Because I can't use all my extensions nor favorite themes.
Many of my extensions are not portable.
This way Fx Portable doesn't give me the feeling of my Firefox.
In this case I can use the host's browser -
exact the same results.
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Firefox Portable practically useless
May 7, 2009 - 4:33am
#1
Firefox Portable practically useless
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are often designed independently of the browser itself, this simply a general problem of the extensions and addons etc.
This is not only that some may not be portable, they will also not work on different operating systems etc.
This does not mean the portable software is useless completely. It is just made to be portable on its own, no one is able to portabilaze hundreds of extensions, some ofthem very special and working only in some special configuration of the host.
And you have also to observe, that the extensions itself are just brought up by the community and have not all the same extend of quality assurance then the browser itself.
Number of extensions will work under XP, but not under w2k for example, there might be some they will not work with vista or what ever.
Some extensions will work only if extension XY is not installed or similar conflicts.
BTW, can you tell which extensions are causing problems? Some of the experts here might give you some advise how to deal with it.
So to expect whole of you collections of probably some exotic extensions should work portable is asking too much.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
While I don't doubt there are some extensions that don't work very well portably (Clippings for example) I wouldn't say this is anywhere near the majority - I use a fair few which work portable with no hitches whatsoever. Don't blame the potability of the browser because some extensions don't work properly with it.
Also, not every PC has FireFox and you wouldn't want to be stuck with IE
Clippings works great portably. There is one problem I've encountered with it. I had it on my home PC since Firefox 2.x.x, and when I got Firefox 3, it stopped remembering its clippings. It didn't update itself either. So I manually check and sure enough... instead of saying something like "This extension has an update" it said something like "This extension has a compatibility update." Weird, I know, but I updated it and now it's great.
Really? When I use it it created a file in my documents folder which had all the clippings in and, when I deleted it (thinking it was just a backup) the extension had lost all its clippings
It's possible the path was just a setting somewhere that I just missed though.
I've only found a grand total of two extensions that don't work portably in the current setup... and every theme I've tried works portably. Sure you're not thinking of plugins?
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
To add what to what John said:
ALL of my addons have worked great (except for cooliris but i don't even use it). Would you mind telling us what addons your having trouble with?
Out of my 39 currently installed and used extensions, I have 2 that give me problems. When I first get to a new machine that is different from the last one I was at, I have to do an update on my extensions. Update then applies a compatibility patch or what have you and then a restart and it works fine. As for stuff left behind, I am not sure. But that is all I have seen and is nothing major.
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you do or say will be exaggerated or mis-quoted and used against you.
Which two?
And plugins are fine too. Shockwave, Flash, I think I have Quicktime... I pretty much just copied my plugins folder over from my installed Firefox, now everything works on the go. Since then, I installed Portable Firefox twice at home (one's mine, the other's my wife's) and put the plugins in those folders - no problems reported so far (and my wife won't hesitate to call me if the computer does anything unexpected).
I would disagree with this topic's creator fully as Portable Firefox is probably the most useful app I have. To really use a web browser to the fullest, you have to spend a lot of time getting the settings *just right*. You can't quantify the time it takes, as it takes a lot of trial and error. Something doesn't move right, you go in and tweak it a bit. To be able to keep that setup from machine to machine is awesome. That's why I have portable apps on my external hard drive at home. When I go from XP to Vista and soon to the Windows 7 demo or back to XP, all the apps stay configured, of course, but it's most useful with Firefox. Notepad++ is probably the next-most configured app after Firefox, and I can set up Notepad++ to my specs in 5 minutes or less. And VLC, but it runs fine out of the box, there are just a few tweaks I apply to that.
I have tried over 100 extensions on FFP over time of using it and all of them have worked...
iLike Macs, iPwn, However you put it... Apple is better ^_^
"Claiming that your operating system is the best in the world because more people use it is like saying McDonalds makes the best food in the world..."
Before anyone says "search", it would be nice to have a stickied thread listing known extensions that do not work well with the portable version of FF. By the way, I am not sure what changed with the latest FF3 update, but for me, it has never worked better or been faster than it is currently. Thanks JTH!
