This link has been bookmarked by 62 people . It was first bookmarked on 27 Jul 2006, by MrJudd.
-
25 Feb 15
-
Upgrading Firefox Portable
To upgrade to a newer version of Firefox Portable, just install a new copy of Firefox Portable right over your old one. All your data will be preserved. You can use the built in updater as well, but some non-personal files or directories may be left behind. This will be addressed in an upcoming release
-
-
10 Oct 13
-
10 Apr 12
-
29 Jan 12
-
07 Jan 11
Liv"Copying Your Local Firefox Settings
If you're using a local copy of Firefox, you may wish to just copy your local Firefox settings right into Firefox Portable. Your local Firefox profile is usually installed in C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.???\ After running Firefox Portable once to let it setup its data directories, just copy the contents of that folder (except the cache directories) to the FirefoxPortable\Data\profile directory. Then, and this is important, delete the file FirefoxPortableSettings.ini within the FirefoxPortable\Data\settings directory, if there is one. When you start Firefox Portable for the first time, it's recommended that you turn off disk cache, password saving and history if you're using a flash-based portable device. You can set all of these within the Privacy tab of the Firefox Options window. Sometimes, certain profiles will cause the launcher to fail or hang. It's best to give it a few minutes to see if it's just checking compatibility and adjusting the locations of the extensions before giving up on it. If it fails, it is usually due to an incompatible extension." -
10 May 10
-
Installing Firefox Portable
-
Installing Firefox Portable
To install Firefox Portable, just download the portable package at the top of the Firefox Portable page and then double-click it. Select the location you wish to install to and click OK. A FirefoxPortable directory will be created there and all the necessary files installed. That's all there is to it.
-
To install Firefox Portable, just download the portable package at the top of the Firefox Portable page and then double-click it. Select the location you wish to install to and click OK. A FirefoxPortable directory will be created there and all the necessary files installed. That's all there is to it.
-
Upgrading Firefox Portable
-
To upgrade to a newer version of Firefox Portable, just install a new copy of Firefox Portable right over your old one. All your data will be preserved.
-
If you're upgrading from Portable Firefox (older name and directories), make a copy of your existing profile folder within the PortableFirefox\Data\profile directory on your portable drive. Then download the new version of Firefox Portable and copy your profile from the old version into the new version within FirefoxPortable\Data\profile.
-
If you added any plugins or searchplugins, you should copy those directories as well (PortableFirefox\plugins to FirefoxPortable\Data\plugins and PortableFirefox\firefox\searchplugins to FirefoxPortable\App\firefox\searchplugins).
-
Copying Your Local Firefox Settings
-
If you're using a local copy of Firefox, you may wish to just copy your local Firefox settings right into Firefox Portable. Your local Firefox profile is usually installed in C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.???\ After running Firefox Portable once to let it setup its data directories, just copy the contents of that folder (except the cache directories) to the FirefoxPortable\Data\profile directory.
-
Then, and this is important, delete the file FirefoxPortableSettings.ini within the FirefoxPortable\Data\settings directory, if there is one. When you start Firefox Portable for the first time, it's recommended that you turn off disk cache, password saving and history if you're using a flash-based portable device. You can set all of these within the Privacy tab of the Firefox Options window.
-
Using a Second (or Third) Profile with Firefox Portable
-
A second profile can allows you to setup another set of settings (bookmarks, extensions, preferences, etc) for Firefox Portable that you can use independent of your main settings. This is useful for sharing a flash drive with someone, testing extensions and configuration options or separating our work from personal details
-
To use a second profile, install the Firefox Portable 2nd Profile 1.0 app in the same PortableApps directory that FirefoxPortable is in (so, if Firefox Portable is installed to X:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable, you'd install this to X:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable2ndProfile). In the PortableApps.com Menu, it will show up as "Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition 2nd Profile". You can easily rename it to something more useful by right-clicking and selecting rename. When you run it, it will start Firefox Portable up with your second profile without affecting your main profile.
-
You can even install a 3rd or 4th profile by installing the 2nd Profile app again to another location (like X:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable3rdProfile) and then renaming it in the PortableApps.com Menu.
-
Note that only one profile can be used at a time, even with MultipleInstances turned on in the advanced launcher INI. This is a limitation of Firefox itself.
-
Installing Plugins (Flash, Shockwave, etc.)
-
With Firefox Portable, plugins work a bit differently than they do in regular Firefox
-
- Flash Plugin - To install Flash, you can either try our easy to use Flash installer for Firefox Portable, or follow these steps:
- Flash is available as an extension. Just click the link.
- You'll probably see a yellow bar across the top of the browser (if not, skip to Step 5), on that bar, click Edit Options
- In the popup window, click Allow to add PortableApps.com to your whitelist and then click close
- Now try the link again
- You'll see a popup asking if you would like to install, click OK after the countdown and follow along the prompts
-
- Shockwave Plugin - To install Shockwave, follow these steps:
- Download the free Shockwave Player from the Macromedia website
- Run the installation routine and, instead of letting it install to a local browser, select to choose your browser
- Browse to X:\FirefoxPortable\App\firefox (where X is your device's driver letter) and continue with the installation
- You may need to restart Firefox Portable for the changes to take effect
-
Configuring Helper Apps (PDF reader, document viewers, etc)
-
Firefox Portable supports the ability to set other portable apps as helper apps to handle additional document types even as you move between PCs. So, you can set Sumatra PDF Portable as your PDF viewer, OpenOffice.org Portable as your DOC opener and VLC Media Player Portable as your AVI handler and it will all work as you move to other PCs.
