I desperately want to run two instances of firefox at the same time (a local one and a portable one) and YET have the freedom to have secondary launches with both (see, I want to use this amazing program to choose which one I want to use whenever I click on a link in a program/url in windows explorer). I've learnt here that firefox portable simply doesn't support secondary launches in Multiple Instances mode.
Since I want want secondary launches I have to have to set AllowMultipleInstances to false. So the next step as I see it, is to somehow stop new secondary launches of portable firefox from opening a tab in my local firefox (but staying within portable firefox)! I need to make them not think they're the same process and thus act completely independently (as if one is reported to my system as google chrome).
I've tried renaming the portable firefox exe to something completely different but it's not enough. Is there a way to do this? If I have to hack the portable firefox exe (I have reshacker on standby) is it not too complicated?
Thanks for your help (John, if no one else :D)!
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As mentioned in the linked thread, it is a limitation of Firefox itself. Nothing we do can root around it. Hacking firefox.exe with reshacker won't change it either.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Is there a way to get what I'm after then, via the setting AllowMultipleInstances to true route?
(I guess not since you'd probably suggest it, but I want to exhaust all my options before going and killing myself)
Anyway thanks for your quick response. By the whole site I can tell you're on to things and an incredibly helpful person :). Good on you!
I just wish there was a patch to change this behaviour in firefox or something. I know that's impractical to expect, but I wish FF wasn't so hard-coded to prevent multiple instances, and had more flexibility that way. Yeah whatever, I know only 1% of FF users use two FF's at once :rolleyes:. STILL...:/
There's no way to fork firefox's code in your portable version to enable this, is there? (too much work and potential huge problems?) Wouldn't it make a lot of sense, since independence of use (and I'll bet, quite often, simultaneous use to another installation of FF) is what portable FF users are after?
cheers
As I said, there is absolutely nothing we can do via a launcher or external settings to make Firefox behave the way you want it to. Firefox is designed to run as a single instance per user. It has an environment variable that can be set to allow multiple instances (read; running one version with two different profiles at the same time... or two different versions with two different profiles) but the ability to have the OS pass in a link and have Firefox pop it up doesn't work properly with this. This is because Firefox won't then understand which Firefox it should be passing that link off to.
This likely won't be changed as hardly anyone runs multiple instances in the first place. If you can come up with code to properly handle it and get it submitted to Firefox's bug tracker, I'd wager it would be done. But I don't know any devs with any interest in doing it. If you really want it, you could offer a cash bounty, perhaps.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Ok well thanks for the informative ultimatum. Indeed money can almost get you anything you want in this world (materially) :P. I don't think I'm in that position though :|
Back to a less ideal experience on my computer then :/. But hardly the end of the world.
Hi John, it's me again.
I noticed that the developer and nightly builds of firefox and Thunderbird have different process descriptions than normal (in task manager) - this doesn't make it possible for two separate 'Firefoxes' (able to open links independently and at the same time, as if two completely different browsers), does it?
Is it still the way that firefox (no matter the process title) behaves in the OS, that governs this? It still identifies as the same beast, in terms of opening links from the OS?
Many thanks