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Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

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Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#31

Post by radley »

mrb wrote: post #15

What an extremely confusing blog post! I don't understand why it seemingly presents profiles as a new feature? Firefox has had profiles for years. What the heck is new? I had to click the other link https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-management to understand that this is all about simple UI improvements to make it easier to work with existing profiles. The blog post is more than confusing, it is misleading.…

If it's buried in about:config, it's not a feature, it's just a dev tool. (FWIW, I read that config settings may reset during updates, so at best it's just a temporary patch.)

It's like saying you have a responsive website, but only if I edit the layout in the DOM.

Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#32

Post by degamad »

happymellon wrote: post #3
sorcercode wrote: post #2

for the most part I've been using Firefox containers and loving that life of getting the same benefits without having to create separate profiles. but it's nice to see this finally get into Firefox because there are still a lot of folks who also want to maintain things like browser bookmarks, passwords etc in a separate profile. that's the only conceivable useful difference over Containers (which IMHO is slightly bet…

> that's the only conceivable useful difference over Containers But thats a massive difference. I have work profiles and a personal profile. I have password manager profiles for clients (clients will provide their own PM logins to segregate their access) which are different between them, and having separate profiles is huge. Containers are great, especially for crappy websites that use your sessions for tracking whic…

You've hit on the relevant distinction: user context vs system context.

I use containers to separate system context (partitioning cookies and site data) while remaining in the same user context (e.g. "personal browsing").

I use profiles for when I need different user contexts (different bookmarks and frequently used sites for different clients or projects).

When only one tool is available, you are limited by the constraints of that tool (e.g. bookmarks bleeding over between user contexts when using containers, or having to copy extensions or bookmarks into every profile).

Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#33

Post by Kinrany »

throwaway106382 wrote: post #18

I'm happy this is getting a new UI. Always been a pain to use compared to Chrome profiles. Profiles WITH container tabs is pretty killer, dont' think Chrome has anything like this.

Why'd you use profiles and containers together?

Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#34

Post by ciupicri »

agumonkey wrote: post #29
jmakov wrote: post #22

The most useful feature with the worst UX. You have to type about:profiles and then create a new profile. But imagin you now want to move old profiles to a new computer and FF happens to run in a Flatpack. Yeah, much fun

there's an old '-P' flag that shows a small ui see https://imgur.com/a/Tmt3oEL

Does it still work?

Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#35

Post by cassepipe »

ghostly_s wrote: post #24
bluebarbet wrote: post #11

Profiles are great. I've used them for years. Much better than containers, which separate your data sort-of-but-not-quite. A profile folder has everything . You can copy it, back it up, plug it into a completely new Firefox installation later. That portability is a killer feature, but scriptability needs to be improved. The manual says you can do: >`firefox --profile Start with profile at ` But that will not work as…

Tried containers when it was released but found it very inconvenient to manage. If I understand this solution doesn't even let you have two profiles open at once? That's even less useful imho. edit: I use Simple Tab Groups which is far more featureful - "Send tab to [group/container/etc]" for example is table stakes.

I personnally went for extensions using them. I downloaded, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Youtube containers extensions.

I have had issues with Youtube and Google together. I think I solved it using the "Don't track me Google extension" but I am not so sure anymore

Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#36

Post by sfRattan »

sudobash1 wrote: post #9
sorcercode wrote: post #2

for the most part I've been using Firefox containers and loving that life of getting the same benefits without having to create separate profiles. but it's nice to see this finally get into Firefox because there are still a lot of folks who also want to maintain things like browser bookmarks, passwords etc in a separate profile. that's the only conceivable useful difference over Containers (which IMHO is slightly bet…

> that's the only conceivable useful difference over Containers Actually, I have wanted better profile support for a while to segregate addons. There are plenty of addons that I want to use occasionally that require full data access. I generally do trust them, but even so, I keep these in a separate profile just in case. That is something that can't be done with containers.

> There are plenty of addons that I want to use occasionally that require full data access. I generally do trust them...

Seconded, except I don't trust most add-ons and don't want to have to trust them.

I want an easy way to launch a disposable browser session in any browser, totally isolated, with add-ons chosen (and downloaded) at launch time, and then erased of with the rest of the session when its last open page is closed.

Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#37

Post by cassepipe »

radley wrote: post #31
mrb wrote: post #15

What an extremely confusing blog post! I don't understand why it seemingly presents profiles as a new feature? Firefox has had profiles for years. What the heck is new? I had to click the other link https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-management to understand that this is all about simple UI improvements to make it easier to work with existing profiles. The blog post is more than confusing, it is misleading.…

If it's buried in about:config , it's not a feature, it's just a dev tool. (FWIW, I read that config settings may reset during updates, so at best it's just a temporary patch.) It's like saying you have a responsive website, but only if I edit the layout in the DOM.

Nit: It's not a parameter in about:config, it's been available for a while under about:profiles, no tweak needed

Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#38

Post by throwaway106382 »

Kinrany wrote: post #33
throwaway106382 wrote: post #18

I'm happy this is getting a new UI. Always been a pain to use compared to Chrome profiles. Profiles WITH container tabs is pretty killer, dont' think Chrome has anything like this.

Why'd you use profiles and containers together?

Profiles for the typical Work/Personal separation with their own bookmarks, extensions, password manager accounts etc……

Then I use containers for isolating sensitive accounts within those profiles (bank, work Google Drive, etc).

I also use temporary containers to make it easier to be logged into the same site with multiple accounts at the same time between tabs - like admin and user accounts for our company’s app - which also make it easier to clear sessions and data.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...

Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#39

Post by Am4TIfIsER0ppos »

agumonkey wrote: post #29
jmakov wrote: post #22

The most useful feature with the worst UX. You have to type about:profiles and then create a new profile. But imagin you now want to move old profiles to a new computer and FF happens to run in a Flatpack. Yeah, much fun

there's an old '-P' flag that shows a small ui see https://imgur.com/a/Tmt3oEL

That used to be a start menu entry in the old days. I had heard it was removed but to my surprise -P works on my current linux. I'll have to see if it does actually start a new profile.
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