Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition 3 Beta 1 Released

John T. Haller's picture
Submitted by John T. Haller on November 30, 2007 - 5:02pm

Firefox logoMozilla Firefox®, Portable Edition 3 Beta 1 has been released. It's the first beta of the upcoming Mozilla Firefox 3 web browser bundled with a PortableApps.com launcher as a portable app, so you can take your browser, bookmarks, settings and extensions on the go. It's also a great way to test out all the new features of 3.0 without affecting your existing Firefox installation. It's packaged in PortableApps.com Format so it can easily integrate with the PortableApps.com Suite. And it's open source and completely free.

Read on for more details...

Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 1

Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 1 is the first test release of the upcoming 3.0 version of Firefox. With tons of new features, security enhancements, performance upgrades and more, it's one of the most widely-anticipated releases this year. And, thanks to the PortableApps.com packaging, you can try out all the new features without impacting your locally-installed copy of Firefox. For more on what's new, read the Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 1 Release Notes.

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 Suite including the Menu and Backup Utility.

Download

Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition is available for immediate download from the Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition 3 Beta 1 homepage. Get it today!

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Comments

John T. Haller's picture

John T. Haller

November 30, 2007 - 5:21pm

I wasn't sure about that. I think we're at the point where we have enough German users, though, that it would be a good thing. If you can setup a German version of the page in the appropriate place, I'll package and release it alongside the English version. Think it's worth it?

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

Many thanks for the release of the great Firefox 3 Beta, I don't know how I could live without the tags and the great new address bar autocompletion in the Firefox 2 days!

I vote for the German version if Marko would do it.
Then I could convince even more satisfied Firefox 2 Portable users to try or switch to Firefox 3 Smile

Keep up the good work, greetings from Germany,
René

P.S.: I hope the nearly 5 months old VLC Portable will be upgraded soon as the final 0.8.6d has just arrived.

I'll check it.

Now there is only the english version but I also think a german one would be cool.

EDIT:

John if you do a german beta version could you have it NOT use the standard foldername but something like "FirefoxPortable3beta" so noone accidentally overwrites his normal firefox???

"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate

Simeon's picture

Simeon

December 1, 2007 - 10:45am

ich glaub jetzt stimmts Smile

"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate

On the english and the german page the first occurence of this special character is the unicode character (inside a sub?), but in the last sentence, it is the correct reg HTML entity.

MarkoMLM's picture

MarkoMLM

December 1, 2007 - 5:21pm

... a reviews by another person is better than a review by the author:-)

Marko

Paid for Software more or less?
What You need is OSS!

Will there be localized versions like for Firefox Portable 2.0.0.10 as well (German, French, Italian)?

It should not be much different to Firefox 2, so most of the translations could be reused.
If you need translation help, just ask, as you did last time so successfully.
https://portableapps.com/node/9793

And if you want to have a customized database based localization form in PHP in order to have overview, statistics and missing translations, I would be glad to help.

bubazoo's picture

bubazoo

December 5, 2007 - 6:54pm

I don't think it was worth packaging Firefox 3 beta 1, into a portableapps version, until version 3 is actually released. I think the time would have been better spent getting the 1.1 interface out the door, not worrying so much about all the different language sets, since all that would come in time, or pidgin up to 2.2.3, or something else more important, but thats just my opinion. Odiously quality is worth waiting for, but I think this is being a little too nit picky Smile

(ok, sorry, didn't know links weren't allowed in sigs, it does not say in the rules, so thanks for informing me.)

If you don't want to test FF3 then don't use it. I thing time is better spent by John not reading frivolous posts that complain about a good app.

Life is about the journey not the destination!

The Kazoo Spartan

Tim Clark's picture

Tim Clark

December 5, 2007 - 10:32pm

If I followed your logic I would have to say that it would be best to stop wasting time on the PAM/PAP as we wait for 1.1.785.921.24 RC451c Blum
and concentrate on the apps, like FF. The transition to FF3 may not be easy and so it's good that John is looking at it now so we don't have someone post 3 minutes after it's released "Why haven't you Posted FFP3 yet?"

but thats just my opinion

[note I said "if" I followed his logic Wink ]

Tim

Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?

Should I let it install to the default location if I want to preserve my existing install or another folder?

Life is about the journey not the destination!

The Kazoo Spartan

John T. Haller's picture

John T. Haller

November 30, 2007 - 10:09pm

Best to install it side by side. Change it to FirefoxPortableTest or something.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

wsm23

November 30, 2007 - 10:38pm

I like the (test) in the name also. Helps with the menu.

Life is about the journey not the destination!

The Kazoo Spartan

nightbeholder

December 1, 2007 - 7:24am

thanks for this
i've been waiting to try it but did not wanted to install it

unfortunately it still doesn't support most of my extensions but that is comprehensive at this time...

i. e. PortableApps/FirefoxPortable/Data/profile and its called bookmarks.html

"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate

Steve Lamerton's picture

Steve Lamerton

December 1, 2007 - 3:30pm

think you'll need to use the importer as Firefox 3 uses a new method to store bookmarks. Note I not certain on this as I have taken this as an opportunity to start a new profile!

You can simply import the bookmarks.html file from your other profile. It is a one time operation. The only thing I had to adjust was the placement of my bookmarks toolbar folder because the import created another one.

So far the only issue is that many extensions that have 3.0 capability only go up to 3.0a*.

Life is about the journey not the destination!

The Kazoo Spartan

RMB Fixed

December 2, 2007 - 12:02pm

..will soon release a update to Mr.Tech's Local Install extension.
Or does someone know of another way to disable the max-version check for extensions ?

Tim Clark's picture

Tim Clark

December 2, 2007 - 12:32pm

Is disabling the check the only thing that would work for you?
If so, I don't know how.

Would you be willing to go "into" the add-on/extension and change "its" max-version. I had to do this with an extension which is no longer supported.

Find the file in the .xpi [which is really just a .zip file] called install.rdf [it is really a text file]. Within it find :

em:maxVersion="2.0.0.*" and change it.

This of course doesn't mean the add-on/extension will actually work [that is of course the purpose of maxVersion, to tell you to what point the creator has test it] but it often does.

If this doesn't work for you, sorry.

If you do try this Back up, BackUp, BACKUP !!!

Tim

Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?

RMB Fixed

December 4, 2007 - 7:10am

I'll start with doing it to the Mr.Tech Local Install xpi Smile

edit : MrTech Local Install seems to be working like a charm ..
many extensions do work on a higher max.version . MrTech allows you to
disable the max.version check and has a nice feature called "make all compatible" .

LittleUnkn0wn

December 6, 2007 - 10:56am

Some might still be compatible. XPI's are just renamed ZIP files. rename it to a ZIP file, open install.rdf, and change the maxvalue. Then rename the ZIP back to an XPI. It won't always work, but sometimes it will, so it's worth a try.

Ph3nomin0n

December 3, 2007 - 10:46am

This app installs great but when you run it a popup comes up that says "crash!bang!boom! Firefox has crashed, send error report?" so its not working, so now im downgrading to the 2.10 for the second time because the first time it didnt run.

Do not install over your existing FF2.0*. The profiles AFAIK are not compatible. It may "just work", but the bookmarks and cookies are in a different format. Plus chances are you will not be able to use some of your extensions with 3.0 yet.

Life is about the journey not the destination!

The Kazoo Spartan