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The signing into an account in chrome is the killer feature for me. I have work and a couple of personal accounts that I have signed in in different browser wi

by e40 9y ago

The signing into an account in chrome is the killer feature for me. I have work and a couple of personal accounts that I have signed in in different browser windows. That allows me to keep things separate (extensions, mail, browsing, bookmarks, etc). How do FF users do this?

ghostcluster 9y ago
But now that Google has fundamentally broken users' trust by locking people out of their own Google Docs through automated machine learning algorithm, can't you see why people are wanting to protect themselves from a corporate culture that allows those kinds of zealous and intrusive policies? It was locking out journalists drafting stories! How can you trust Google anymore? There's something rotten festering in Mountain View.
- orbat 9y ago
  People seem to have the laughable idea that somehow only government censorship is bad, or that corporations aren't capable of censorship in the first place because they're private entities. I mean, yes, the world will look like that if you reduce everything to contractual relationships like libertarians seem to do, but personally I hope we could hold corporations accountable for actions like these. Like it or not, we've become extremely reliant on cloud services; Google closing someone's account without the possibility of appeal may not be politically motivated censorship, but it's still arbitrary censorship (even if you did click on the "agree" button on the EULA nobody ever reads). Why shouldn't we hold corporations to the same standards as governments? If we don't want the government arbitrarily censoring people, why are we OK with corporations doing it?
  - deong 9y ago
    > If we don't want the government arbitrarily censoring people, why are we OK with corporations doing it? Because the "opt-out" process is orders of magnitude easier. You don't have to use Google. Microsoft has online document creation applications, as does Apple, assuming iWork still exists. Or you can just write documents offline using any of several thousand tools. Corporate censorship is entirely under your control. You can always stop the censorship by simply not saying it using that corporation's tools. Corporations can control how you say something, but not what you say. Governments can control the act of saying it. One is far worse than the other.
    - Santosh83 9y ago
      Until all the big corps start censoring the same kinds of contents and behaviour by an unspoken consensus. At that point it becomes effectively as easy to live without all the major online services as it would be to live as an outlaw. Easier or more difficult to get by without shouldn't distract us from the core point GP made, that corporate (arbitrary) censorship, with no redress, should be taken as seriously as govt censorship. These days they are just two arms on the same chimera.
      - moomin 9y ago
        Consider this: imagine the guy sat next to you at work starts yelling at you with a loudhailer all day. Every day. And he never ever shuts up. (Alternatively, imagine that he just whispers "fuck santosh" all day.) Would you expect him to be free to continue doing it? Would you expect the government to stop him? Or would you expect your employer to stop him? The answer is: groups of people (and corporations are groups of people) are free to limit speech according to whatever rules the group decides upon. What you're proposing is that certain large corporations be treated as quasi-governmental entities. Which is a _free-speech restriction_. Not saying it's a bad idea, necessarily. But I'd rather my freedom to say that certain types of speech are unacceptable was guaranteed.
        Santosh83 9y ago
        In which case there needs to be easy to employ mechanisms to redress grievances, which tech corps currently don't have. For example, account lockouts and DMCA takedowns (when done by error or if the user thinks is unfair) are pretty much permanent. Your best option is to accept the data loss, move on and create another account. My point is censorship is a huge responsibility and power, especially when it is done at the scale govts and multi-national corps do, and therefore it needs serious transparency and checks and balances, in both cases. I don't see this happening to satisfaction. Instances of regrettable censorship stay regrettable, and keep recurring.
        deong 9y ago
  - voidmain 9y ago
    > Why shouldn't we hold corporations to the same standards as governments? Because one of these organizations can throw you into a cage to be raped and tortured for the rest of your life, and the other can deny you access to some fairly useful web apps.
    - eloisant 9y ago
      Denying someone's access to his own email inbox can have dramatic consequences on his life. Not as dramatic as being detained and tortured obviously, but still pretty serious. There is already a case where private companies can't shut down their service to you as they wish, it's utilities (water, electricity, gas). I hope we can recognize at some point that Internet access should count as a utility too, and some core services like email service too.
