By using an open-source program called SQLite Database Browser, you will be able to find all browser data recorded. Not only that, but you will also be able to see the database structure and browse, while even having the option to manipulate the data within each of the tables. The following information applies to various operating systems, but for the sake of basic demonstration, Windows 7 will be used as an example. The link follows to download SQLite Database Browser: http://sourceforge.net/projects/sqlitebrowser/

Start by making sure that Firefox is closed; otherwise file locks will present a problem. Open SQLite Database Browser and click the “open” icon and navigate to the appropriate Firefox profile. In Windows 7, it is found in this location:

%UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\.default

The following database example shows a database called “formhistory.sqlite”. It stores entered values in the form of input fields like e-mail addresses and even phone numbers. Firefox can be set up to store this information. If it is, it can be found here.

Notice that you can open this table and browse the “moz_formhistory” table. This delightful utility allows you to access many different entries so you may learn exactly how this works. The name of the HTML field where you entered your data is stored in the column titled “fieldname” and the value is listed under the “value” column. There will be many different fieldname values that are the same, but have different “values” defined. This is because field names like “Email” and “Subject” are common field names. You will also notice that values entered on one site will show up on another site.

All of this information can be sensitive. You can search for your credit card number, by pattern, and you will find the plain text entry within this database.

It is likely that you will find many entries that you wish to delete. Locate the “id” value of the entry in the Browse Data tab and click the convenient button “Delete Record”. When you save the changes, the data will be gone. This is perfect for manually clearing sensitive data and is a quick process once you get a feel for it. In this way, you can clear specific privacy data without wiping out your entire browsing data.

For PC security, it is important that privacy data is cleared frequently. This is the type of information that is bait and breeding ground for malware of all types. By keeping sensitive data clear, there is nothing to steal! Naturally, you want to be sure that you do a basic clean of the hard drive and empty the Recycle Bin after this, as some of this data can remain in temporary files and common file locations even after deletion.

Bibus is free, easy to use, cross platform (Linux and Windows) and allows you to create customized styles for for bibliographies. In this tutorial you will learn how to install and use Bibus (with a nod to OpenOffice).

Installation

The installation of Bibus is simple. If you are using Ubuntu you can open up either Synaptic or the Ubuntu Software Center, do a search for “bibus” (no quotes), and install the results.  If you are using Debian you will be glad to know that Bibus is now in the official repositories, so all you need to do is issue the command:

sudo apt-get install bibus

For any other distribution you will need to install from source. To do this you will need to first make sure you have the following installed (which can be done with your normal application installer):

• python
• wxpython2.* (where * is >= 6)

Now wxpython2.* will be listed as something different from different distributions. For example, in Fedora 12 you will be looking for wxPython in Mandriva you are looking for wxPythonGTK, and in SuSE you are looking for python-wxgtk. Now it’s time to download the source and install. Here are the steps:

Download the source from Sourceforge.

Open up a terminal window.

Change to the directory that contains Bibus source.

Unpack the source with the command tar xvzf bibus-XXX.tgz (Where XXX is the release number).

Change into the newly created bibus-XXX directory (Where XXX is the release number).

Change to the root user with the command su.

Export various paths necessary with the commands:
export DESTDIR=/usr/local
export python=/usr/bin/python
export oopath=/usr/lib/openoffice.org3/program
make -f Setup/Makefile DESTDIR=$DESTDIR python=$python oopath=$oopath install

Once installed you will find the Bibus menu entry in the Office sub-menu of the Applications menu.

First connection wizard

When you first fire up Bibus you will need to walk through a very simple connection wizard. This wizard will want to know:

• What office suite you want to connect with Bibus (Choices being: OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, and None.)
• Will you want to insert citations directly into OpenOffice ? If you want this feature you will have to start OpenOffice in “listening” mode (more on that in a moment).
• What database do you want to use (SQLite or MySQL).
• Where to store the database file.
• Username.

Figure 1

Finally, Bibus will open up and you will be treated to the main window (see Figure 1). You will be connected to your default database, so you are ready to start creating.

