Up to and including Fx Portable 2.0.0.12, when I started it, FirefoxPortable.exe would load firefox.exe and then terminate. Now, after my first install using Fx Portable 2.0.0.13, FirefoxPortable.exe does not terminate and establishes firefox.exe as a daughter process. (Thunderbird Portable has worked like this for some time now, so it's not a totally new experience.)
Why the change? What's the benefit?
(I did a cursory search for something on this, but didn't find anything. If I missed it... sorry.)
Thanks.
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Not sure what has happened in your case but it "should" have been this way All the Time!
FFP should not exit until closing of FF so it can do its "clean up"
Normally it would only exit if you have a local install of FF.
Has anything changed on your system?
Tim
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
The new version also works with FF3 and checks for its bits. As soon people will be upgrading from 2 to 3, this was done preemptively to ensure that the portable version continues to clean everything up that it should.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Cool.
Thanks.
John,
I'm not sure what you're saying here
Your saying something HAS changed ?
My FFP has always been running when FF is running and always shuts down when FF closes. Same with TBP and TB.
I'm not sure what "preemptive" change has occurred.
Sorry if I'm missing something here, but if I am others might be too.
Tim
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
ThunderbirdPortable.exe *always* sticks around because it has to clean up certain registry settings no matter what.
FirefoxPortable.exe only sticks around if it thinks it has to. If you don't have Firefox installed locally, it has to. In the new version, it checks for this better and it checks for certain FF3 stuff preemptively so that this new launcher will work with upgrades.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Don't know about the local being there vs. not there... the local installs of Fx that I have are on machines that were imaged years ago--I don't install it locally anymore. Whether there's a local install or not doesn't seem to have affected previous FirefoxPortable.exe versions, but that was then and this is now. It works the way it works; so long as it keeps working, that's good enough for me.
(More puzzling to me, though, is why anyone who's worked with Firefox--not FireFox--extensions would use the 2-letter designation "FF" instead of [the correct and proper] Fx.
)
Thanks, again. Keep up the great work!
The "correct and proper" is a bad idea,
Always has been
Fx is just weird
FF, FFP, works better for most people, like TB and TBP [we don't say/write Tb or TbP do we?
Puzzle solved ?
Tim
[edit: I meant to say Td and TdP above but my fingers thought they were dumb too :-P]
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
Actually, if you used the same silly logic that makes Firefox into Fx, Thunderbird would be Td. And Sunbird would be Sd. Basically, all dumb abbreviations.
Firefox=FF
Thunderbird=TB
Sunbird=SB
All make sense.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
See,
I meant to write Td and TdP in my example above !!!
It's just so dumb that my fingers wouldn't let me do it
Thanks John for catching that.
I'll leave it uncorrected so your comment doesn't look silly
tim
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
Well, now, I never said it wasn't silly or that it was consistent... and I was kidding, after all.
Well, actually, yes we do write Tb (though I never used "TbP" in my life). If you look at any and all Fx and Tb extension names, then you'll see the 'fx' and/or 'tb' in all of them; that's just the naming convention that's existed for a long, long time.
Of course, I was just kidding... it's an "insider" joke for other systems folk. Don't take it to heart.
I do appreciate all sincere comments.
I meant Td
see above,
Tim
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
Although the 'official' shortening is Fx, far more people use FF to abbreviate it as it makes more sense.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
"One man's potion..."
My motto: to each his (or her) own. (I'll always use Fx and Tb, though.
)
So, the launcher (1.5.3.0) that comes with FFP 2.0.0.12 is different from the one that comes with FFP 2.0.0.13?
Alive and kicking!
"If you were a robot, and I knew but you didn't, would you want me to tell you?"
The launcher changes every few months as refinements and enhancements are made. We add new features (like the mime type/helper app portablization) and fix bugs as we go along.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
No, I keep changes to a minimum; don't let anything auto-update (including Windows) if I can avoid it. As far as I can recall, it's worked this way on every one of the more than a dozen machines that I've used over the past several years (since I started using Portable Firefox, as it used to be called). Of course, I always wondered why it was different for Thunderbird. I'm rather confident it has something to do with FirefoxPortable.exe 1.5.9.0 working differently than 1.5.3.0 does.
Two recent installs (same day): 2.0.0.12 (1.5.3.0) results in one process (firefox.exe) and 2.0.0.13 (1.5.9.0) results in 2 processes (FirefoxPortable.exe with a daughter of firefox.exe).
Definitely a change.