PortableApps.com is proud to announce the release of Mozilla Firefox®, Portable Edition 29.0 Beta 1 Rev 2 as well as Aurora 30.0 and Nightly 31.0 versions. The new beta lets you try out the new Australis UI changes. And they won't affect your standard local or portable Firefox install. It's packaged in PortableApps.com Format so it can easily integrate with the PortableApps.com Platform. And, as always, it's open source and completely free.
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Update automatically or install from the portable app store (advanced apps enabled) in the PortableApps.com Platform.
Revision 2: 28.0 beta 1 was originally bundled in the Firefox Portable 29 Beta 1 release due to a build configuration error. Revision 2 corrects this. We apologize for any invonvenience.
Features
Mozilla Firefox is a fast, full-featured web browser that's easy to use. It has lots of great features including popup-blocking, tabbed-browsing, integrated search, improved privacy features, automatic updating and more. Plus, thanks to the PortableApps.com launcher bundled in the Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition, it leaves no personal information behind on the machine you run it on, so you can take your favorite browser along with all your favorite bookmarks and extensions with you wherever you go. Learn more about Mozilla Firefox...
PortableApps.com Installer / PortableApps.com Format
Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition is packaged in a PortableApps.com Installer so it will automatically detect an existing PortableApps.com installation when your drive is plugged in. And it's in PortableApps.com Format, so it automatically works with the PortableApps.com Platform including the Menu and Backup Utility.
Download
Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition is available for immediate download from the Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition Beta homepage. Aurora and Nightly are available further down the page. Get it today!
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Comments
Looks like 28 to me.
Says it's 28, too.
Confirmed
Looks like the builder still downloaded and packaged 28 instead of 29. I'm rebuilding it now.
Revision 2 = Proper Build
The original release accidentally included Firefox 28 Beta 1 due to a build configuration error. Revision 2 fixes this issue. We apologize for any inconvenience.
No end of trial and tribulation... ;)
I get this message:
The "/Mozilla Firefox, P...ev_2_English.paf.exe" file could not be found or is not available. Please select another file.
Fixed
The links on the page have been corrected.
Thanks.
The good news: it's downloaded and installed. The bad news: it's downloaded and installed.
(I think I'm going to be a long time getting used to Australis... till the extension devs catchup with keeping the new look yet making it more "compact" (Mozilla really doesn't want us "messing" with chrome customizations like we used to [translation: small is bad, wasting space is good]).
Oh, well... this is why I'm playing with it.
Thanks again.
Thunderbird
If you're a Thunderbird user, you're already familiar with the tabs and the menu on the right as I am. The look is much improved in those regards. As for extensions, I only use a handful that adjust online content, none that add any UI changes.
Yes and no...
Yes, I've been using Thunderbird since it was introduced, including the recent releases--for testing anyway. So, I'm familiar with the UI similarities. And no, I've gone back to using Tb3.1 for the most part--always plain text or simple HTML for viewing messages (very few of them anything but actual personal stuff). Mostly for Gmail accounts (where spam and other crap go to spam and trash). Still, Australis in Fx has some new stuff. Mozilla spent years on this... and I really don't see the point. My #1 observation: Mozilla really loves the big Back button. (I haven't used the Back button in a browser in years. Every mouse I've used for a long, long time has a back button [and forward, too].)
I've got it minimally customized to make the chrome less intrusive. And while I've heavily modified Firefox chrome in the past, I'm doing less and less with every release. I mostly just want to reduce the amount of chrome-wasted space delivered by Mozilla. Australis as much as anything seems to be the result of a desire by Mozilla to increase the amount of chrome that users see. Well, it's nothing I can't fix.
Australis as much as anything
Well, I really don't think this is their intent.
Firefox Chrome**
The nav-bar is 50% larger because they removed the option ("removed" being the key word here) to use small icons. The Australis tabs themselves are a little bit larger. The new findbar (not, technically speaking, part of the Australis UI) is 25% larger. And all of this comes from padding--empty space that does nothing. Before Australis I could use simple built-in options to reduce my header to little more than 50px; now the best I can do with the given options is reduce it to 72px (more than a line's worth of typical content). So the only way I can get the space back is to disable stuff I don't want to disable or to install add-ons which effectively replace Australis. Why would Mozilla want so much empty space crowding out my content? I guess they want to be sure that everyone sees the extraordinary lengths they've gone to in order to make Firefox look more like Google Chrome.
Empty space doesn't actually do anything useful. It only gets in the way when trying to see what it was you "came here for" in the first place. I simply can't fathom all of the time they invested in Australis. I don't want a "pretty" interface; I want a useful one--one without all of this wasted space.
**yes, the double entendre is intentional (now & before)
Which betas get posted?
Will you be putting up beta 3?
Thanks.
Updater
You can use Firefox's built-in updater to update from Beta 1 to Beta 3 today.
Yeah, I did that...
for two distinct instances. Both crash repeatedly when going to sites which I've had no issues with previously (and still don't except for these two instances). I tend to think there might be something wonky with updating that way--at least with this beta--instead of the usual way. I tend to think that it's not a beta 3 issue, though it could be. I can't really test the difference without having a beta 3 portable. It'd be nice to test it, but it's not essential.
Thanks.
Should Work
It should work without issue as it has for years. If you don't trust it, you can use 7-Zip Portable to extract the files from the beta installer and place them within the FirefoxPortableTest\App\Firefox directory.
OK, updated manually.
After doing all that I did before with the other two instances, I haven't had a crash yet. I'll break it in some more and see if anything does, in fact, break.
I can say with some certainty that at least one of the other two instances pulled in files from the locally-installed version (pre-29 of course) after/during being updated to beta 3. As to why that happened... meh, but it seems to have happened both times, since they both would crash--one very consistently and the other somewhat less so. Anyway, it looks like a Mozilla issue with the updater (which only convinces me more that not using the internal updater is the best course for the portable edition, esp. not with beta).