Firefox Saga

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

The other day, I realized that the only thing important about my web browser (Firefox) is the profile, which contains my cookies, my bookmarks(favorites), my customizations, etc.  (The cookies contain those saved passwords onto websites I login to).

Now that I'm running a dual-boot machine, and, to have a backup of those files above, I decided to see if I could force Firefox to move it's directory/folder wherein all of the above is stored, onto a different physical disk (than from my OS).

After many obscure spells being cast, and much cursing and swearing, I concluded:  you can't.   You just can't.  No matter how hard I tried, I could not force a standard Firefox to **not** write certain, critical files under my Windoze user folders... which are on the same drive as my OS.  Thus, if I bare-metal re-install the OS, these files get wiped out...

...so I was about to give it all up, when I discovered this:

Firefox Portable.  It's designed to run entirely within a USB thumb drive, but it is just as happy to run on a drive other than C:.

Thus, any OS that can see this external drive, can run Firefox Portable edition, replete with all my files, custom settings, cookies, cache-storage, etc.

This means, that if I'm booting into Win7, I can see *all* my Firefox stuff. I can modify it.  I can add new extensions, remove those I no longer like, etc.  Too cool-- just like "standard" FF.

But the real wonderment, is that if I re-boot into XP (which I must do, to play old games), I **still** get all my FF stuff-- complete with my latest changes...

And?

If I re-install the OS?  My entire FireFox is completely unaffected:  the "install" is simply creating a shortcut to the non-C drive (in this case, drive P:  ).

The only fly in this ointment, is that certain extensions, such as Flash, are not open source.  Thus?  You have to install the standard FF, and copy the flash settings into the portable directory-- or you need to do a "custom" flash install, and direct it out to the location of the portable FF, so that Flash can properly 'see' it.   There's a website dedicated to "how 2" on these and other minor 'gotchas' with the portable version.

But other than that minorment, I'm in hog-heaven.



P.S.  I'm told there is a portable version of Thunderbird... my E-mail client..... Hmmmmm.......

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Edit: Yep:  after my experience with portable firefox?  Portable thunderbird was a snap-- I'm already up and running with it.

[stellinacadente]

WAAAAAOOOO this was fashinating BRAVO! I wish I could do that stuff

[Aggie]

Hmm....  interesting. 

How would Portable be as a complete substitute for standard FF?  What I'm thinking about here is making clones of FF Portable for two separate machines (work laptop and home PC), and periodically re-cloning whatever version has seen the most modifications in a given period of time (passwords, bookmarks, etc).

It also sounds like it's got the potential to work as a plug-in 'passkey' for sensitive sites, provided you kept the thumbdrive in a safe place - log into everything and anything (especially occasional-use sites that you NEVER remember the danged password for), save the passwords, and use Portable for accessing those accounts, while keeping your on-board version of Firefox in the dark about these accounts.  Could be handy if one had roommates and shared browser access, to keep them out of your social networking and bank accounts but allow easy access when you need it _{(or for surfing dodgy sites that you don't want appearing in your main browser history etc.)}.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Hmm....  interesting. 

How would Portable be as a complete substitute for standard FF?  What I'm thinking about here is making clones of FF Portable for two separate machines (work laptop and home PC), and periodically re-cloning whatever version has seen the most modifications in a given period of time (passwords, bookmarks, etc).

It also sounds like it's got the potential to work as a plug-in 'passkey' for sensitive sites, provided you kept the thumbdrive in a safe place - log into everything and anything (especially occasional-use sites that you NEVER remember the danged password for), save the passwords, and use Portable for accessing those accounts, while keeping your on-board version of Firefox in the dark about these accounts.  Could be handy if one had roommates and shared browser access, to keep them out of your social networking and bank accounts but allow easy access when you need it _{(or for surfing dodgy sites that you don't want appearing in your main browser history etc.)}.

Google "firefox portable".  It was expressly designed for USB thumb drives-- alas, it won't work from a CD, without copying to a working directory, then all your results/new cookies/updated web-cache/updated passwords would be lost.

As for the install?  Once you've set it up?  You are free to simply use the copy command to clone it, or to update/sync it on several machines.

A BATCH (.BAT) file could be written, or you could use Windoze explorer to accomplish the copying.

You could even use a mix:  thumb drives for machines you don't want to leave footprints, then when you get home, copy the contents of the install folder onto your home machine, updating it's install with no muss, no fuss.   Then, after a day of surfing at home, copy back to the thumb drive to update it.  Like I said, some .BAT files on your desktop can make this a snap.   You can even use XCOPY to only copy the files that are new and/or updated-- speeding it up immensely.

It Just Works.

There are a coupla gotchas, though:  Adobe reader cannot be made portable, so it has to exist on any machine you want to run portable FF on (and use PDF files within it).

Same goes for FLASH and JAVA-- these must be installed on the machines you want to use portable FF on.

Extensions for portable FF are a bit different-- they work, no worries, but they are a bit different to install.  The **simplest** is how I did it: 

I had already installed standard FF onto my machine, with all the lovely extensions I have to have.

Then, I installed portable FF onto my P: drive (visible from both XP and Win7).  Next, I located my profile in standard FF, and copied the contents onto the profile created for portable FF (on P:, of course).  Then I re-started portable and it recognized all my extensions automagcally.

So far, it's also managed to keep itself updated.

I've not uninstalled standard FF, though-- no need, really-- but I did have to fiddle with Win7 a bit to force it to use portable FF as the default browser.   In XP that was easier.