In Firefox Portable 67 I noticed a problem with Windows jump lists in the taskbar - there are menus to open a new tab, a new window or a frequently visited sites - when Firefox Portable is open and I click on any of these menu items a new instance of Firefox Portable is opened in new profile, not the one I'm currently using. This is not how the jump lists work for installed Firefox - the currently used profile is used and that's how it should be. This effectively makes the taskbar jump lists useless since opening a new instance in a new profile is almost never what the user intends.
I know it is somehow related to the issue of setting up Firefox 67 as the default browser but in this case I don't want to set up Firefox Portable as my default browser - I just want to be able to use the taskbar to open a new Firefox tab or window without switching to a currently open Firefox window and pressing Ctrl+T or N. Any idea how this can be fixed?
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Pinning to taskbar is only supported via the PortableApps.com Platform.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
But I'm not interested in pinning to taskbar but in using the taskbar right click menus. Anyway, I've tried installing the Platform and then Firefox via the Platform and still doesn't work - now there are even no menu items for new window, new tab or frequently visited web sites. Only the standard "Firefox" item, which starts a new instance in a new profile.
Any way to make the taskbar jump lists usable for Fx Portable?
There should not be any taskbar menu icons visible as they only work when Firefox is installed and running with a standard profile as of Firefox 67. I tried running Firefox Portable both from the PortableApps.com Platform and directly via FirefoxPortable.exe and in neither case were any taskbar menu icons available. How are you launching it?
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Actually, in my case the taskbar menu icons sometimes are visible and sometimes not. On the first run they are not visible. But I also launch a locally installed Firefox, sometimes side by side, and then Firefox Portable also gets the taskbar menus. I think Windows must be remembering something between the different firefox.exe processes. I launch the portable app via FirefoxPortable.exe.
From what I understand from your reply is that the taskbar menus will not work for Firefox Portable. That is fine but the problem is that often there are taskbar menus that do not work properly and are confusing. As I see there are two kinds of menus:
1. The standard menu icon pointing the the executable, which is always added by Windows and it's simply called "Firefox" - it's the 3rd one from the bottom above "Pin to taskbar". I don't know if it can be removed but in my case it's always there and it opens Firefox Portable new window - the problem is it opens the window in a different (new) profile, that's why I consider it confusing at best and even useless.
2. The rest of the taskbar menus under categories "Tasks" and "Frequent" - normally they are not there but after launching a local installation of Firefox they start appearing. Again, they are useless here because they open Firefox Portable in a new profile. In this case I'd like to get rid of them but I don't know how. I've tried disabling them with browser.taskbar.lists.enabled=false but it has no effect. I suppose they never appear if a local Firefox installation is not used in the system.
Would it be possible to at least make the default menu icon (point 1) usable by pointing it to the correct profile? So far I've managed to come up with a partial workaround - I created a shortcut in the same directory as FirefoxPortable.exe directly pointing to firefox.exe with a path to the profile like this:
This corrects the problem of the default Windows menu icon (point 1) - now it always opens the new window in the correct profile. The downside is that Windows shortcuts are not really portable so if I run it from a different folder or drive letter it will not work. Maybe at least this one menu icon could be made usable by applying some fix to the FirefoxPortable.exe launcher?
After a few launches of Firefox Portable the taskbar menus I mentioned in point 2 are gone - probably Windows cleared some cache and now they are not there. So I would not worry about them, I think there is nothing you can do about them. But it would be nice if the icon from point 1 could be made to work well.
I've found out an interesting thing - the taskbar menu item "Firefox" for launching a new window works differently depending on what is added (pinned) to Start (as a tile). When I use the FirefoxPortable.exe launcher and this launcher is pinned to Start or no Firefox is pinned to Start then the taskbar menu item launches a new window in a new profile (bad behaviour). But when I create the direct shortcut I mentioned earlier (pointing to S:\prog\FirefoxPortable\App\Firefox\firefox.exe -profile "..\..\Data\profile") and add this shortcut to Start then the taskbar item opens a new window in the correct profile. Windows somehow determines it's a good idea to use this shortcut for new Firefox instances even though I didn't use it to launch Firefox. It's unexpected to me but this is how Windows 10 works.
But if I start Firefox Portable using this direct shortcut then the taskbar menu item works correctly regardless of whether the shortcut is added to Start or not.
So these are the workarounds I've found so far to make the taskbar "Firefox" item work correctly with the portable profile.