Over Viewing the Interface - Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.4 for Effective MySQL Management - page 62

Saving in phpMyAdmin configuration storage
To enable this mode, $cfg['Servers'][$i]['userconfig'] must be configured
with the name of the table which holds these preferences, and the table must exist.
This saving location is most useful because settings are immediately applied to the
running instance upon login; moreover, it follows the user on whichever browser he
happens to use.
If this storage is not configured, the settings page greets us with the following message:
Your preferences will be saved for current session only. Storing them permanently
requires phpMyAdmin configuration storage.
Saving in a file
We always have the possibility of exporting our settings to a file and importing them
back. The file follows the JSON format (see http://json.org ). This method can be
handy in the following situations:
• We plan to use these settings on another phpMyAdmin instance
• We want to keep a history of our settings; therefore, saving them from time
to time in several files
Saving in the browser's local storage
Recent browsers, for example Firefox 6 and Internet Explorer 9, offer a local storage
mechanism which is persistent between sessions. The first time we enter the Manage
your settings sub-page, we see the You have no saved settings! message inside
the Import from browser's storage dialog. However, after exporting settings to
browser's local storage, the Import section tells us the date and time when settings
were last saved using this mechanism.
In addition, when phpMyAdmin settings are found in the browser's storage and the
phpMyAdmin configuration storage is not available, each phpMyAdmin page has
the following message at the top:
Your browser has phpMyAdmin configuration for this domain. Would you like to
import it for current session? Yes / No