      - voidmain 9y ago
        So if that risk is so scary, build an e-mail service that protects someone's access to their inbox by contractual or technical means, and try to convince them to switch. Any power that you take away from (comparatively weak, subject to competition) Google by giving it to (already terrifyingly powerful and monopolistic) USG is not a move in the right direction.
        kbenson 9y ago
        I think you're getting downvoted mostly because of calling Google "comparatively weak", but I think your point and your comparison is correct. Google is weak in comparison to the U.S. Government and, importantly, is subject to competition. There are other email services which offer what people want. Want people are proposing is imposing their will on Google and the people that run it, even though there is competition out there that people could use instead and get what they want. Gmail and Google Apps are far from the only options people have, and far from the only free options people have. But if it is so important that people have an email address, then the USG could actually offer that (I've long thought the USPS should offer verified email addresses with strict spam protection by aggressively pursuing violators). Otherwise, let people pay what they want for the level of assurance they want. The other side of this argument is that there are some things we do want to enforce companies do, such as offer a base level of health care in a package. I support this as well, because that solves an endemic problem where people have restricted choice and it also hurts society as a whole. That is, I think Hobby Lobby should have to provide birth control in their health plans because of the reasons outlined above, but I don't think any non governmental service provider that isn't a monopoly (and Google isn't a monopoly in cloud apps, even if there is an argument that can be made about them being one in search) should have to adhere to dictates about what what content they must allow on their service. That's a pretty slippery slope in my view.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    > Why shouldn't we hold corporations to the same standards as governments? Because you have choice of what to use. You don't always (or even often) have choice of what country to live in, and there's not a lot of unclaimed land that's hospitable. Some people may want a service they know the operators of will be proactive about keeping certain content off. Others will want a service that makes it their goal to not do that and protect everything on it. Choice is key here, and the government stipulating what needs to be done is actually restrictive, not freeing (you're just imposing your own views on others systematically). When there isn't a choice of what service/product to use, that's when other laws may come into effect. Anti-trust laws.
- DonHopkins 9y ago
  Sign up for Google Gold and you can make as many abusive documents as you want, without any risk of automated censorship! https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/31/google-docs-users-locked-out/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/31/google-docs-users-locked...
  - acgIssues 9y ago
    Now this is ridiculous. Thanks for sharing this article.
- Johnny555 9y ago
  But weren't they locking those users because their algorithm thought it saw malware? It's not like Google said "You're writing a story about bombs or some other inappropriate subject so we're locking you out". This sounds like one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" no-win solutions for Google. Users (and Google) don't want Google to allow people to use Google Docs to distribute malware and harvest passwords, they don't want someone at Google to look at their documents to see if they are "safe" (which Google couldn't realistically do even if they wanted to), so then people got upset when the automated software Google uses to look for these problems did a bad job for some people. While it'd be nice if every system and process worked well 100% of the time and had no bugs, that's just not a realistic expectation.
Thorncorona 9y ago
FF just came out with multi account containers about a month ago -> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- eli 9y ago
  And prior to that you could run multiple Firefox instances with different profiles. Not super hard.
  - nachtigall 9y ago
    > you could run multiple Firefox instances with different profiles But not at the same time, which is a showstopper to me (still using Firefox Nightly as main browser).
    - rhn_mk1 9y ago
      You can absolutely run multiple different instances at the same time. I've been using Firefox this way for over a year, 2 instances open right now.
      - drdaeman 9y ago
        It is possible, but it's messy in terms of which one is the default (clicking on links outside of the browser), taskbar/launcher buttons (OS- and DE-dependent, some configurations have issues e.g. with pinning) etc. I think there was something else - minor and just slightly inconvenient - but I forgot. Compared to ProfileManager, Container Tabs are absolutely awesome. Completely different experience, smooth and nice.
