this to be a rather interesting profile backup option for Firefox. FEBE (short for Firefox Environment Backup Extension) is an extension that can be used to backup important parts of your profile. Things like themes, extensions, bookmarks, preferences, cookies, passwords and more can all be saved to a single file, and restored at a moments notice.

What really makes this a fantastic choice for backing up your Firefox profile is that it has scheduling capabilities. You can choose to have your profile automatically backed up daily, weekly, monthly, or you can just set it to remind you every few days.

The first thing you’ll want to do after installing FEBE is go and setup the directory where your backups will be stored. Then from the Tools -> FEBE menu you can initiate your first backup of whatever profile items you chose in the options.

(Click to Enlarge)
FEBE Options FEBE Directory FEBE Schedule

As you can see this is an extremely intuitive option for backing up your Firefox profile, but MozBackup is also nice since it works with several different Mozilla applications. The choice of which backup solution is obviously up to you, but take them seriously because they could save you a lot of trouble in the future.

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