5 ms·

I'm a pretty heavy user of Chrome profiles .. definitely doesn't feel as well thought out in Firefox.

lol768 9y ago
As someone who's not really used Chrome aside from browser testing (which used to involve a lot of cursing because flexbox min sizing was broken), can you explain what Chrome profiles offer over e.g. container tabs? Are you using them as separate cookie jars, to install different extensions or something else?
- scotu 9y ago
  they allow different sets of extensions (and cookie jar and so on) and they are basically segregated by window (no tabs with different profile in the same window). In the end they are different from containers in the general purpose (they are geared towards having a multi user experience more than firefox's multi identity/privacy) but chrome's take is much less frustrating to manage in my experience because you can't open the wrong type of tab involuntarly. That said I switched to firefox and this (and lack of U2F 2nd factor auth) is the only pain point so far
  - hadrien01 9y ago
    What you're looking for is called Firefox profiles. Just launch firefox -P.
    - scotu 9y ago
      I'd love a combination of the two maybe, but profiles are probably good enough, thanks
  - lol768 9y ago
    > That said I switched to firefox and this (and lack of U2F 2nd factor auth) is the only pain point so far You should be able to flip "security.webauth.u2f" depending on your release channel. If not available yet, I think it will be soon in any case.
    - Tomte 9y ago
      None of the sites where I've been using U2F works. Some/many sites are sniffing the user agent. And as far as I have googled, there may be a bug in Mozilla's implementation (or maybe a different interpretation of the standard) that they are currently fixing.
      - Manishearth 9y ago
        It's not a bug in Mozilla's implementation. Google has a JS u2f library that relies on an implementation specific detail of Chrome's U2F impl. Lots of folks use this library.
        Tomte 9y ago
        Hm, that's not good. Is that implementation detail something Mozilla might replicate?
        Manishearth 9y ago
        Not easily IIRC. Google is aware of that bug so I think we're going to just wait.
    - Manishearth 9y ago
      I wouldn't do that right now. It's available, and it works for some sites (Github), but not Duo or Google or most sites. The reason behind this isn't Firefox's fault, Google has a js u2f library that they've written that relies on implementation specific details. It's not easy for Firefox to switch over to that particular unspecced behavior, nor should it, really, so you need to wait for Google to fix it and consumers to pull it in. Usually the effect of this is that yubikey login doesn't work on some sites, however a couple weeks ago it went to the level that GMail login didn't work at all; it would log you in and show the progress bar and get stuck there (without even throwing up a JS error)
  - JetSpiegel 9y ago
    You want Profiles then. Run `firefox -P` to get a functional GUI. Create some profiles and named them. Create links that run `firefox -P Work`, `firefox -P Personal`, `firefox -P Furries`, whatever. If you have other firefox instances opened, add `--no-remote` to the command line. They are completely separate instances of Firefox, they share only the executable.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
mintplant 9y ago
Try Firefox Containers: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
randomString1 9y ago
I agree. Here's my setup for standalone/isolated profiles if it's any help: "firefox.exe" -no-remote -fullscreen -P "spotify-profile" -url "https://open.spotify.com" and user_pref("taskbar.grouping.useprofile", true) so that I get separate icons in my taskbar for each profile https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Line_Options https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Lin...
- idle_processor 9y ago
  > and user_pref("taskbar.grouping.useprofile", true) so that I get separate icons in my taskbar for each profile Thanks for bringing this up. It was bothering me. Here are specific instructions on how to do this, for the curious: https://superuser.com/a/1050664 https://superuser.com/a/1050664 And in case anyone's curious about changing the icons of the different profiles in the taskbar, there's this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/24398229 https://stackoverflow.com/a/24398229
Manishearth 9y ago
Firefox has about:profiles; they work much the same but don't have as good a UI. I prefer Container Tabs, which basically let you have profiles on a per-tab basis. So you can have some green tabs, some yellow tabs, and some pink tabs, and each is effectively a separate profile cookie-wise. This is a built in feature but I recommend using https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... since it enhances it.
- konart 9y ago
  They really need to imorove usability of this feature though. At the very least you should be able to move the existing tabs to a given container and add sites to some list to be opened in a given container by default. Right now workflow is too inconvenient.
  - Manishearth 9y ago
    I believe the original test feature had something like this (maybe I'm misremembering) and the final release didn't. Maybe it's something they plan on polishing up and adding.