        jakub_g 9y ago
        ProfileManager is a bit awkward indeed. You can pass `-p primaryprofile` and `-p secondaryprofile -no-remote` to make sure that links from OS are not opened in the 2nd instance, but then, when you close Firefox and click an external link, it will open Firefox with the last opened profile, which might be `secondaryprofile`. The solution for me was to use one Firefox installation per profile: primary = stable, secondary = nightly. Container tabs are way nicer than this, but since I open lots of tabs, I still like the distinction between stable and nightly (stable = regular browsing, nightly = FB).
fiatjaf 9y ago
Firefox 58 has "persona" tabs. Coloured tabs that keep their own sessions. You can just configure multiple personas and work on them all simultaneously from the same window (or you can use different windows, if you prefer). It's good even for creating fake accounts, test accounts, testing apps from the perspective of different user sessions etc.
- wtetzner 9y ago
  They're available in earlier versions, but I think you have to turn in on in about:config.
- Myrmornis 9y ago
  Can I check I understand: Firefox has - Profiles - Containers - Persona tabs ?
  - callahad 9y ago
    Just two things: Profiles and Multi-Account Containers. The original poster was referring to Containers when saying "persona tabs."
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  > You can just configure multiple personas and work on them all simultaneously from the same window Really? I can configure two personas to go through two different proxies? I can disable javascript in one and leave it enabled in the other? Those are features I need in Containers, but as far as I've been able to read, they aren't present and there are no plans to allow for them.
remedan 9y ago
Firefox has supported multiple profiles for ages. Just run it with -P. It allows you to have separate history, extensions, bookmarks, everything. The new panel containers are also handy. They allow you to have shared history and bookmarks but separate cookies and sessions. You can be logged into the same site on different accounts in two tabs in the same window.
- freeone3000 9y ago
  There's no easy way of switching between them, starting a new firefox instance requires running from a command interpreter with -P specified, even the selection window isn't great. The containers feature is the alternative you want to propose here.
  - remedan 9y ago
    Well, you could add about:profiles to your bookmarks. But I agree that the UX around profiles in FF is a bit clunky. But containers don't have separate extensions, bookmarks and history so they can't completely replace profiles.
    - wheresmyusern 9y ago
      exactly. i cant believe nobody here seems to know about profiles or about:profiles. its the perfect solution. my setup is tree-style tabs (recently made to work with 57) and a different profile for each task (one profile for each language im learning, one for music, and one for each research topic i might be pursuing). whats your setup like?
      - Santosh83 9y ago
        But does about:profiles work bug-free for you? From my experience it has had a long standing bug: when you select a different profile to the one you're currently using and click the "Open profile in new window" button, it actually loads the current profile again in another window. I read on a forum somewhere (forget the link) that this was an acknowledged problem and would be fixed sometime in future. So at least until then, about:profiles is no replacement for using the -P command-line switch to start the profile manager. Using multiple profiles seamlessly is one area Firefox can and should seriously improve, or Chrome's "User" feature will always have the edge.
taway12340x0 9y ago
> I have work and a couple of personal accounts that I have signed in in different browser windows. Don't do that. On one hand you mix work and personal related issues (not recommended) on the other hand it makes it easier to track you (as your accounts can be correlated). As a dev I have my own (personal, work, ...) users/accounts even at home (if I do remote) to separate the stuff - maybe that's paranoid, but for me it was great to improve work-life balance.
- Myrmornis 9y ago
  Yes, it's paranoid, but I respect your decision to do it. However the imperative mood used in your first sentence is totally inappropriate. That's exactly what Profiles are for; the vast majority of people are going to want to process personal issues and work issues without signing in as a different user.
- blt 9y ago
  I am also worried about this, but how do you deal with it on mobile?
zeveb 9y ago
I use separate Firefox profiles. Try 'firefox --ProfileManager' to create one.
- geekamongus 9y ago
  -P for the lazy.
madeofpalk 9y ago
That's got nothing to do with 'signing into an account in Chrome'. Chrome supports multiple profiles, which may optionally be associated with a Google account. Firefox has the same thing, minus the Google account.
nathan_long 9y ago
I've been using Pinboard for bookmarks since before browsers started offering sync. I can create and search those bookmarks in any browser, and since I use multiple browsers on multile machines, that's handy. My webmail is also accessible from any browser. Syncing extensions and browsing history is not something I feel I need.
