I had been using Minefield since Alpha 8 which was quite a long time ago. My Firefox profile has been used by Firefox 2 since I last reinstalled Windows on my computer and it had bee used by multiple Alpha and Beta builds (lots of nightlies) and during all the updates, my profile had become a mess and full of information from various versions of Firefox/Minefield. When Firefox 3 RC1 came out, I decided that it was time to start my profile again, except I will save my load of bookmarks I have collected over the years.

The process of backing up my Bookmarks was really simple. Using the new Places manager, exporting the database was simple. I needed a way of getting the saved passwords so I had them on record incase I didn’t know a password and didn’t want to get that information emailed to me. I managed to find a cunning way of backing up and accessing them if needed. After that, I went into the application data folder and renamed my profile. I didn’t delete it straight away in case something when horribly wrong and I wanted to turn back.

This is where the first problem arose. I couldn’t open Firefox because it kept telling me it was still open and in use. It clearly wasn’t due to it not showing in the process manager. I renamed the profile back to its original name and Firefox opened fine. I renamed it back and again Firefox had trouble. What I needed to do was open Firefox with the profile manager so I could create a new profile from scratch. Peppery found it and told me over IM how to do it. It was relatively simple.

With a new profile, I felt lost. This wasn’t my browser! My browser has extensions and acts differently to this. I first went and downloaded a couple of extensions that I needed. After all that, I then went and changed some of the setting in the add-ons and in the program options. Now all I needed was my bookmarks, and my tabs. Restoring my bookmarks was just as simple and fast as exporting them. In a click or two, my bookmarks were all back, and from there, I could restore all my tabs.

Logging into all my sites was going to be a challenge. Because all my passwords were gone, I had to rely on my memory, and my cheat sheet, to assist me with logging on to websites and saving the passwords so I no longer have to remember, not that I have to remember, all my passwords. From this, I am reminded about one of the best features of Firefox 3, the simple password remember bar. It is a godsend compared to the old save password dialog box.

The only real problem I had with this is the address bar. In my old profile, I had 90 days of history and that really made the new address bar work great. It still works good with only bookmarks, but the thing that makes it a wonder, is the addition of history. The feature is definitely not as rich without it, and having no history made it quite useless. Although after a few weeks, it started to become useful again.

I do believe that a clean out was good, and I noticed a significant amount of speed improvements, but that was more likely due to it not having 90 days of history holding it back, and many unused extensions disabled. Even though I did lose history which was slightly annoying, I am very happy I did it and would consider doing it with the released of Firefox 4. I really love Firefox 3 and a clean out did wonders!