Not the same thing at all to my mind. The older method of doing the privacy toolbar gave you control over your settings automatically with a set of rules that you could check on or off.
Now, unless there is a setting I'm missing, the same functions listed above are handled manually, meaning you have to go in and laboriously check settings from Tools/Privacy/Clear Data (four clicks to do what was once a set and forget setting and change if need be).
Not anywhere near the same. There is a setting to globally clear everything, but that is of little help when what I want is to clear only certain items such as history, urls, cache(s) and keep passwords and cookies (I manage cookies better using an external cookie manager).
I do not think the default Privacy Bar functions have changed (some of the syntax has). But as You suggested - it can be custom hacked to fit any needs
It is good to know that you can hack the syntax because to my mind, the new version is a regression, not an improvement.
For example, in the old version, you could set your privacy settings to clear on either or both startup and shutdown: So in my case, I would not check mark either cookies* or passwords, but would set history, url and cache to clear on shutdown. The key is it is automatic and can be changed whenever circumstances change.
Now, if I am reading it properly, you have to manually change this stuff.
To hack it is hard? IF not, I would want to give it a try.
Much thanks,
* for cookies I would use Cookie Monster or similar and for passwords, I would manually edit it outside of KM or internally with the builtin editor.
You're right. What confused me was the "clear automatically" caption. I thought that meant automatically clear everything, so I did not drill down to see what it actually did do. <sigh>