- geekamongus 9y ago
  Pinboard seems to be minimally maintained. I've tried contacting the developer (it is just one guy) and have had no response. A bit concerning, if you ask me.
  - scholia 9y ago
    I have seen him being very responsive to paying customers and his charges are reasonable. However, it seems he did get deluged with delicious users whining at him after he saved that service, and you wouldn't reasonably expect a one-man business to be able to handle that. You could always try tweeting him. He's also on HN.
    - geekamongus 9y ago
      Eh, I moved on. I paid for a year, but decided I didn't want to invest too much in a service that seemed more likely to vanish than others.
  - jonathankoren 9y ago
    You can always try Pocket. It's both mobile and desktop browser base, and supports search and tagging. Oh, and it's and it's built into Firefox now. DISCLOSURE: I work for Mozilla, and Pocket in particular.
    - geekamongus 9y ago
      Thanks...since Firefox Quantum blew me away the other day, I have been playing with Pocket. It's actually pretty cool.
fencepost 9y ago
The signing into an account in Chrome almost got someone fired at a small customer of mine a few weeks ago. Fortunately they called me first to look into it, I pointed out that the porn bookmarks in question were years old and that since Chrome was signed into a personal account it was pretty likely that the same account had been used by other family members at home. I also wrote this up for the owners to send to their staff, feel free to reuse if appropriate for you: We’ve seen at least one situation recently where a user “signed in” to Chrome when prompted, which brought that user’s personal bookmarks and website logins onto their work computer. While Chrome offers this as an option, there are no situations where your personal account should be linked to a browser at work – if you need to be using personal email, etc. please do so from your own phone or other device on your own time. This is for your own privacy and security as well as for the practice – we want to not have your personal data on our systems, and you don’t want your private email, bookmarks, etc. accessible to anyone else who happens to be at your desk while you’ve stepped away. If you have linked your browser to a personal account, please remove that connection using the instructions below. You can check whether Chrome is linked to an online account by clicking on the small person icon at the top right corner of the window – just to the left of the “X” to close the window. • If you click on that and it asks you to sign in, you’re not linked to an account. • If you click on that and it lists a personal account, click on “Manage People” to open a new window listing connected accounts. On each account there are 3 dots in the top right corner – click those and “Remove this person” • If you see a name rather than a generic person icon, click on that and use “Manage People” to remove that connected account. Firefox offers a similar but less-used version of this that would have required creating a Firefox account to use Firefox Sync. If you have done this with Firefox please disconnect it; if you’re not sure then you almost certainly haven’t done this in Firefox and don’t need to worry about it.
- dewiz 9y ago
  This story would deserve a blog post of its own. Google might not realize it, but the ease of being tracked by them is also a risk in work place.
  - justatdotin 9y ago
Manishearth 9y ago
Container tabs in Firefox lets you do this within a single window. about:profiles gives you the same functionality as Chrome's profiles; it's just a bit harder to discover.
_puk 9y ago
For most Google SPAs I use an appify tool, that contains the site in a single app webview with no shared cookie store. Then in my main FF browser I have cookie crushing on, so that when I navigate away from a domain, all cookies that were created are destroyed. Ok, I spend my life filling in captchas, but to me that’s a signal that it is working and Google aren’t overly sure who I am.
jrwiegand 9y ago
Yes, as other people have said containers does this magically. I even have Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp sign-ins in their own container. Everything is separate and I honestly feel safer on the net because of it.
JoshMnem 9y ago
Firefox containers[1] are new, but you could always do this with Firefox profiles. If you're on Linux or Mac, open a terminal and type: firefox -ProfileManager -no-remote & (I alias it to `ff`.) Create different profiles[2] for each separate browser you need, and then make shortcuts to launch them.[3] Each Firefox profile will work like a completely separate browser. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... [2] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-... [3] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Line_Options https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Lin...
- ufo 9y ago
  Or just "-P" if you want to be concise :)
arkh 9y ago
QubesOS. Makes fucking up accounts even harder to do. https://www.qubes-os.org/ https://www.qubes-os.org/

