The Browser Den

Multiple versions of Firefox will happily co-exist on the same machine. However, it’s a good idea to tell each version to use its own separate profile. The process of doing this is relatively simple. I will describe the process for Windows initially and then mention how it differs for Linux and Mac OS X.
1. Line up the versions of Firefox you would like to install. For testing I’d recommend the latest out of the 1.0.x series, the latest out of the 1.5.x series and 2.0. Install each version with the ‘custom’ option and specify the path you would like to install the browser under, make it unique e.g. “c:\program files\Mozilla Firefox 1.5″. Once installed, rename the shortcuts on the desktop and start menu to something unique or they’ll get overwritten when you install the next version. You can do this by right clicking and selecting ‘Rename’.

2. Right click on one of the Firefox icons and select ‘Properties’, in the target section add -profilemanager to the end of the command. Click OK and then double click the icon to bring up the profilemanager.

3. Create a profile for each separate Firefox version installed, you can do this by clicking on “Create Profile…”. Give each profile a unique name, this name is case sensitive so I recommend using lowercase and keeping it one word (e.g. firefox1.5).

4. Right click on the Firefox icons for each version installed and add -P profilename to the end of the command in the target section. e.g.:
“C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 1.5\firefox.exe” -P firefox1.5
If this is correct then it’ll launch Firefox with the specified profile. You can tell if you’re using the correct version by selecting “About” from the Help menu.

Linux

The process is similar to above, you can change the shortcuts used by your window manager to call Firefox with the -P argument. The exact process varies depending on your window manager but will be similar to how Windows does it.

On the command line you would use:
./firefox -profilemanager
to bring up the profile manager and:
./firefox -P profilename
to load a specific profile. Note that you’d need to enclose the profile name in quotes if it contains a space (e.g. ./firefox -P “profile name”).

Mac OS X

When I need to launch Firefox with a different profile I tend to use the terminal. In that case the instructions are the same as the Linux command line. On Mac OS X the actual Firefox executable lives inside the Firefox.app folder (or whatever it has been renamed to), the location is:

/contents/MacOS/firefoxI will update this with instructions on how to do this via the GUI once I discover them. Any ideas please comment.

For more information see the MozillaZine Knowledge base entry on the Profile Manager.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 1st, 2006 at 4:24 pm and is filed under Firefox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.