Running several versions of firefox on #!

In a recent attempt to be helpful and make it easier on people new to Crunchbang to get an updated web browser on Statler ( stable). I ended up installing several versions of firefox on my OS. See that monstrous thread here if ya want.

This left me with a few headaches, between juggling firefox profiles and migrating bookmarks ... blahblahblah. So put my thinking cap on, googled a bit and wanted to share what I found 2 fix things. Cause if you're like me, two things are obvious.

1. #! and gnu/Linux are awesome stuff.
2. I'm lazy and prefer things to be easy if at all poss.

While profile manager is neato imo. It's also a PITA having to choose which firefox profile is going to be used, with which mozilla browser everytime you wanna launch or use one of them. Then there's the potential for a careless keystroke, choosing the wrong firefox profile and poss borking summin.

In my case, I ended up with 3 mozilla browsers onboard, iceweasel 9, firefox 9 and Aurora ( aka: firefox 10, mozilla testing.) Set up a new firefox profile for each to keep things running better, as imo I think you have to.

1st let's open firefox profile manager and take a look at it. Open a run dialogue and type ...

firefox -P

Or terminal with ...

firefox -P &exit

Firefox profilemanager opens, we notice that we can create a new profile, rename or delete an existing profile here. We also notice a checkbox ( checked by default ), that says "Dont ask at startup", if we uncheck that box, profile manager will pop up everytime you launch a mozilla browser and let you pick which profile to use with it, which is good if you have several versions of firefox, but also for me annoying and thus why this how to.

You'll have a default profile already there. Am sure you likely get what that's for. In my case I renamed it Iceweasel ( cause that's the one I use with iceweasel o course.) And I created a new firefox profile for Firefox 9, named it Firefox and another for Aurora ... You guessed it, I named that one Aurora.

I setup keyboard shortcuts in rc.xml and symlinks to make life easier when launching these browsers. See montrous thread linked above for more info on the adventure.

And while this is kewl n makes me feel like a nix ninja. Cuz I have iceweasel 9, firefox 9 and Aurora on Statler. Ha ... that's right firefox who's your daddy !?! But ... I could only run one at a time ( I thought, which iz lame ) and was having to keep track and select the right firefox profile n the profile manager everytime I launched one of them. These things all offend my primal laziness instincts and are less leet than they should be imo. Noooooo, this will not do !

There has to be a way to tell x version of firefox to use a certain profile and not have to choose in profilemanager everytime. Gnu/Linux n google 2 da rescue !

How do we do this, in run dialogue, terminal or rc.xml ...

Mentioned I setup a symlink to be able to launch firefox 9 w/o having to type out the full file path, I called that symlink /firefox9 ... Now in run dialogue, terminal ... whenever I type said symlink ... /firefox9 the browser launches. I also put that symlink in the rc.xml file for the keyboard shortcut. This was easier, more appealing to my fundamental laziness BUT not quite acceptable yet. Because the goal is to tell firefox 9 to use the right browser profile w/o having to pick it in the profilemanager everytime.

Fortunately the people who design all this kewl software are uber intelligent techie folks and design it for user friendliness, aka: Lazy and/or not so uber intelligent techie folks ( such as meself ). So this is very easy to do.

Instead of just typing out the symlink to launch firefox 9, I only have to include a bit more to tell it which firefox profile it's going to use. So in terminal, run dialogue and I went ahead and put it in rc.xml too so the keyboard shortcut I setup there will launch it with the profile I want it to use. As follows.

/firefox9 -P "Firefox"

Note: In other words, add -P "the-name-of-the-firefoxprofile-you-want-it-2-use" Enclosed in quotes ... Just like you see here.

Now when I launch firefox 9 in the example above, it launches and automatically uses the firefox profile I want ... w/o profilemanager bugging me about selecting one. Plus if for some reason, I wanted to have all 3 (iceweasel9/firefox9/aurora) running side by side at the same time, no prob.

And now ... Chapter 2 ( lol ... this has become a friggin bk, and bks are supposed to have chapters I guess. )

Cure for headache #2 ... All these dang bookmarks scattered everywhere, I want access to all of them, from all my mozilla browsers. If for no other reason than the kewl and laziness factor !

Also apparently easy to do. Found myself bookmarking stuff of course, also found myself getting confused and annoyed. Errrr did I bookmark that thingy in Iceweasel, firefox 9 or was I using Aurora ? *Head scratch ...

Now I could try to migrate bookmarks between all these mozilla based browsers manually though for obvious reasons that would bite. So hmmmm ... *lil lightbulb pops on above head ... Hey doesn't the newer firefox stuff have a feature called Set up sync ? Found in the firefox settings ( and yes, iceweasel too o course.) under Tools ... You'll see the sucker there, kinda hard to miss as it says Set up sync ... Click that and there ya go.

Link about it, as I'm new to it and don't know much about it. Besides who better to explain, than the folks who made it ?

And there ya have it ... another monstrous babbling post, happy computing fellow #!ers and gnu/nixers. Viva la gnu/Linux darn it ! Hmmmm ... Also, what better way to end a book, than the traditional way ? *More head scratches. Oooooo I know.

The End. 

Last edited by CBizgreat! (2012-01-16 16:00:26)

Some common cbiz abbreviations. This will save me time and yet @ same time tell folks what the babble is supposed to mean.

Vll ! = ( Viva la gnu/Linux !)    Vl#!! = ( Viva la #! !)    Last but not least, UD ... OD ! = ( Use Debian ... or die !)