by e40 9y ago

ghostcluster 9y ago

But now that Google has fundamentally broken users' trust by locking people out of their own Google Docs through automated machine learning algorithm, can't you see why people are wanting to protect themselves from a corporate culture that allows those kinds of zealous and intrusive policies? It was locking out journalists drafting stories! How can you trust Google anymore? There's something rotten festering in Mountain View.

orbat 9y ago
People seem to have the laughable idea that somehow only government censorship is bad, or that corporations aren't capable of censorship in the first place because they're private entities. I mean, yes, the world will look like that if you reduce everything to contractual relationships like libertarians seem to do, but personally I hope we could hold corporations accountable for actions like these. Like it or not, we've become extremely reliant on cloud services; Google closing someone's account without the possibility of appeal may not be politically motivated censorship, but it's still arbitrary censorship (even if you did click on the "agree" button on the EULA nobody ever reads). Why shouldn't we hold corporations to the same standards as governments? If we don't want the government arbitrarily censoring people, why are we OK with corporations doing it?
- deong 9y ago
  > If we don't want the government arbitrarily censoring people, why are we OK with corporations doing it? Because the "opt-out" process is orders of magnitude easier. You don't have to use Google. Microsoft has online document creation applications, as does Apple, assuming iWork still exists. Or you can just write documents offline using any of several thousand tools. Corporate censorship is entirely under your control. You can always stop the censorship by simply not saying it using that corporation's tools. Corporations can control how you say something, but not what you say. Governments can control the act of saying it. One is far worse than the other.
  - Santosh83 9y ago
    Until all the big corps start censoring the same kinds of contents and behaviour by an unspoken consensus. At that point it becomes effectively as easy to live without all the major online services as it would be to live as an outlaw. Easier or more difficult to get by without shouldn't distract us from the core point GP made, that corporate (arbitrary) censorship, with no redress, should be taken as seriously as govt censorship. These days they are just two arms on the same chimera.
    - moomin 9y ago
      Consider this: imagine the guy sat next to you at work starts yelling at you with a loudhailer all day. Every day. And he never ever shuts up. (Alternatively, imagine that he just whispers "fuck santosh" all day.) Would you expect him to be free to continue doing it? Would you expect the government to stop him? Or would you expect your employer to stop him? The answer is: groups of people (and corporations are groups of people) are free to limit speech according to whatever rules the group decides upon. What you're proposing is that certain large corporations be treated as quasi-governmental entities. Which is a _free-speech restriction_. Not saying it's a bad idea, necessarily. But I'd rather my freedom to say that certain types of speech are unacceptable was guaranteed.
      - Santosh83 9y ago
        In which case there needs to be easy to employ mechanisms to redress grievances, which tech corps currently don't have. For example, account lockouts and DMCA takedowns (when done by error or if the user thinks is unfair) are pretty much permanent. Your best option is to accept the data loss, move on and create another account. My point is censorship is a huge responsibility and power, especially when it is done at the scale govts and multi-national corps do, and therefore it needs serious transparency and checks and balances, in both cases. I don't see this happening to satisfaction. Instances of regrettable censorship stay regrettable, and keep recurring.
        deong 9y ago
- voidmain 9y ago
  > Why shouldn't we hold corporations to the same standards as governments? Because one of these organizations can throw you into a cage to be raped and tortured for the rest of your life, and the other can deny you access to some fairly useful web apps.
  - eloisant 9y ago
    Denying someone's access to his own email inbox can have dramatic consequences on his life. Not as dramatic as being detained and tortured obviously, but still pretty serious. There is already a case where private companies can't shut down their service to you as they wish, it's utilities (water, electricity, gas). I hope we can recognize at some point that Internet access should count as a utility too, and some core services like email service too.
    - voidmain 9y ago
      So if that risk is so scary, build an e-mail service that protects someone's access to their inbox by contractual or technical means, and try to convince them to switch. Any power that you take away from (comparatively weak, subject to competition) Google by giving it to (already terrifyingly powerful and monopolistic) USG is not a move in the right direction.
      - kbenson 9y ago
        I think you're getting downvoted mostly because of calling Google "comparatively weak", but I think your point and your comparison is correct. Google is weak in comparison to the U.S. Government and, importantly, is subject to competition. There are other email services which offer what people want. Want people are proposing is imposing their will on Google and the people that run it, even though there is competition out there that people could use instead and get what they want. Gmail and Google Apps are far from the only options people have, and far from the only free options people have. But if it is so important that people have an email address, then the USG could actually offer that (I've long thought the USPS should offer verified email addresses with strict spam protection by aggressively pursuing violators). Otherwise, let people pay what they want for the level of assurance they want. The other side of this argument is that there are some things we do want to enforce companies do, such as offer a base level of health care in a package. I support this as well, because that solves an endemic problem where people have restricted choice and it also hurts society as a whole. That is, I think Hobby Lobby should have to provide birth control in their health plans because of the reasons outlined above, but I don't think any non governmental service provider that isn't a monopoly (and Google isn't a monopoly in cloud apps, even if there is an argument that can be made about them being one in search) should have to adhere to dictates about what what content they must allow on their service. That's a pretty slippery slope in my view.
- kbenson 9y ago
  > Why shouldn't we hold corporations to the same standards as governments? Because you have choice of what to use. You don't always (or even often) have choice of what country to live in, and there's not a lot of unclaimed land that's hospitable. Some people may want a service they know the operators of will be proactive about keeping certain content off. Others will want a service that makes it their goal to not do that and protect everything on it. Choice is key here, and the government stipulating what needs to be done is actually restrictive, not freeing (you're just imposing your own views on others systematically). When there isn't a choice of what service/product to use, that's when other laws may come into effect. Anti-trust laws.
DonHopkins 9y ago
Sign up for Google Gold and you can make as many abusive documents as you want, without any risk of automated censorship! https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/31/google-docs-users-locked-out/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/31/google-docs-users-locked...
- acgIssues 9y ago
  Now this is ridiculous. Thanks for sharing this article.
Johnny555 9y ago
But weren't they locking those users because their algorithm thought it saw malware? It's not like Google said "You're writing a story about bombs or some other inappropriate subject so we're locking you out". This sounds like one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" no-win solutions for Google. Users (and Google) don't want Google to allow people to use Google Docs to distribute malware and harvest passwords, they don't want someone at Google to look at their documents to see if they are "safe" (which Google couldn't realistically do even if they wanted to), so then people got upset when the automated software Google uses to look for these problems did a bad job for some people. While it'd be nice if every system and process worked well 100% of the time and had no bugs, that's just not a realistic expectation.

