More About What it Does in Detail:

Clear Private Data installs just like any other Firefox add-on and is available at the Mozilla Add-ons website here.

Quote from the Add-ons page:

Long Description

This extension utilizes the "Clear Private Data…" feature that is part of Firefox version 1.5 and above. It makes this feature a lot more accessible via right-click context menu and an optional toolbar button.

Works with:

• Firefox: 1.5 – 3.1a1pre

General Use of Clear Private Data

This review will follow the usual format of presenting the majority of information as screenshots backed up by further information where necessary.

(click on any picture to enlarge where necessary)

Once installed Clear Private Data appears in the Add-ons manager, however there are no options available from here. Options are set using the standard Firefox Privacy tab.;

When first installed you need to manually add the Clear Private Data toolbar button to your toolbars using the Customize feature:

Once this is done clicking on the toolbar button displays the Clear Private Data dialog box (provided you have not set the Ask me before clearing private data option to off in the Privacy tab options)

The dialog box is shown with certain Options already checked.

Clicking on the Clear Private Data button will clear all those items whose boxes have a check mark (tick) in them.

The preset checked boxes can be changed by going to the Firefox Privacy options dialog. To access this click on Tools-Options in the menu bar and the select the privacy tab:

and then clicking on the Settings button to display the following window:

This dialog is almost exactly the same as the one you see when you click on the toolbar button, the only difference seems to be the Firefox icon is not shown in the titlebar. Anyway, anything you set as checked here will be shown by default as checked when you hit the toolbar button.

Unless you uncheck the Ask me before clearing private data option to off in the Privacy tab in which case the dialog is not shown and all the default options are automatically cleared.

This is very useful if you always want to clear the same things quickly and without the dialog box appearing. This is where I think that the Clear Private Data add-on could be improved by offering two toolbar buttons or a dropdown to choose “instant” clear or select options from the dialog.

My usual settings are just to have the dialog box shown when I hit the toolbar button with the clear Cache option set

Clear Private Data also offers a menu item under the Tools item:

So What Are the 5 Things?

Well the different things you can use Clear Private Data for are:

1. Privacy – Remove browsing history, download history, passwords, etc.

As I said above there are many reasons you may need to do this. I find this useful with setting up different versions of Portable Firefox installations to use at home or work or to give to someone else complete with Add-ons and Toolbar layouts for them to use.

2. Troubleshooting – Clear the Cache

Sometime Firefox will have problems loading a page or pages. In my experience clearing the cache may resolve the problem. It is certainly worth a try and will only have a minor impact on displaying some pages for a short while.

3. USB/ Removable Media Space – Clear Cache

Clearing the cache will greatly decrease the space used on your USB stick

4. USB/ Removable Media Security – Clear Passwords – History – Downloads – etc.

Make sure you don’t give away anything important if you loose your USB stick or it is borrowed by a friend or colleague

5. Firefox Portable Cloning

If you want to clone a version of Firefox Portable on your PC or USB stick of removable media then Clear Private Data allows you to minimize the size by clearing the cache and also allows you to make sure you don’t transfer sensitive data.

With  all of the above the need to be aware that data may be available through file recovery and other methods needs to be accounted for

Go to Page 3 for ProReviewer Summary

(see Page Navigation below)

Popularity: 36% [?]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Pages: 1 2 3

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 11th, 2008 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Firefox Add-ons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.