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Firefox Profilemaker

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Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#51

Post by xte »

jiveturkey wrote: post #49
xte wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, without sarcasm, people, not browsers makers, should ditch modern "web" to came back to local application with networking enabled. We need to regain control of our systems and data before being all slave (without even the need of a strong power) of few corporations...

and yet here you are

Yep, since most people forget nntp... But I'm here not elsewhere and I'm receive HN updates via mail (RSS2Email) and planning to try my first Emacs serious work with a modification of HN plugin to allow posts not only view...

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#52

Post by rhizome »

mrmr1993 wrote: post #48
xte wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a FF user (and a browser's user in general) I found actual browsers absurd monsters that service like ffprofile only try to mitigate. Few example: any complex enough software offer config files/dir. normally human readable and manageable. I can easily install plugins in Emacs via a simple config edit, same for (n)vim, same for zsh or fish, I can change my OS (NixOS) with a simple human-readable config file. Same f…

This seems to be by design: when these things are available, spyware -- especially on Windows -- will be quick to make malicious changes in all these if they can. It's a pain, but I can see the compromise. If it makes the average Firefox user more vulnerable, there's definitely a case to protect them, even at the expense of its more capable users.

if spyware has permissions to change ".firefox-prefs" doesn't it have permission to change about:config items, too?

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#53

Post by WorldMaker »

eikenberry wrote: post #35
WorldMaker wrote: post #4

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…

Container Tabs give you no control over which extensions are used in that container. That is my main use of Profiles.

They could. That seems to me like a useful feature to support. With the modern extensions (as opposed to old XPCOM/XUL components), that sounds technically doable to me.

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#54

Post by xte »

mrmr1993 wrote: post #48
xte wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a FF user (and a browser's user in general) I found actual browsers absurd monsters that service like ffprofile only try to mitigate. Few example: any complex enough software offer config files/dir. normally human readable and manageable. I can easily install plugins in Emacs via a simple config edit, same for (n)vim, same for zsh or fish, I can change my OS (NixOS) with a simple human-readable config file. Same f…

This seems to be by design: when these things are available, spyware -- especially on Windows -- will be quick to make malicious changes in all these if they can. It's a pain, but I can see the compromise. If it makes the average Firefox user more vulnerable, there's definitely a case to protect them, even at the expense of its more capable users.

No software trick can fix OS unsafe design. Also "protecting users" limiting their power means jails them, not really protecting.

End users are adult, not child, and developers are others adults with ZERO right on their software's user.

If people want safer systems better learn to avoid commercial software, nothing else can help them.

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#55

Post by WorldMaker »

shittyadmin wrote: post #27
WorldMaker wrote: post #4

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 love container tabs, my biggest worry and the reason I'm hesitant to rely on them is that I suspect they'll get scrapped in the future because Mozilla seems to be building a Chrome clone lately.

Yeah, I've been following with keen eyes Mozilla's efforts in the space. I really like that they are experimenting with it, and I really hope them success, or at least to continue to take risks and experiment with it, but also due to the nature of the experiments to date there hasn't yet been a case where I'd swap my existing profiles for container tabs (even with the headaches of maintaining -ProfileManager launch shortcuts and remembering when I need to --no-remote or use weirder workarounds/shortcuts to get things launched properly).

In migrating the primary container tab UI into an extension, Mozilla seems committed to at least providing the functionality as a long term extension API. So I don't expect the feature to be scrapped at this point; maybe just to remain rather anemic "out of the box" for the time being as Mozilla iterates on its extension. That has me curious if there's a good power user-focused extension already to meet my profile needs (or how hard it would be to build one), but so far that's only been an idle curiosity.

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#56

Post by AnaniasAnanas »

mrmr1993 wrote: post #48
xte wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a FF user (and a browser's user in general) I found actual browsers absurd monsters that service like ffprofile only try to mitigate. Few example: any complex enough software offer config files/dir. normally human readable and manageable. I can easily install plugins in Emacs via a simple config edit, same for (n)vim, same for zsh or fish, I can change my OS (NixOS) with a simple human-readable config file. Same f…

This seems to be by design: when these things are available, spyware -- especially on Windows -- will be quick to make malicious changes in all these if they can. It's a pain, but I can see the compromise. If it makes the average Firefox user more vulnerable, there's definitely a case to protect them, even at the expense of its more capable users.

I doubt that nowadays many of the average Firefox users are really average computer users.

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#57

Post by asdff »

WorldMaker wrote: post #4
nicoburns wrote: post #2

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 are so clunky in practice, they really need a lot of work. Google something in your Google container, click a link, and instead of just directing to the link, the link is opened in a new tab and the search result tab is closed instantly. You can't go back to the results, you have to unclose the tab.

Container tabs also were terrible if you needed a persistent login. My school proxy for journal subscriptions has like half a dozen redirects with different URL names, I either had to not use containers here or add an exception for every step in the login process that it would break because of the container system. I hated constantly running into problems with containers breaking websites and making browsing so cumbersome that I stopped using them entirely.

Like some of the esoteric Adblocker configurations favored here, they are good in principle, but in practice break 50% of websites on the internet without spending serious time crafting exceptions for every issue you run into on every new site you find.

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#58

Post by unqueued »

eikenberry wrote: post #35
WorldMaker wrote: post #4

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…

Container Tabs give you no control over which extensions are used in that container. That is my main use of Profiles.

I've posted this a bunch of times on HN, but these scripts I use let me launch a new instance of the Firefox engine with its own prefs.js and extensions from the terminal[1].

Profilemaker pairs perfectly with this.

[1]: https://github.com/unqueued/foxbox

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#59

Post by asdff »

alexis_fr wrote: post #20
WorldMaker wrote: post #4

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…

« 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 lik…

> « Container Tabs » doesn’t build trust in user’s mind. You’re always one click away from sending data with the wrong profile.

Which users are you referring to, the ones who read HN and use firefox with containers? Most non-technical people would think you told them a conspiracy theory if you said Facebook can track their browsing outside the site, let alone be aware of that possibility enough to install firefox then install and configure containers. People who know about these risks and are installing extensions like containers are already conscious of their exposure on the web and are doing their due diligence not to leave much-identifying information out there, to begin with.

The sad truth is we write, and comment, and endlessly debate security best practices here that only get used by people reading this forum or small, highly technical and specific corners of Reddit.

Re: Firefox Profilemaker

#60

Post by keyle »

I've seen expensive training seminars for less options than that!

It's sad that someone would ever need to know half of these to browse the Internet safely.

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