Firefox 3 beta goes portable

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Mozilla, Browser Tips, Beta

Firefox 3 beta goes portable

by Brad Linder Dec 7th 2007

Want to test out Firefox 3 beta without messing up all of your precious Firefox 2 settings? Easy, just install the portable version. The Portable Apps developers have been doing a great job of pushing out versions of Firefox that can be run from a flash drive within a few days of every major Firefox release lately. And now that Firefox 3 has hit the beta stage, they've started portablizing (is that a word?) it as well.

Because Firefox Portable is self-contained, it will not write any data to your hard drive or registry. That means you can test out Firefox 3's new features like Places, and improved location bar without messing up your current settings. You don't have to install Firefox 3 Portable to a flash drive, you can just as easily install it to a folder on your hard drive.

If you want to run Firefox 3 beta while you have a Firefox 2 window open, you'll need to make one small tweak. Find the FirefoxPortable.ini file in \Other\Sources\ and copy it to the directory that has FirefoxPortable.exe. Edit FirefoxPortable.ini with Notepad, Wordpad, or whatever text editor you prefer, and change AllowMultipleInstances=false so that it says true. Save the file and you can now run Firefox 2 and 3 at the same time.

[via CyberNet]

Tags: Firefox, Firefox-3, Firefox-portable

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Gardiner Westbound said 1:46PM on 12-07-2007

It wouldn't work for me.

RP said 10:14PM on 12-09-2007

It ran for me, but I didn't see the "Places" button. Is there a way to enable it?

yhancik said 8:11AM on 12-16-2007

Bookmarks -> Organize bookmarks

RP said 5:38PM on 12-16-2007

Firefox 3 beta has a button named "Places" on the Bookmarks toolbar (left side). The button leads to several sub-menus:
- Recently Starred Pages
- Recently Visited Starred Pages
- Most Visited Starred Pages
- Recently Used Tags
- Most Used Tags
- Most Visited Pages
I don't see any of this in the portable version... even though the article mentions it. My bookmarks toolbar only has "Getting Started".

Redneck Techy said 12:29AM on 12-10-2007

It did not work for me either till I moved a copy of the FirefoxPortable.ini file with the tweak above to the outer location where the FirefoxPortable.exe file is. It was not enough just to change the file where it was at I actually have two seperate copies both of them adjusted to AllowMultipleInstances=true. Now it works great

www.tech-weekly.com

SonofPearl said 5:22PM on 12-13-2007

Doesn't work for me either. The 'install' button is greyed out. The tweak makes no difference.

yhancik said 8:11AM on 12-16-2007

I've seen the same issue (greyed out button) if you don't select a proper install directory (not the default "/firefoxportable" or whatever it was)

SonofPearl said 9:36AM on 12-20-2007

It still doesn't work - wherever I try to install it on my memory stick.

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