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I am a Mozilla supporter and FF is my "daily driver" browser. Very interested in this feature. Chrome has had it for a years, and it's a killer feature for man

I am a Mozilla supporter and FF is my "daily driver" browser. Very interested in this feature. Chrome has had it for a years, and it's a killer feature for many developers. It's very very useful to have multiple browser windows open, each logged into the same site as a different user. A lot of people do this by opening multiple browsers (FF, Chrome, Edge, Safari, etc) but that has its limits and it just adds another variable my poor brain would prefer not to handle. Also very useful for home/work separation. One browser account for work and one for home. And also maybe one for porn. So that when you're screensharing in a meeting and you type a URL into the browser, you don't get autocomplete suggestions for your favorite porn sites popping up. Happened to an old (married) boss of mine once while displaying his screen on the projector... typed "a" into the URL field and the browser helpfully suggested he navigate to AdultFriendFinder. Right in front of some clients. :) Firefox's "container tabs" implementation may be slightly confusing. Chrome's implementation is dead simple. One identity per window, and the identity name is always displayed in the upper right. With FF's container tabs, I'll have one identity per tab, and I can see they're color coded, but that means I'll have to mentally map colors to identities. It's more flexible than Chrome's implementation but there's more cognitive overhead involved. Also, what's up with the name "container tabs?" That tells me nothing about what they do. All tabs... contain things. I think they need to rename it to "identity tabs" or something. How on Earth would anybody ever guess that "container tabs" is related to identities and data sharing? We'll see how it plays out though. I'm excited to try it and I am continually grateful for Mozilla's efforts. In fact this reminds me I haven't donated to them in a while....