As others have indicated, I have to wonder which extensions and themes you are using. I have about 35 extensions in my primary portable FireFox which I use, and about 20 on another portable install, about half a dozen of which are different from my primary install. Every one of the extensions I have tested worked perfectly, and the 4 or 5 themes I've tested (haven't found one I like yet, though) have all worked.
So, I guess what I'm really saying are - which specific extensions and themes aren't working for you?
are you starting FireFoxPortable.exe?
Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world
never had any problem with FF portable or any add ons.
please stop calling people trolls, it just isn't very friendly.
"NEW for Portable Firefox/Thunderbird users: There is a special build of Clippings designed for Portable Firefox/Thunderbird. "
I found it near the top of this page:
http://clippings.mozdev.org/installation.html
No way to tell how "new" that post is but the file is named clippings-pe-3.1.xpi
What's different? Farther down the page see the change log for 3.1 and it has a line saying "Separate build for Portable Firefox/Thunderbird. In this build, the common datasource feature is disabled." I think that "common" location is on your c:..docs and settings, vs on your FFP profile directory.
That's all I know. "Backup" first.
Bh2ooo
Thank you very much for that, I'll give it a whirl as it was quite useful while I had it
I just use the U3 on my flash drive instead of the one from PA. I do, however, use the on from PA when certain things will block use of a disk. I personally like the U3 version because it seems a bit more stable. Plus on U3 they have winRAR.
PA has 7Zip which is just about the same thing. I used (an older version of) WinRAR for 4-5 years after discovering that there were archive formats besides .zip and that WinZIP was no longer good enough, but since I've began to "go open source" last year and switched to 7Zip, I've experienced no loss of functionality. 7Zip's GUI could use a bit of work (WinRAR did look better) but there's not a single thing wrong with 7Zip, as far as I can tell.
I find that 7-Zip is usually better than RAR if configured properly.
Vintage!
Here's the thing though... they're all about the same.
WinZIP was top dog in the mid-90s when everyone was using ZIP files. It was all you needed on a Windows machine. Other machines favored other formats, but for Windows, ZIP was king.
The only reason WinZIP needed to be replaced, aside from the fact that Windows XP (onward) featured out-of-the-box support for ZIP files (rendering them as folders), was that RAR files became common, as they offered better compression than ZIP in some cases.
7Zip got popular for a minute when .7z came out as superior to RAR, but WinRAR quickly added support.
Nowadays 7Zip, WinRAR, and a bunch of others, including free and paid software, open just about anything you throw at them. According to Wikipedia's comparison of file archivers, 7Zip and WinRAR are about evenly matched, but WinRAR costs $30 (unless you pirate it, which a lot of people do) and 7Zip is free.
The table at Wikipedia is simple and very outdated. 7-Zip at its defaults will give you very different results from 7-Zip configured properly for what will be compressed. For arbitrary binary data, 7-Zip beats RAR 95% of the time, usually by a significant margin, and when RAR does win, it is almost always by a very small margin.
Never trust any site as authoritative. There are a few good sites that work well as a baseline, but none will ever be up-to-date and comprehensive enough to even get close to being perfect.
Here's the thing though... they're all about the same.
Far from it.
Vintage!
I don't think he was referring to the formats being all about the same, he meant the software itself. The point made was that the vast majority of archivers will open just about any format you throw at them, so it doesn't really matter from an end-user perspective which to use.
I mainly meant the programs, yes. Whether you have WinRAR (legally or otherwise), 7-Zip, or any of the other main ones not called "WinZIP" you pretty much have the same feature set.
I also meant the compression formats, in a sense. Without configuring WinRAR or 7-Zip, and using their inherent defaults, I don't think the difference matters enough to choose one over the other. The geeks will be able to tweak either format to be better than the other's default, and that's cool, and that's fine, but the average user isn't going to do that.
What's really important is that your archive software opens the archives you need. At least, to me anyway.
7Zip and WinRAR are about evenly matched, but WinRAR costs $30 (unless you pirate it, which a lot of people do) and 7Zip is free.
I was under the impression that winRAR was just nagware as I've had it (not pirated - I got it off their own site) for at least a year and it still works fine. To be honest I do generally use 7Zip though, I prefer open source