Hi,
I really dig the portable apps on here, with no dependency on registry or windows system folders, any of that junk.
One thing I don't get is why the Profile Manager was removed from Firefox? It pretty much makes the portable version useless for me, since I have several profiles that I am using throughout the day depending on what I am doing.
The Profile Manager allows the users to create a new profile in any directory they choose. This should work just fine for making new profiles on a USB stick or anywhere else a folder can be created.
I do not think copying over a whole folder structure for each profile I want is a good solution. So now I have 6 copies of all the binaries, and must maintain and update every single "profile"? That's an ugly solution, and defeats the whole purpose of being able to just have one single portable install that I can use everywhere.
At the very least, would it be possible to add a command line switch so that I can specify a profile folder to load from? Even if the Profile Manager is not included, it would allow for alternate profiles already created to be easily loaded.
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BTW - I have seen mention of someone suggesting using a BAT file to rename folders, or ini files. Sorry but there's something hackish about having to run a rename script just in order to start an application. At best it's a workaround for something that there should be support for. Multiple profiles are a big part of why I feel Firefox is superior to other browsers. There are lots of uses for this feature, just because you may not use it does not mean others don't find it very useful.
Perhaps it would be possible to add a command line argument to specify which ini file the application should load? That might be the easiest way to open up things a little so that only a shortcut would be needed to start a different profile, instead of a hackish rename script.
Is it removed? I'm not sure about this, maybe it would break portability. But there is https://portableapps.com/support/firefox_portable#second_profile.
And it should still be possible to copy "FirefoxPortable\Other\Source\FirefoxPortable.ini" to "FirefoxPortable\" and then open it with notepad and edit the line "AdditionalParameters=" to "AdditionalParameters=[cmd arguments to open profile manager]".
"Der Klügere gibt nach, deshalb regieren Dumme die Welt."
Due to the way Firefox works with the
-profilecommand line paramter which is required to make it portable, this is a technical impossibility. However, John has provided an alternative with the (above linked) second profile launcher.I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
Why is it a technical impossibility, are all command line options removed/disabled for all portable apps or something?
Firefox's profile manager *only* works with profiles setup and known to the local PC configuration of Firefox. So while you can configure local Firefox to have profiles on other drives and such, the configuration of the profile manager itself is maintained on the local PC. It will ONLY use %APPDATA% for storing this configuration. No commandline option will override it. SO profile manager is not portable.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!