-
- Click Tools and then Options from the menu
- Select the Content tab
- Within the File Types section, click the Manage button
- In the list of types, select the one you wish to edit and click the Change Action button (if you don't see the type you want, see the note below)
- Select the "Open them with this application" radio button and then click Browse
- Select the portable app you'd like to open this file type with (example: SumatraPortable.exe)
- Click Ok. Click Close. And click OK to close all the windows.
The setting to do this in Firefox Portable works just like it does in a regular install of Firefox:
Now, when you click on a file of that type in Firefox, it will open it in the portable app you selected. The PortabableApps.com Launcher takes care of any needed changes as you move between PCs.
-
Improving Firefox Portable's Performance
-
Here's a list of different things you can do to speed things up:
-
Disable Cache - Cache is disabled by default because on most drives, cache will actually slow Firefox Portable down. If you've copied in a local profile or enabled it, you can disable it within the Options window.
-
- Disable Session Restore / Undo Close Tab - Firefox 2.0 introduced a new feature called session restore. It keeps track of all your open windows and tabs and can restore your session if Firefox should crash. While a handy feature, it does have the unfortunate side effect of writing to disk on every page load, which slows down Firefox Portable. In Firefox 3.0, this feature was enhanced to provide more features but at the cost of more disk writes (which is why Firefox Portable asks on first run if you'd like to disable it). There's no option to disable it in the usual Tools - Options windows, but you can disable it manually.
- In Firefox's address bar, type in about:config and then hit enter
- Right-click on any entry and select New - Boolean
- For the name, enter browser.sessionstore.enabled and click OK
- Select false and then click OK
-
Disable Anti-Phishing - Firefox comes bundled with an anti-phishing filter that warns you of fake sites pretending to be things like ebay and bank login pages. As with the ression restore, though, it results in additional writes to the drive. This is especially noticable in the first several minutes of using Firefox Portable as it has to download the anti-phishing database and store it within your profile (a 3mb+ file on Firefox 2 and a 50mb+ file on Firefox 3). You can disable this feature by clicking Tools - Options and then selecting the Security tab. Uncheck the box next to "Tell me if the site I'm visiting is a suspected forgery" and then click OK. The anti-phishing filter is now off. If you'd like to get back the space taken up by the database of forged sites, exit Firefox Portable and then head to the FirefoxPortable\Data\profile directory on your drive. Delete the urlclassifier*.sqlite file.
-
Disable History - Disabling history will prevent Firefox from writing a small bit of data to your drive for every page you visit.
-
Known Issues
-
Renaming FirefoxPortable.exe - Once on your portable device, the launcher can be renamed to anything you'd like except for firefox.exe. It tries to detect an existing instance of Firefox so it doesn't just launch a new local one and if it is named firefox.exe, it will detect itself.
-
No Portable Java - Sun's Java VM needs to be installed locally as it makes a slew of registry entries, etc. There is no way to make it portable at present, so you will only be able to use Java-enabled sites on machines that have the Sun Java VM installed locally.
-
-
20 Mar 10
Jess CFor local profile location in Windows ME/Firefox 2 go to:
C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ -
27 Jun 09
-
21 May 09
-
11 May 09
-
05 Feb 09
-
PortableFirefox\Data\profile directory
-
\Data\plugins
-
firefox\searchplugins
-
ortableFirefox\firefox\searchplugins
-
-
03 Feb 09
-
23 Jan 09
-
12 Nov 08
-
01 Aug 08
-
Copying Your Local Firefox Settings
If you're using a local copy of Firefox, you may wish to just copy your local Firefox settings right into Firefox Portable. Your local Firefox profile is usually installed in C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.???\ Just copy the contents of that folder (except the cache directories) to the FirefoxPortable\Data\profile directory. Then, and this is important, delete the file FirefoxPortableSettings.ini within the FirefoxPortable\Data\settings directory, if there is one. When you start Firefox Portable for the first time, it's recommended that you turn off disk cache, password saving and history if you're using a flash-based portable device. You can set all of these within the Privacy tab of the Firefox Options window. Sometimes, certain profiles will cause the launcher to fail or hang. It's best to give it a few minutes to see if it's just checking compatiblity and adjusting the locations of the extensions before giving up on it. If it fails, it is usually due to an incompatible extension.
-
-
03 Apr 08
-
03 Jan 08
-
07 Jul 07
-
30 Apr 07
-
26 Mar 07
-
29 Dec 06
-
08 Aug 06
-
29 Jul 06
-
Copying Your Local Firefox Settings
If you're using a local copy of Firefox, you may wish to just copy your local Firefox settings right into Firefox Portable. Your local Firefox profile is usually installed in C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.???\ Just copy all of those files except the cache directories to the profile directory within Firefox Portable. When you start Firefox Portable for the first time, be sure to turn off disk cache, password saving and history if you're using a non-hard drive portable device. You can set all of these within the Privacy tab of the Firefox Options window. Sometimes, certain profiles will cause the launcher to fail or hang. This is usually due to an incompatible extension.
-
-
27 Jul 06
Page Comments
Would you like to comment?
Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.