Thorncorona 9y ago

FF just came out with multi account containers about a month ago -> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
eli 9y ago
And prior to that you could run multiple Firefox instances with different profiles. Not super hard.
- nachtigall 9y ago
  > you could run multiple Firefox instances with different profiles But not at the same time, which is a showstopper to me (still using Firefox Nightly as main browser).
  - rhn_mk1 9y ago
    You can absolutely run multiple different instances at the same time. I've been using Firefox this way for over a year, 2 instances open right now.
    - drdaeman 9y ago
      It is possible, but it's messy in terms of which one is the default (clicking on links outside of the browser), taskbar/launcher buttons (OS- and DE-dependent, some configurations have issues e.g. with pinning) etc. I think there was something else - minor and just slightly inconvenient - but I forgot. Compared to ProfileManager, Container Tabs are absolutely awesome. Completely different experience, smooth and nice.
      - jakub_g 9y ago
        ProfileManager is a bit awkward indeed. You can pass `-p primaryprofile` and `-p secondaryprofile -no-remote` to make sure that links from OS are not opened in the 2nd instance, but then, when you close Firefox and click an external link, it will open Firefox with the last opened profile, which might be `secondaryprofile`. The solution for me was to use one Firefox installation per profile: primary = stable, secondary = nightly. Container tabs are way nicer than this, but since I open lots of tabs, I still like the distinction between stable and nightly (stable = regular browsing, nightly = FB).