rcthompson 10y ago
Edit: I guess I'm misremembering how Chrome works, or maybe they changed it since I've last used Chrome seriously. I'll leave the comment so the replies make sense. Original comment: I'm kind of surprised that Mozilla went with a per-tab approach here, since they went with per-window for private browsing (while Chrome did the opposite: per-tab private browsing and per-window profiles).
- dingo_bat 10y ago
  That's not right. Chrome's incognito mode is per window.
  - parasubcutaneor 10y ago
    Not even. Chome's session isolation is only per each of the two browsing modes.
    - fragmede 10y ago
      Chrome supports multiple profiles (click the person icon or username on the upper right), not just logged and incognito.
      - hosh 10y ago
        I don't think those profiles let you do things per-tab.
      - angry_octet 10y ago
        Yes, but all incognito tabs are in the same session, even if opened in separate windows.
    - niftich 10y ago
      This. The relevant Chromium issue report is here [1], and it's been open for years. [1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=24690 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=24690
- 0xCMP 10y ago
  What do you mean? It opens a new window?
- lucideer 10y ago
  I might be remembering wrong, but I'm pretty sure Chrome started with per-window private browsing before eventually upgrading to per-tab. So Firefox seems to be just jumping ahead of that initial limitation from the start here.
chrisper 10y ago
How do I use it in Chrome or is it in Chrome per user session rather than per tab?
- hosh 10y ago
  When I went looking for a per-tab profile, I did not see this in either Chrome or Firefox. Firefox has the Multifox addon that does this per-tab, but it is incompatible with the multiprocess feature.
icebraining 10y ago
Chrome has had it for a years, and it's a killer feature for many developers. It's very very useful to have multiple browser windows open, each logged into the same site as a different user. A lot of people do this by opening multiple browsers (FF, Chrome, Edge, Safari, etc) but that has its limits and it just adds another variable my poor brain would prefer not to handle. Firefox has had this since, well, forever; they're called "profiles". I run two windows with different profiles (for "personal" and "work"), each with different install addons, Sync accounts, etc. Unfortunately the UI is clunky (requires adding a couple of flags to the shortcut/command).
- StevePerkins 10y ago
  Firefox profiles used to be more prominent/accessible. Then about 5 or so years back, Mozilla decided to dumb down the UI to better imitate Chrome. Now I think you have to actually launch Firefox from the command-line with special arguments to use profiles (or else install a third-party plugin to manage them).
  - Sylos 10y ago
    You can also type "about:profiles" into the URL-bar, but yeah, that's a rather recent addition.
  - weaksauce 10y ago
    You can have the profile manager pop up every time you open Firefox. It should probably have a better, more accessible UI though.
- Certhas 10y ago
  Indeed, I have several firefox profiles and corresponding launch scripts: ff-home contains: firefox -P home etc... Each of them has a different theme so the windows are clearly visually different.
Manishearth 10y ago
Firefox has had multiple profiles for years too, though the UI isn't as nice as Chrome's. This is different, this is basically profiles that can sharethe same browser window.
- cbsmith 10y ago
  I'm not sure I understand the benefit of being able to share the same browser window.
  - Manishearth 10y ago
    I personally like keeping things in a single browser window, and find it super annoying when I have multiple windows. But I sometimes want to use a site whilst logged out or logged in to a different account, or just don't want to be tracked. across the web. It's nice to be able to do it all in one place. It also helps enforce a better discipline in keeping parts of your life (and thus your online identity) separate so that it's harder to track.
    - cbsmith 10y ago
      Multiple windows sure seems like a clean visual signal that you are in a different privacy context...
- Touche 10y ago
  Not as nice is a pretty big understatement. Here's the article that Mozilla links to about how to do it on OSX: http://spf13.com/post/managing-multiple-firefox-profiles-in-os-x/ http://spf13.com/post/managing-multiple-firefox-profiles-in-... /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin --profilemanager
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Actually, just open about:profiles in the browser, and you can easily switch.
sydd 10y ago
totally agree with the naming, 'container tabs' is bad. Also I dont like the separation, like having one for banking and one for personal stuff. Arent they the same? I'd have the following: personal: For personal banking, gmail, facebook, etc. very high security except on my trusted sites. Work: Work stuff. high security. Browsing: normal security, so everything works. wild west: No history, high security. Like private mode. gmail, facobook, banks etc blacklisted so you cant log in even by accident.
- jlgaddis 10y ago
  Personally, I don't care for their choice of names. Hopefully the browser will allow an arbitrary number of containers and customization of their names.
stymaar 10y ago
> Chrome has had it for a years No, not really, not at all. Chromium has an equivalent (but more accessible and more user friendly) feature than Firefox profile, but it's nowhere close to this. The profile feature in Firefox and Chromium allows you to have a different set of add-ons or browser configuration, but this feature is really different: it allows you, with the same features and add-ons, to have different sessions, with independent cookies to limit tracking and mitigate CSRF attacks.
Vinnl 10y ago
In case your comment reminds others: https://donate.mozilla.org/ https://donate.mozilla.org/ :)

rcthompson 10y ago

Edit: I guess I'm misremembering how Chrome works, or maybe they changed it since I've last used Chrome seriously. I'll leave the comment so the replies make sense. Original comment: I'm kind of surprised that Mozilla went with a per-tab approach here, since they went with per-window for private browsing (while Chrome did the opposite: per-tab private browsing and per-window profiles).

dingo_bat 10y ago
That's not right. Chrome's incognito mode is per window.
- parasubcutaneor 10y ago
  Not even. Chome's session isolation is only per each of the two browsing modes.
  - fragmede 10y ago
    Chrome supports multiple profiles (click the person icon or username on the upper right), not just logged and incognito.
    - hosh 10y ago
      I don't think those profiles let you do things per-tab.
    - angry_octet 10y ago
      Yes, but all incognito tabs are in the same session, even if opened in separate windows.
  - niftich 10y ago
    This. The relevant Chromium issue report is here [1], and it's been open for years. [1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=24690 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=24690
0xCMP 10y ago
What do you mean? It opens a new window?
lucideer 10y ago
I might be remembering wrong, but I'm pretty sure Chrome started with per-window private browsing before eventually upgrading to per-tab. So Firefox seems to be just jumping ahead of that initial limitation from the start here.