As someone who's not really used Chrome aside from browser testing (which used to involve a lot of cursing because flexbox min sizing was broken), can you explain what Chrome profiles offer over e.g. container tabs? Are you using them as separate cookie jars, to install different extensions or something else?

scotu 9y ago
they allow different sets of extensions (and cookie jar and so on) and they are basically segregated by window (no tabs with different profile in the same window). In the end they are different from containers in the general purpose (they are geared towards having a multi user experience more than firefox's multi identity/privacy) but chrome's take is much less frustrating to manage in my experience because you can't open the wrong type of tab involuntarly. That said I switched to firefox and this (and lack of U2F 2nd factor auth) is the only pain point so far
- hadrien01 9y ago
  What you're looking for is called Firefox profiles. Just launch firefox -P.
  - scotu 9y ago
    I'd love a combination of the two maybe, but profiles are probably good enough, thanks
- lol768 9y ago
  > That said I switched to firefox and this (and lack of U2F 2nd factor auth) is the only pain point so far You should be able to flip "security.webauth.u2f" depending on your release channel. If not available yet, I think it will be soon in any case.
  - Tomte 9y ago
    None of the sites where I've been using U2F works. Some/many sites are sniffing the user agent. And as far as I have googled, there may be a bug in Mozilla's implementation (or maybe a different interpretation of the standard) that they are currently fixing.
    - Manishearth 9y ago
      It's not a bug in Mozilla's implementation. Google has a JS u2f library that relies on an implementation specific detail of Chrome's U2F impl. Lots of folks use this library.
      - Tomte 9y ago
        Hm, that's not good. Is that implementation detail something Mozilla might replicate?
        Manishearth 9y ago
        Not easily IIRC. Google is aware of that bug so I think we're going to just wait.
  - Manishearth 9y ago
    I wouldn't do that right now. It's available, and it works for some sites (Github), but not Duo or Google or most sites. The reason behind this isn't Firefox's fault, Google has a js u2f library that they've written that relies on implementation specific details. It's not easy for Firefox to switch over to that particular unspecced behavior, nor should it, really, so you need to wait for Google to fix it and consumers to pull it in. Usually the effect of this is that yubikey login doesn't work on some sites, however a couple weeks ago it went to the level that GMail login didn't work at all; it would log you in and show the progress bar and get stuck there (without even throwing up a JS error)
- JetSpiegel 9y ago
  You want Profiles then. Run `firefox -P` to get a functional GUI. Create some profiles and named them. Create links that run `firefox -P Work`, `firefox -P Personal`, `firefox -P Furries`, whatever. If you have other firefox instances opened, add `--no-remote` to the command line. They are completely separate instances of Firefox, they share only the executable.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

mintplant 9y ago

Try Firefox Containers: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

randomString1 9y ago

I agree. Here's my setup for standalone/isolated profiles if it's any help: "firefox.exe" -no-remote -fullscreen -P "spotify-profile" -url "https://open.spotify.com" and user_pref("taskbar.grouping.useprofile", true) so that I get separate icons in my taskbar for each profile https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Line_Options https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Lin...

idle_processor 9y ago
> and user_pref("taskbar.grouping.useprofile", true) so that I get separate icons in my taskbar for each profile Thanks for bringing this up. It was bothering me. Here are specific instructions on how to do this, for the curious: https://superuser.com/a/1050664 https://superuser.com/a/1050664 And in case anyone's curious about changing the icons of the different profiles in the taskbar, there's this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/24398229 https://stackoverflow.com/a/24398229

Manishearth 9y ago

Firefox has about:profiles; they work much the same but don't have as good a UI. I prefer Container Tabs, which basically let you have profiles on a per-tab basis. So you can have some green tabs, some yellow tabs, and some pink tabs, and each is effectively a separate profile cookie-wise. This is a built in feature but I recommend using https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... since it enhances it.

konart 9y ago
They really need to imorove usability of this feature though. At the very least you should be able to move the existing tabs to a given container and add sites to some list to be opened in a given container by default. Right now workflow is too inconvenient.
- Manishearth 9y ago
  I believe the original test feature had something like this (maybe I'm misremembering) and the final release didn't. Maybe it's something they plan on polishing up and adding.