In order to create a new citation right click the “All my references” link and select New Reference. You can also either select New Reference from the References menu or hit the key combination <Ctrl>N.

Figure 2

When the References Editor appears (see Figure 2), fill out all of the necessary information and click OK to save the reference. NOTE: You must enter Author name in the format: lastname, firstname.

Inserting citations into OpenOffice

During the first connection wizard there was a section that asked if you wanted to be able to insert citations directly into OpenOffice. On that page click the Accept button which will open a document in OpenOffice. In this document you will find a button labeled Accept UNO Connections. You need to click that button and then quit and restart OpenOffice.

Once you have this set up you need to highlight a citation that you want to add to an OpenOffice document, click on the OpenOffice menu, and select Insert Citation. Now there is a slight possibility that you will receive an error that Bibus can not connect to OpenOffice. If this is the case you need to take these steps:

• Click on the Tools menu and select Options.
• Click on the Security section.
• Click on the Macro Security button.
• Set Macro Security to Medium.

Now Bibus should be able to connect to OpenOffice and insert your citations for you.

Final thoughts

If you are in a position where your writing leans heavy on the bibliographic citations, you will gladly welcome the help of Bibus. Not only does it make inserting proper bibliographic citations, it makes managing your bibliographic database a snap.

The Firefox add-on basically offers two options to optimize the SQLite database. The first option will remind the Firefox user every x starts to clean the SQLite databases by displaying an icon in the Firefox status bar.

The second option, which is probably more comfortable to most users, is the option to clean the SQLite databases every x startups of the Firefox web browser. This means that the optimization will be run automatically. Both numbers can be changed in the options of the add-on to increase or decrease the number of startups that are required before the reminder or optimization takes place.

Vacuum Places Improved is compatible with Firefox 3.5 and later and can be downloaded from the official Mozilla Firefox website.

The Firefox add-on Vacuum Places makes this process more comfortable by providing the means to run the database optimization right from within Firefox. The experimental add-on will optimize the SQLite databases of the active Firefox profile whenever its button in the Firefox status bar is pressed.

The database size reduction depends largely on the amount of data in the database, the time it has been in use and the last cleanup. A run on a test system (using the batch file) reduced the size of the profile folder from 64.8 Megabytes to 53.4 Megabytes.

Vacuum Places can be downloaded from the official Mozilla Firefox website. It is advised to create a backup of the Firefox profile folder before running it for the first time.

It is possible to optimized SQLite databases which defragments them so that their size decreases and performance is gained. The website Web Upd8 explains how to optimize the SQLite databases of Firefox running under Windows, Linux or Mac OS. Windows users for example need to download a batch file and place them into the Firefox profile that they want to optimize.

The batch file will run the vacuum command on all SQlite databases that are located in the profile folder. The effect of the optimization depends largely on the fragmentation of the SQLite databases. Optimization on a test system reduced the size of the Firefox profile folder from 64.8 Megabytes to 53.4 Megabytes. Users with many bookmarks and RSS feeds will most likely see a large size reduction of the profile folder while users who use Firefox only occasionally will see little to no improvement.

The web server can be downloaded in various configurations. The various configurations range from a bare-bone Apache web server to a web server supporting MySQL, SQLite, Pearl and PHP. The configuration only has an effect on the type of applications that can be run on the web server. Most users will probably need at least MySQL and PHP support to run their websites locally.

The web server can be started by double-clicking on the Server2Go.exe executable file in the root directory of the server. This will load the various web server modules and display a start page in the web browser. The pms_config.ini file can be used to change various settings of the web server including the default web browser, the port and whether the modules like MySQL or PHP should be started as well.

The actual files of a website are placed in the htdocs directory of the web server. Loading them can be as easy as pointing your browser to 127.0.0.1:4001 or some subdirectory of it depending on the type of site.

MySQL comes with phpMyAdmin which is accessible from the main interface of the web server. Server2Go offers an uncomplicated way to run a web server, it is especially helpful in environments where software installations are restricted.