chrisper 10y ago

How do I use it in Chrome or is it in Chrome per user session rather than per tab?

hosh 10y ago
When I went looking for a per-tab profile, I did not see this in either Chrome or Firefox. Firefox has the Multifox addon that does this per-tab, but it is incompatible with the multiprocess feature.

icebraining 10y ago

Chrome has had it for a years, and it's a killer feature for many developers. It's very very useful to have multiple browser windows open, each logged into the same site as a different user. A lot of people do this by opening multiple browsers (FF, Chrome, Edge, Safari, etc) but that has its limits and it just adds another variable my poor brain would prefer not to handle. Firefox has had this since, well, forever; they're called "profiles". I run two windows with different profiles (for "personal" and "work"), each with different install addons, Sync accounts, etc. Unfortunately the UI is clunky (requires adding a couple of flags to the shortcut/command).

StevePerkins 10y ago
Firefox profiles used to be more prominent/accessible. Then about 5 or so years back, Mozilla decided to dumb down the UI to better imitate Chrome. Now I think you have to actually launch Firefox from the command-line with special arguments to use profiles (or else install a third-party plugin to manage them).
- Sylos 10y ago
  You can also type "about:profiles" into the URL-bar, but yeah, that's a rather recent addition.
- weaksauce 10y ago
  You can have the profile manager pop up every time you open Firefox. It should probably have a better, more accessible UI though.
Certhas 10y ago
Indeed, I have several firefox profiles and corresponding launch scripts: ff-home contains: firefox -P home etc... Each of them has a different theme so the windows are clearly visually different.

Manishearth 10y ago

Firefox has had multiple profiles for years too, though the UI isn't as nice as Chrome's. This is different, this is basically profiles that can sharethe same browser window.

cbsmith 10y ago
I'm not sure I understand the benefit of being able to share the same browser window.
- Manishearth 10y ago
  I personally like keeping things in a single browser window, and find it super annoying when I have multiple windows. But I sometimes want to use a site whilst logged out or logged in to a different account, or just don't want to be tracked. across the web. It's nice to be able to do it all in one place. It also helps enforce a better discipline in keeping parts of your life (and thus your online identity) separate so that it's harder to track.
  - cbsmith 10y ago
    Multiple windows sure seems like a clean visual signal that you are in a different privacy context...
Touche 10y ago
Not as nice is a pretty big understatement. Here's the article that Mozilla links to about how to do it on OSX: http://spf13.com/post/managing-multiple-firefox-profiles-in-os-x/ http://spf13.com/post/managing-multiple-firefox-profiles-in-... /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin --profilemanager
- kuschku 10y ago
  Actually, just open about:profiles in the browser, and you can easily switch.

sydd 10y ago

totally agree with the naming, 'container tabs' is bad. Also I dont like the separation, like having one for banking and one for personal stuff. Arent they the same? I'd have the following: personal: For personal banking, gmail, facebook, etc. very high security except on my trusted sites. Work: Work stuff. high security. Browsing: normal security, so everything works. wild west: No history, high security. Like private mode. gmail, facobook, banks etc blacklisted so you cant log in even by accident.

jlgaddis 10y ago
Personally, I don't care for their choice of names. Hopefully the browser will allow an arbitrary number of containers and customization of their names.

stymaar 10y ago

> Chrome has had it for a years No, not really, not at all. Chromium has an equivalent (but more accessible and more user friendly) feature than Firefox profile, but it's nowhere close to this. The profile feature in Firefox and Chromium allows you to have a different set of add-ons or browser configuration, but this feature is really different: it allows you, with the same features and add-ons, to have different sessions, with independent cookies to limit tracking and mitigate CSRF attacks.

Vinnl 10y ago

In case your comment reminds others: https://donate.mozilla.org/ https://donate.mozilla.org/ :)