fiatjaf 9y ago

Firefox 58 has "persona" tabs. Coloured tabs that keep their own sessions. You can just configure multiple personas and work on them all simultaneously from the same window (or you can use different windows, if you prefer). It's good even for creating fake accounts, test accounts, testing apps from the perspective of different user sessions etc.

wtetzner 9y ago
They're available in earlier versions, but I think you have to turn in on in about:config.
Myrmornis 9y ago
Can I check I understand: Firefox has - Profiles - Containers - Persona tabs ?
- callahad 9y ago
  Just two things: Profiles and Multi-Account Containers. The original poster was referring to Containers when saying "persona tabs."
thaumasiotes 9y ago
> You can just configure multiple personas and work on them all simultaneously from the same window Really? I can configure two personas to go through two different proxies? I can disable javascript in one and leave it enabled in the other? Those are features I need in Containers, but as far as I've been able to read, they aren't present and there are no plans to allow for them.

remedan 9y ago

Firefox has supported multiple profiles for ages. Just run it with -P. It allows you to have separate history, extensions, bookmarks, everything. The new panel containers are also handy. They allow you to have shared history and bookmarks but separate cookies and sessions. You can be logged into the same site on different accounts in two tabs in the same window.

freeone3000 9y ago
There's no easy way of switching between them, starting a new firefox instance requires running from a command interpreter with -P specified, even the selection window isn't great. The containers feature is the alternative you want to propose here.
- remedan 9y ago
  Well, you could add about:profiles to your bookmarks. But I agree that the UX around profiles in FF is a bit clunky. But containers don't have separate extensions, bookmarks and history so they can't completely replace profiles.
  - wheresmyusern 9y ago
    exactly. i cant believe nobody here seems to know about profiles or about:profiles. its the perfect solution. my setup is tree-style tabs (recently made to work with 57) and a different profile for each task (one profile for each language im learning, one for music, and one for each research topic i might be pursuing). whats your setup like?
    - Santosh83 9y ago
      But does about:profiles work bug-free for you? From my experience it has had a long standing bug: when you select a different profile to the one you're currently using and click the "Open profile in new window" button, it actually loads the current profile again in another window. I read on a forum somewhere (forget the link) that this was an acknowledged problem and would be fixed sometime in future. So at least until then, about:profiles is no replacement for using the -P command-line switch to start the profile manager. Using multiple profiles seamlessly is one area Firefox can and should seriously improve, or Chrome's "User" feature will always have the edge.

taway12340x0 9y ago

> I have work and a couple of personal accounts that I have signed in in different browser windows. Don't do that. On one hand you mix work and personal related issues (not recommended) on the other hand it makes it easier to track you (as your accounts can be correlated). As a dev I have my own (personal, work, ...) users/accounts even at home (if I do remote) to separate the stuff - maybe that's paranoid, but for me it was great to improve work-life balance.

Myrmornis 9y ago
Yes, it's paranoid, but I respect your decision to do it. However the imperative mood used in your first sentence is totally inappropriate. That's exactly what Profiles are for; the vast majority of people are going to want to process personal issues and work issues without signing in as a different user.
blt 9y ago
I am also worried about this, but how do you deal with it on mobile?

zeveb 9y ago

I use separate Firefox profiles. Try 'firefox --ProfileManager' to create one.

geekamongus 9y ago
-P for the lazy.

madeofpalk 9y ago

That's got nothing to do with 'signing into an account in Chrome'. Chrome supports multiple profiles, which may optionally be associated with a Google account. Firefox has the same thing, minus the Google account.

nathan_long 9y ago

I've been using Pinboard for bookmarks since before browsers started offering sync. I can create and search those bookmarks in any browser, and since I use multiple browsers on multile machines, that's handy. My webmail is also accessible from any browser. Syncing extensions and browsing history is not something I feel I need.

