User:Madamezou/ProfilesHowTo

How to use different versions and profiles of Firefox on Windows and Linux.

Windows

The following has been tested on Windows 7, but it should be pretty similar in other Windows versions.

How to install and run different Firefox versions

You may want to have different versions of Firefox on the same computer, in order to be able to reproduce bugs on the different versions, or on the different nightlies.

First of all, you'll have to download the version you want: here's the latest Nightly, latest Aurora, latest Beta. For other versions of Nightly, check out this page.

(TBD: and find a stable url for the latest beta or add how to find the latest beta)

You'll want to download the .zip file associated to your operating system (Windows) and architecture (32 or 64 bit). If there's only a 32bit version you can safely download that even if you are on 64bit: it will work anyway.

Tell Windows that you want to save the file (TBD: screenshot). When the download is finished, unzip the archive (TBD more detailed?) in a new directory. For instance in (TBD: example path).

To launch it, press "WindowsKey+R", enter the path of the file and the command line arguments, this way: <path-to-file> -no-remote -P. (screenshot)

The -no-remote argument will allow multiple copies of the application to run at one time. The -P argument will launch the profile manager and let you create, delete, rename or choose a profile. There are also other command line options.

How to manage profiles

As said above, the -P option will launch the profile manager. You can decide to create a new profile, rename or delete an existing one or to launch Firefox using a specific profile.

If you already know which profile you want to use, you can directly launch it using the -p <profilename> option: <path-to-file> -no-remote -p <profilename>

(TBD screenshot)

(TBD a note about the importance of profiles in triaging/verification?)

Create a launcher

If you want to start regularly a specific version of Firefox with a specific profile, you can create a shortcut on the Desktop. Right click on the desktop, choose New → Shortcut and follow the instructions of the wizard. When it prompts you for location add: <path-to-file> followed by the command line arguments you want to use (for instance <path-to-file> -no-remote -p <profilename>). (TBD screenshot?)

Linux

How to install and run different Firefox versions

You may want to have different versions of Firefox on the same computer, in order to be able to reproduce bugs on the different versions, or on the different nightlies.

First of all, you'll have to download the version you want: here's the latest Nightly, latest Aurora, latest Beta. For other versions of Nightly, check out this page.

(TBD: add an explanation for the structure of the page, and find a stable url for the latest beta or add how to find the latest beta)

The file you want to download is the .tar.bz2 for your OS (Linux) and architecture (i686 for 32bit and x86_64 for 64bit). When the download is finished, create a new directory in your home: mkdir <newdirname> Now you can unpack the tarball in the new directory: cd <newdirname>; tar xvf <path-to-tarball>

And finally launch Firefox: ./firefox/firefox -no-remote -P

If you want "-no-remote" to be active all the time, set the environmental variable "MOZ_NO_REMOTE" to "1", for example (but don't forget about it later): export MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1