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Firefox Profilemaker

ffprofile.com

11–20 of 89 posts

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#11

I feel the strong need to point out some of these settings will break Firefox in subtle and hard to understand ways. There’s a reason you “void the warranty” when tweaking the about:config preferences. No rule against it, but just watch out. (Mozilla employee)

Maybe Mozilla should remove about:config, so users can't hurt themselves on it. I'm sure the telemetry shows its rarely used, and when it is, it often breaks the browser in ways that are unfixable for the average user. Malware is also able to modify these advanced settings to hijack the browser in nasty ways, and slow down Firefox, and make people switch to Chrome faster. If they don't remove it Firefox is going to continue its user count slide into irrelevance.

(This is in fact sarcasm before you get too eager with that down arrow)

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#12

I feel the strong need to point out some of these settings will break Firefox in subtle and hard to understand ways. There’s a reason you “void the warranty” when tweaking the about:config preferences. No rule against it, but just watch out. (Mozilla employee)

I won't ask for a complete audit, but is there one example from the wizard that could break stuff, that is NOT called out by the wizard itself?

That might be true for a technical user, but is the average user going to know that discord is broken because they disabled webrtc? Also, resistfingerprinting is going to significantly increase the difficulty of recaptcha challenges you encounter.

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#13

I feel the strong need to point out some of these settings will break Firefox in subtle and hard to understand ways. There’s a reason you “void the warranty” when tweaking the about:config preferences. No rule against it, but just watch out. (Mozilla employee)

I won't ask for a complete audit, but is there one example from the wizard that could break stuff, that is NOT called out by the wizard itself?

I used to run Firefox with resist fingerprinting enabled. I believe it was causing chat time stamps on websites like WhatsApp to be incorrect, which was annoying but I don’t know if you consider that broken.

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't ask for a complete audit, but is there one example from the wizard that could break stuff, that is NOT called out by the wizard itself?

I used to run Firefox with resist fingerprinting enabled. I believe it was causing chat time stamps on websites like WhatsApp to be incorrect, which was annoying but I don’t know if you consider that broken.

Yes I discovered that when viewing the TV guide on plex. Everything was an hour out (UK). I think with resist fingerprinting the timezone is set to UTC0. In the end I had to turn that setting off.

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#16
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's something that I like about experiments in "Container Tabs", where you get the power of separate profiles, but the ability to mix-and-match them in the same browser window and opening a profile can be as simple as opening a new tab. I understand though why Mozilla seems to be having such a hard time converging on a UX for Container Tabs that makes everyone happy and it may be impossible to ever surface 100% of…

I don’t understand why Firefox removed the tab exposé feature they had. Clicking a button gave you a look at all your open tabs allowing you to then drag them into groups. Only your active group was displayed but you could always switch to another group when browsing in a different context. Combine that experience with the current Containers sandboxing feature and that would be a dream.

You can read more about the decision to remove it on Mozilla's Bugzilla [0].

There are extension providing pretty much the same experience, like Panorama view [1]. I agree that it's very convenient to separate tabs into separate topics, and only view the ones that are relevant at any time.

[0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1222550

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-view...

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#17
post #3

I wish Firefox exposed a better UI for it's profiles. It seems like a really powerful feature that is much less useful than it might be due to poor ergonomics...

I feel that it has become less useful since containerised tabs were introduced. One of the use cases for profiles were using a separate browsing profile.

Is it possible to clear all cookies in the main profile while leaving the cookies in the containers intact?

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#18
I'm not after a whole profile-builder but the Google Redirects Fixer & Tracking Remover add-on (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/google-no-tra...) caught my eye.

Unfortunately look's like it's defunct, a bunch of 1-star reviews being left recently. Perhaps worth removing it from the tool if the author is here?

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#19
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't ask for a complete audit, but is there one example from the wizard that could break stuff, that is NOT called out by the wizard itself?

That might be true for a technical user, but is the average user going to know that discord is broken because they disabled webrtc? Also, resistfingerprinting is going to significantly increase the difficulty of recaptcha challenges you encounter.

ResistFingerprinting is currently known to break Google's Recaptcha v3. Here is the Firefox bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1503872

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#20

I wish Firefox exposed a better UI for it's profiles. It seems like a really powerful feature that is much less useful than it might be due to poor ergonomics...

That's something that I like about experiments in "Container Tabs", where you get the power of separate profiles, but the ability to mix-and-match them in the same browser window and opening a profile can be as simple as opening a new tab. I understand though why Mozilla seems to be having such a hard time converging on a UX for Container Tabs that makes everyone happy and it may be impossible to ever surface 100% of…

« Container Tabs » doesn’t build trust in user’s mind. You’re always one click away from sending data with the wrong profile. With Chrome, you get a separate window, and different skins, and a different data folder on the hard drive, you can at least comfort yourself with the idea that you’ve somewhat isolated your lives.

Besides the classic work/home/sysadmin profiles, I also have a profile for browsing websites like /r/MensRights or christian websites: People have been fired for way less, so with such an incentive, Firefox tabs are way below expectations in terms of design.

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