Suppose you need to send a friend a copy of say… Firebug 1.2 (site down at time of writing), but your favorite backup utility is not compatible with Firefox 3 yet. Not to worry! Just zip it up and send it like so:

1. Go to your Firefox extensions directory in your profile (WinXP default is C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\extensions\*nix is ~/.mozilla/firefox/<profile>/extensions)
2. Zip up the extension you want
3. Unzip in another profile extensions directory

One step command-line (Cygwin or Shell) example

#Make backup
cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/extensions && tar -cvf ~/firebug.tar.gz firebug@software.joehewitt.com/
# OR to copy to another profile
cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/extensions && cp -R firebug@software.joehewitt.com/ ../../yyyyyyyy.otherprofile/extensions/

You might even use it to play around with settings of your favorite extensions! I can’t verify this for every extension obviously, but the ones I’ve tried work like a charm! You can also do this with entire profiles!

Chuck Baker’s FEBE is my preferred way to backup a Firefox extension and my profile, but it is not yet compatible with Firefox 3 as of this post. Has anyone else used a different method or other suggestions? Let’s hear them!

Chuck updates us that FEBE 6.0 beta is available at: the FEBE download site and is compatible with FF3! Great!

P.S. – I’m sure you’ve already heard about the Firefox 3 download day this coming Tuesday, June 17th. You have? Just checking. :)