FF has become too kludgey & confusing!?

Question

We used to use a very early version of FF which was fast, easy to use, enjoyable. Recently upgraded to FF 9 and we're going crazy with all the complicated drop-down menus and many levels you need to traverse to do a simple thing like PURGE ALL PRIVATE DATA. This is ridiculous! Why isn't there a SINGLE BUTTON available on the toolbar for things one needs to do often, like: STOP, DELETE PRIVATE DATA, CLEAR COOKIES.
Further, FF claims that in Private Mode nothing is stored on our hard drive, but what about all those sqlite folders like places.sqlite that house so much of our details and NEVER seem to get deleted even with CCleaner? How can you mislead people like this?
And what is the purpose of sqlite folders when we specifically tell FF *not* to store history, bookmarks, cookies, etc.?

Answer 1

Also speak_easy, those sqlite files you see are locked while in private browsing mode. Instead temporary copies are made alongside the original files to process the cookie, history, form history, or downloads data.
'''Technical mumbo-jumbo explanation:'''
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For example, if you open your Firefox profile while in Private Browsing mode you'll see files like cookies.sqlite-shm & cookies.sqlite-wal for cookies. And places.sqlite-shm & places.sqlite-wal for places.sqlite (this file contains both your bookmarks and history).
To further check, you can right click > choose '''Properties''' on the original files of places.sqlite, cookies.sqlite, downloads.sqlite and formhistory.sqlite and view their modified times.
But this won't be too helpful if you switch back and forth between normal browsing and private browsing all the time. You'll have to remember what time you started PB mode and see that during that time the modified time on those files did not change. It does help users who use permanent private browsing mode. Using me as a example, all my cookies, places, downloads and formhistory.sqlite files all show the modified time of the day they were first created when I installed Firefox. Since then that means no data has been written inside of them.
The files need to be there for technical reasons otherwise private browsing mode wouldn't be able to work.
Also those files are not deleted completely because if you casually switch between normal and PB mode you would lose all the data you had from normal browsing as well. Private browsing blocks itself from saving to those sqlite files while protecting the data you had there from normal mode. Once you switch back, PB mode deletes the extra files it was using temporarily to hold your private mode data while leaving your original sqlite files untouched. Hope that makes sense.
'''Also sorry in advance for the blast of technical mumbo-jumbo from me & jscher2000.'''
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I do agree those menus are kind of close together but since I switched back to the "classic" view. I have my old menus back and am happy. Follow jscher2000's steps to get the classic menu back.
Also you called the sqlite files, sqlite folders. They are actually files. But you may have been in a rush when typing. And yeah, this stuff can get confusing. But thankfully we don't have to do the geeky work that goes into this very tough software writing process. :)
'''Note for the advanced/more paranoid users:'''
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Even if you start Firefox in Permanent Private Browsing mode before you start Firefox for the first time. Which means Firefox was never opened in normal browsing mode. The main sqlite files will all have a certain default size when created from scratch. They do not start at zero. Default sizes I have: cookies.sqlite 128kb, places.sqlite 1.12MB, downloads.sqlite 64kb, formhistory.sqlite 160 kb. Other sqlite files also are created with default sizes as well. I have yet to see a zero kb one.