CyberNotes: Using Firefox Portable to Test Nightly Releases
Web Browser Wednesday
One of the things that really seems to draw people to CyberNet is the posting of Firefox Portable builds for pre-release versions of Firefox. Right now Mozilla is testing out Firefox 3 Alpha builds, and the ability to play with it appeals to a lot of people. A while back I wrote a guide on setting up your own version of Firefox Portable, but that was still when the application was called Portable Firefox.
I receive requests all of the time for providing nightly builds of Firefox 3 in a portable fashion so that there is no fear of messing up your stable profile. Heck, I’ll even show you where to copy the contents of your existing profile to in the Firefox Portable so that it is really easy to see if your extensions will work. Let’s go ahead and get started…
–Setting Up Your Own Firefox Portable–
- The first thing that you’ll need to do is download my “blank” Firefox Portable ZIP file. I say that it is blank because it doesn’t include the actual Firefox files that are needed to run the browser. You’ll be adding those in a few steps from now. Also, it is important to note that the installation I am providing to you is setup to not show a splash screen and to allow multiple instances of Firefox to be running side-by-side. That means you’ll be able to run your nightly build at the same time you’re running your stable build! See this article for an explanation on how I did that.
- Extract the contents from the file you downloaded in Step 1 which should result in a folder called “FirefoxPortable“.
- Download the latest nightly trunk to play with the bleeding edge version of Firefox. This is the most recent that you can get, and to find the file that you want to download look for the most recent date that has a “win32.zip” extension.
- Extract the contents from the file you downloaded in Step 3 which should result in a folder called “firefox“.
- Drag the firefox folder from Step 4 into the FirefoxPortable -> App folder from Step 2:
- That’s all, now just go back to the FirefoxPortable directory and run the FirefoxPortable.exe file. This is what your directory structure should now look like:
- Note: For future reference, you can update Firefox Portable the same way that you update regular Firefox by going to the Help Menu -> Check for Updates.
–Copying Your Current Profile To Firefox Portable–
When you’re testing out Firefox, it would be nice to just copy all of your settings, bookmarks, and extensions over to the portable version so that you can see what works and what doesn’t. No problem! It just takes a few steps to copy everything over:
- Locate your existing profile:
Windows 2000/XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<Windows login/user name>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<Profile name>\
Windows Vista: C:\Users\<Windows login/user name>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<Profile name>\
- Copy ALL of the files and folders of your existing profile into the FirefoxPortable -> Data -> profile folder (make sure to delete everything in that directory if it is not already empty):
- That’s all, the next time you start Firefox Portable it should run your existing profile.
–Overview–
That is basically what I do each time that I test out Firefox builds. Similar things can be done using the portable versions of Thunderbird and many other applications. After you have done it once you’ll be able to do the whole process in a matter of seconds because it really is that easy. The thing that takes the longest to do is download the files. Enjoy! 
This is just one of the hundreds of CyberNotes we have done. You can find more of them by visiting our CyberNotes category, or by subscribing to our CyberNotes feed. We also have a full feed available if you want to receive all of our articles in your reader!
Tags: CyberNotes, Firefox, Freeware, Software, How To, Portable Application, Portable Firefox
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Nice. I’ve got to try it.
Whats new so far in FF3.0a?
Just the rendering engine at this point. Pages will load a little faster and everything appears much clearer. The new features that are expected for Firefox 3 have not begun to get implemented at this point so these Alpha’s are really designed for website publishers to make sure that the sites display correctly.
This doesn’t seem to work with the latest 3.0a3 builds since about the past week. Firefox crashes every time I try to load it with this method.
You may need to start with a clean profile just to be on the safe side. Trying going to the Data->Profile folder and deleting all of the files in there. Then try restarting Portable Firefox to see if having a clean profile helps.
Ryan, I tried that and I tried downloading the blank portable file and using today’s build. It still crashes just before it loads the start pages.
I just tried it myself and it worked fine. I downloaded the blank file and then downloaded the trunk and it ran without crashing. I assume that you aren’t using a profile that you have already created then? If you are that could be the root of the problem, or it could be an extension that isn’t compatible.
I finally figured it out! Minefield was crashing because of bug 331404. I just ran the findold program and deleted the files with really old timestamps. The latest nightly is running fine now.
Awesome! I’m really glad that you got it working!
I have never thought to post to this topic, but this has been a great help in testing the new releases of Firefox. It has allowed me to do my testing without breaking anything else. Thanks Ryan.
No problem! I’m always asked to make portable versions of Firefox and so I knew quite a few people would benefit from learning how to do it themselves.