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If only it gracefully supported profiles in a similar way to Chrome. Having two binaries running gets real funky when you want to open a page in whatever browse

If only it gracefully supported profiles in a similar way to Chrome. Having two binaries running gets real funky when you want to open a page in whatever browser window you recently used, which also happens to be the most recent profile, too.

teekert 3y ago
Is this not a use case for containers? On any other browser I always miss my containers.
wjdp 3y ago
I'm aware it's not the same as Chrome profiles but multi-account containers, where individual tabs can have their own sessions, is a killer feature of Firefox. The ability to have multiple AWS accounts logged into at the same time in tabs side by side is a real time saver.
mrj 3y ago
I use containers with SideBerry for this. I have panels dedicated to google accounts (broadly: work, other and personal). When I'm in a panel and click a link it opens correctly with the right container and corresponding auth. It's the best flow I've found. You can also set rules for domains to always open (or prompt) in a container, but I found that to be too much work for several common domains that I use from different profiles. I do still have rules set up for some things like Github, which should always use my personal container. That's nice since no matter what mode I'm working in, it opens correctly and I don't have to log into Github for each container. And I have stuff like Linkedin and Facebook firewalled into a social container.
danShumway 3y ago
The problem is there's no single right answer about how isolated profiles should be. Firefox offers two options: 1. full profiles, which are almost completely isolated. They're separate processes, the data can live on separate parts of your computer. I do not want that to go away, I like being able to have almost separate Firefox installs on my computer. 2. containers, which are lighter profiles than Chrome and attempt to isolate sites without isolating browser settings. I also really like these, and I don't want them to go away, although I wouldn't mind them getting some additional controls for segmenting more of the browser. What a lot of people want is: 3. Something in the middle between those two things. I'm not opposed to that, but I don't think it's necessarily settled that Chrome's approach is perfect or that different users might not want some things to be less separated than Chrome's approach or more separated. "Something in the middle" can mean a lot of different things, and there are a lot of users that sound like they're asking for the same things (better profiles), when I suspect in actuality many of them have very different ideas about what they want that to look like. I'm down for Firefox offering more options there, but I don't know that there is a singular version of profiles that would satisfy everyone, I suspect the only way this actually works is if it's somewhat configurable. And I definitely don't want the less isolated version of profiles to replace the real actually isolated profiles that Firefox has now. I want at least the option to keep my profiles as separate binaries. Rather than making a completely separate 3rd option, maybe the better option is for containers to have more customization and to allow more isolation? Firefox already doesn't really expose containers without an extension (which is probably a mistake, but whatever) so having different extensions that are hooking in differently and could turn on/off different isolation features might be a middle ground. It does get a little weird if you also want to also isolate addons, but...

teekert 3y ago

Is this not a use case for containers? On any other browser I always miss my containers.

wjdp 3y ago

I'm aware it's not the same as Chrome profiles but multi-account containers, where individual tabs can have their own sessions, is a killer feature of Firefox. The ability to have multiple AWS accounts logged into at the same time in tabs side by side is a real time saver.

mrj 3y ago

I use containers with SideBerry for this. I have panels dedicated to google accounts (broadly: work, other and personal). When I'm in a panel and click a link it opens correctly with the right container and corresponding auth. It's the best flow I've found. You can also set rules for domains to always open (or prompt) in a container, but I found that to be too much work for several common domains that I use from different profiles. I do still have rules set up for some things like Github, which should always use my personal container. That's nice since no matter what mode I'm working in, it opens correctly and I don't have to log into Github for each container. And I have stuff like Linkedin and Facebook firewalled into a social container.

danShumway 3y ago

The problem is there's no single right answer about how isolated profiles should be. Firefox offers two options: 1. full profiles, which are almost completely isolated. They're separate processes, the data can live on separate parts of your computer. I do not want that to go away, I like being able to have almost separate Firefox installs on my computer. 2. containers, which are lighter profiles than Chrome and attempt to isolate sites without isolating browser settings. I also really like these, and I don't want them to go away, although I wouldn't mind them getting some additional controls for segmenting more of the browser. What a lot of people want is: 3. Something in the middle between those two things. I'm not opposed to that, but I don't think it's necessarily settled that Chrome's approach is perfect or that different users might not want some things to be less separated than Chrome's approach or more separated. "Something in the middle" can mean a lot of different things, and there are a lot of users that sound like they're asking for the same things (better profiles), when I suspect in actuality many of them have very different ideas about what they want that to look like. I'm down for Firefox offering more options there, but I don't know that there is a singular version of profiles that would satisfy everyone, I suspect the only way this actually works is if it's somewhat configurable. And I definitely don't want the less isolated version of profiles to replace the real actually isolated profiles that Firefox has now. I want at least the option to keep my profiles as separate binaries. Rather than making a completely separate 3rd option, maybe the better option is for containers to have more customization and to allow more isolation? Firefox already doesn't really expose containers without an extension (which is probably a mistake, but whatever) so having different extensions that are hooking in differently and could turn on/off different isolation features might be a middle ground. It does get a little weird if you also want to also isolate addons, but...