Firefox-portable posts

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Browsers

How to make Firefox Portable your default web browser

by Brad Linder Oct 8th 2009

Your default web browser in Windows is the one that opens any time you click a link to open a web page, open an HTML file, or take any other number of actions that would require a browser to load. It's typically pretty easy to make a browser your default. When you run Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, or Opera for the first time, odds are the browser will ask if you want to make it your default.

Things get a little more tricky when you start using portable browsers. These are browser that you can run without actually installing them to your computer. They don't write any data to your registry and all the files tend to be contained within a single folder which you can run from your hard drive, or a removable USB Flash drive or other media. One of the most popular is Firefox Portable.

But since Firefox Portable doesn't write anything to your registry, it doesn't ask if you want to make it your default browser. That's where a little freeware tool called DefaultBrowser comes in.

We first covered this tool a couple of years ago, when it allowed you to quickly and select your default browser from a small list of web browsers. But as the folks at Freeware Genius recently noticed, DefaultBrowser added support for Firefox Portable last year. That means all you have to do to set Firefox Portable as your default is download DefaultBrowser, run it once, click Firefox Portable, and hit "apply."

You can also select other portable browsers or any web browser not included in the DefaultBrowser by selecting pretty much any executable file using the "select your web browser" setting.

If you run Firefox Portable from a USB flash drive, if the drive letter changes you will have to register the program again.

Tags: default-browser, defaultbrowser, firefox-portable, web-browsers

Filed under: Mozilla, Browsers

Firefox 3.7a1pre Portable lets you try before you install

by Brad Linder Aug 15th 2009

Curious about the first pre-release version of Firefox 3.7, but don't want to actually install it on your computer and risk messing up your Firefox profile? ~~The folks at PortableAppz have put together a portable package. What that means is you can run Firefox 3.7a1pre as an executable file without installing it first.~~

Instead of an installer, what you get when you download the portable version is an application that you click in order to extract the contents to any folder on your hard drive or a USB flash drive. Then all you have to do is open that folder and click the FirefoxPortable.exe file to launch the browser.

Keep in mind, this is pre-release software. It hasn't even reached the Alpha stage yet, which means there may be some major bugs lurking beneath the hood, so don't expect miracles. But that's all the more reason for using a portable version.

Eventually Firefox 3.7 may introduce a tweaked theme with redesigned toolbars. For now, the biggest difference between Firefox 3.7 and Firefox 3.5.2 (the latest stable edition) and Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1 (the latest Alpha version) is that Firefox 3.7a1pre features an even newer version of the Gecko rendering engine.

Update: We've removed the link to the PortableAppz download for two reasons. First, the site sharing unauthorized versions of this and other software. And more importantly, the fine folks at PortableApps.com that make an excellent suite of Portable Software asked RapidShare to remove the download links for the unofficial software that also happened to violate the PortableApps trademark.

Fortunately PortableApps.com now has a portable version of Firefox 3.7a1pre. Actually, it's even better than that. The new portable version of Firefox automatically downloads the latest pre-release builds of Firefox, so you can always test the bleeding edge (and often unstable) version of the browser without installing anything to your computer.

thanks John!

Tags: firefox-3.7, firefox-3.7a1pre, firefox-portable, portable, pre-alpha

Filed under: Windows, Linux, Mozilla, Browsers

Firefox 3.5 exceeds 7 million downloads, portable, Ubuntu versions available

by Brad Linder Jul 2nd 2009

In the few days since Firefox 3.5 was officially unleashed on the public, it's been downloaded well over 7 million times according to Mozilla's real-time download tracker. That's nowhere near the estimated 8 million downloads achieved in the first 24 hours after Firefox 3.0 launched, but it's still pretty good.

It's also probably worth pointing out that anyone who was running Firefox 3.5 RC3 on launch day probably isn't included in these numbers since RC3 is basically the same as the final release, which means if you had that version installed you didn't download any updates.

Now that there's a new version of Firefox, there's also a new version of Firefox Portable, which lets you run the browser from a USB flash drive. If you were running an older version of Firefox Portable you should be able to upgrade automatically from within the browser. But if you want to give Firefox 3.5 a try without installing it to your computer, the portable version is an excellent alternative.

And while Mozilla thinks Firefox 3.5 is stable enough to take remove the "beta" and "release candidate" labels, some Linux distributions might be slower to add the browser to their repositories. But that doesn't mean you can't install the browser manually. Kabatology has posted instructions for installing Firefox 3.5 in Ubuntu by typing a single line of code into a terminal window.

[via Lifehacker]

Tags: firefox, firefox-3.5, firefox-portable, ubuntu

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

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

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