This is great for a power user, and hopefully for mom too.

To me, it's the same power-to-the-people type of idea where a personal server is advocated rather than Facebook; in this case, it's your browser rather than OAuth.

The only plug-in that keeps me on Firefox rather than switching to Chrome is http://www.andyhalford.com/syncplaces/ because I can sync my passwords across Firefox installations on multiple computers.

for me, the only thing keeping me off of chrome is that it has no "master password" concept to protect stored passwords. on firefox, i use the master password timeout extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1275) so it has to be re-entered after a few minutes of not using it.

Set a password on your OS account.

I use xmarks to sync bookmarks, and lastpass to sync passwords. Both of them work with Firefox and Chrome.

I prefer Weave Sync (http://mozillalabs.com/weave/), as it syncs settings, open tabs and browser history as well, and since, like Xmarks, it encrypts everything and lets you use your own server. I hope that Weave Sync one day makes it into Firefox trunk, as it's an extremely useful extension that goes well beyond what most bookmark/password sync extensions do. Sadly, it is limited to Firefox and Fennec right now.

This is somewhat a simple process, but I wish this article had detailed it out a bit more clearly than they did:

a) Create /.well-known/host-meta (XML) which features a URL -OR- set X-Account-Management HTTP header to a URL.

b) Create a JSON document at the provided URL that contains the control document which has connect/disconnect/register/changepass/sessionstatus/accountstatus as applicable (if sessionstatus/accountstatus are provided with a URL that returns 200 HTTP status if logged in, 4xx/5xx otherwise, skip c).

c) Set X-Account-Management-Status HTTP header to active; name="Username"

d) Use Add-on until Firefox adds Account Manager.

-- Refer to https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Weave/Identity/Account_Manager... for granular details on syntax.

I've just finished adding support for Account Manager to my site, FireFound: https://www.firefound.com/ if anyone wants a live example.

I am using 1password http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password to keep track of my passwords. It does a lot of magic making it feel integrated into the web experience, although it doesn't tell my browser whether I'm logged in or not, although I didn't quite feel a need for that before. It syncs the passwords to my iPhone as well.

This is an Interesting idea - and a very useful one. I would like to see it being proposed as a cross browser standard though.

It has been, but all the drafts are spec and subject to change. I think it's early enough in the process that trying to get cross-browser support is somewhat infeasible-- the spec is still too much of a moving target.