Spotlight (leopard) is simply *not* working properly...

Question

i needed to trash my firefox prefs, but couldn't remember the exact name of the document (org.mozilla.firefox.plist). so i typed "firefox" in spotlight.
i got a few results -- the app, etc., -- but absolutely no preference files. i double-checked: i was searching "this computer." it defaults to "contents," so i switched to "file name" -- but still nothing.
finally i went to the preferences folder and scanned for the document manually -- and found it.
if i'm searching "this computer," and spotlight doesn't "see" a document that's sitting right there -- how can this be the correct behavior? i know i was able to find preference files with spotlight in tiger.
what am i missing, here?

Answer 1

Spotlight is great for documents, but for anything system related I use to open a terminal (Command-Space Terminal Enter) and type the following command at the prompt:
locate [filename]
which is in your case:
locate org.mozilla.firefox.plist
I must admit that I come from a Unix background, so the locate command is quite a normal way for me to find files. And you circumvent all those nifty features in Spotlight which like to do your thinking for you.
Further, I must disagree with you in that Leopard Spotlight does not work property. It seems to be doing exactly what is designed to do. That this is not what you would expect it do is more a bug in the design team than in Spotlight