Firefox 3 beta 5 portable edition available - safest way to try out FF3b5

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Windows, Mozilla, Beta

Firefox 3 beta 5 portable edition available - safest way to try out FF3b5

by Brad Linder Apr 2nd 2008

Those folks at PortableApps are getting faster and faster. Just a few hours after Firefox 3 beta 5 was released, the portable version was available for download. Actually, it might have been available immediately, but we didn't think to look for it until a few hours had passed.

What exactly is a portable app? Well, in Windows, it basically means a version of an application that doesn't need to be installed to a particular folder, doesn't need to write entries to the Windows registry, and typically doesn't show up in the Add/Remove dialog. So you can install portable applications to a USB flash drive and take them with you to use on any computer.

But you can also install a portable application like Firefox 3 beta 5 portable edition to any folder on your hard drive. Why would you want to do that? Because then you can try out the latest test version of Firefox without overwriting any of your Firefox 2 settings. The down side is that Firefox portable edition will not import any of your Firefox 2 settings automatically. But you can use programs like the Firefox Environment Backup Extension to copy some of your settings.

Tags: firefox, firefox-3-beta-5, firefox-portable, portable-edition, portableapps

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Josh said 6:30AM on 4-03-2008

Except for some incompatibilities (which isn't something Mozilla should worry about. The developers such as Weblogs, Inc. should be releasing new software for you guys, for example) Firefox 3 is ready for release. They finally fixed my long complained about problem with Digg (that was in fact an error on their end) and I have nothing else wrong in the nightlies (which has very little different from beta 5 at the moment) other than the terrible Proto skin for Macs. Installing Firefox 3 right now is pretty much just as safe as going portable with it until the big release. :P

Will said 6:36AM on 4-03-2008

beta 5 is really awesome, the interface pretty much ready to go and is very smooth. i haven't found any glitches in it yet and i've been using it for a few hours straight

TurboFool said 12:20PM on 4-03-2008

The beta versions already install side-by-side with 2.0 and don't kill settings as far as I can tell, so that's not really a major concern. The PortableApps versions are cool for plenty of other reasons, though.

So far beta 5 is good for me, as well. beta 4 was initially quite strong and then slowly sunk into frequent crashes. Knock on wood, 5 hasn't given me that trouble yet.

Samuel Lago said 1:23PM on 4-03-2008

I remember when FF2 was in beta and they wouldn't release it until it was gold, they caught on...

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