geekamongus 9y ago
Pinboard seems to be minimally maintained. I've tried contacting the developer (it is just one guy) and have had no response. A bit concerning, if you ask me.
- scholia 9y ago
  I have seen him being very responsive to paying customers and his charges are reasonable. However, it seems he did get deluged with delicious users whining at him after he saved that service, and you wouldn't reasonably expect a one-man business to be able to handle that. You could always try tweeting him. He's also on HN.
  - geekamongus 9y ago
    Eh, I moved on. I paid for a year, but decided I didn't want to invest too much in a service that seemed more likely to vanish than others.
- jonathankoren 9y ago
  You can always try Pocket. It's both mobile and desktop browser base, and supports search and tagging. Oh, and it's and it's built into Firefox now. DISCLOSURE: I work for Mozilla, and Pocket in particular.
  - geekamongus 9y ago
    Thanks...since Firefox Quantum blew me away the other day, I have been playing with Pocket. It's actually pretty cool.

fencepost 9y ago

The signing into an account in Chrome almost got someone fired at a small customer of mine a few weeks ago. Fortunately they called me first to look into it, I pointed out that the porn bookmarks in question were years old and that since Chrome was signed into a personal account it was pretty likely that the same account had been used by other family members at home. I also wrote this up for the owners to send to their staff, feel free to reuse if appropriate for you: We’ve seen at least one situation recently where a user “signed in” to Chrome when prompted, which brought that user’s personal bookmarks and website logins onto their work computer. While Chrome offers this as an option, there are no situations where your personal account should be linked to a browser at work – if you need to be using personal email, etc. please do so from your own phone or other device on your own time. This is for your own privacy and security as well as for the practice – we want to not have your personal data on our systems, and you don’t want your private email, bookmarks, etc. accessible to anyone else who happens to be at your desk while you’ve stepped away. If you have linked your browser to a personal account, please remove that connection using the instructions below. You can check whether Chrome is linked to an online account by clicking on the small person icon at the top right corner of the window – just to the left of the “X” to close the window. • If you click on that and it asks you to sign in, you’re not linked to an account. • If you click on that and it lists a personal account, click on “Manage People” to open a new window listing connected accounts. On each account there are 3 dots in the top right corner – click those and “Remove this person” • If you see a name rather than a generic person icon, click on that and use “Manage People” to remove that connected account. Firefox offers a similar but less-used version of this that would have required creating a Firefox account to use Firefox Sync. If you have done this with Firefox please disconnect it; if you’re not sure then you almost certainly haven’t done this in Firefox and don’t need to worry about it.

dewiz 9y ago
This story would deserve a blog post of its own. Google might not realize it, but the ease of being tracked by them is also a risk in work place.
- justatdotin 9y ago

Manishearth 9y ago

Container tabs in Firefox lets you do this within a single window. about:profiles gives you the same functionality as Chrome's profiles; it's just a bit harder to discover.

_puk 9y ago

For most Google SPAs I use an appify tool, that contains the site in a single app webview with no shared cookie store. Then in my main FF browser I have cookie crushing on, so that when I navigate away from a domain, all cookies that were created are destroyed. Ok, I spend my life filling in captchas, but to me that’s a signal that it is working and Google aren’t overly sure who I am.

jrwiegand 9y ago

Yes, as other people have said containers does this magically. I even have Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp sign-ins in their own container. Everything is separate and I honestly feel safer on the net because of it.

JoshMnem 9y ago

Firefox containers[1] are new, but you could always do this with Firefox profiles. If you're on Linux or Mac, open a terminal and type: firefox -ProfileManager -no-remote & (I alias it to `ff`.) Create different profiles[2] for each separate browser you need, and then make shortcuts to launch them.[3] Each Firefox profile will work like a completely separate browser. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... [2] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-... [3] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Line_Options https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Lin...

ufo 9y ago
Or just "-P" if you want to be concise :)

arkh 9y ago

QubesOS. Makes fucking up accounts even harder to do. https://www.qubes-os.org/ https://www.qubes-os.org/