Muffinresearch Labs by Stuart Colville

Run Firefox 2.0 and 1.5 side by side | Comments (10)

Posted in Browsers on 25th October 2006, 12:28 pm by Stuart

If you want to run Firefox 2.0 and Firefox 1.5 side by side you can with a Portable Firefox for both Mac and Windows. These applications allow you to keep separate profiles so you effective keep the older version of firefox as a standalone with a copy of your current profile.

Update: I’ve updated the mac instructions – 27/10/06

Instructions for mac (OSX 10.4+ only):

Note: To save yourself the trouble of carrying out steps 1-9 you can download a custom version of Portable firefox with the script fix and the Firefox 1.5.0.7 already inside the Portable Firefox.app. All you need to do then is run it and copy your profile across as per steps 10-14.

  1. Back-up your current firefox 1.5 profile found in /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default first.
  2. Next download portable PortableFirefox_2.0_en-US-OSX_r4.0 from http://www.freesmug.org/portableapps/firefox/
  3. Download Firefox 1.5.0.7 from http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/1.5.0.7/
  4. Open the PortableFirefox_2.0_en-US-OSX_r4.0.dmg and drag the Portable Firefox folder to your Desktop.
  5. Open Firefox 1.5.0.7.dmg
  6. Open the Portable Firefox folder on your desktop.
  7. Right Click Portable Firefox.app and select “Show package contents”
  8. Copy the the Firefox.app from the mounted Firefox 1.5.0.7.dmg into Content/Resources/ of the Portable Firefox.app package.
  9. Next edit the script file and comment out (with a #) the line quitapp at the bottom of the file
  10. Run Portable Firefox.app
  11. You will be asked do you want to copy an existing profile. Click copy, and then select the 1.5 profile to be copied.
  12. Once this is done successfully firefox 1.5.0.7 will open.
  13. Once you are happy quit this version of firefox and drag the Portable Firefox.app into your applications folder. If you want by all means rename it to Firefox.1.5.app
  14. Next download and install firefox 2.0 in the usual way by dragging the firefox.app into applcations overwriting the old firefox.app If you want to be super careful you can rename the 1.5 firefox.app first so that it make rolling back easier (you did keep a copy of your profile right?) .

Instructions for mac:

  1. Back-up your current firefox 1.5 profile found in /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default first.
  2. Next download portable firefox (Portable Firefox_1.5.0.7_en-US-OSX_r3.0.dmg) from http://www.freesmug.org/portableapps/firefox/
  3. Open the .dmg and drag the portable firefox folder to your applications directory.
  4. Copy the 1.5 profile you just backed up to /Applications/Portable Firefox OS X/app/
  5. Rename the profile directory in /Applications/Portable Firefox OS X/app/
  6. Rename the profile you copied to profile
  7. Test the standalone firefox 1.5.0.7
  8. Next download and install firefox 2.0 in the usual way by dragging the firefox.app into applcations overwriting the old firefox.app If you want to be super careful you can rename the 1.5 firefox.app first so that it make rolling back easier (you did keep a copy of your profile right?) .
  9. Finally Drag the “OPEN Portable Firefox OSX.app” from /Applications/Portable Firefox OS X/ to your dock to run the standalone.

Instructions for PC:

  1. Backup your current profile at C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxx.default
  2. Download portable firefox from http://portableapps.com/news/2006-09-26_-_firefox_portable_1.5.0.7
  3. Double click the .exe you’ve just downloaded. I recommend saving it to C:\Program Files\ the installer will create the directory FirefoxPortable for you in the location you specify
  4. Copy the backed up firefox 1.5.0.7 profile to C:\Program Files\FirefoxPortable\Data\
  5. Rename C:\Program Files\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile to profile.old
  6. Rename your copied profile C:\Program Files\FirefoxPortable\Data\xxxxxx.default to profile
  7. Test the installation by running: C:\Program Files\FirefoxPortable\FirefoxPortable.exe
  8. Download and install firefox 2.0 over your original firefox installation. Make sure you keep a separate copy of your profile handy incase you need to roll back to 1.5.

The only downside with the windows version is that you can’t run both portable firefox 1.5 and firefox 2.0 at exactly the same time but I guess I can live with that. PortableFirefox complains when Firefox 2.0 is already open and if you open firefox 2.0 when the portable app is open Firefox ends up loooking like firefox 1.5!

Post Tools

Comments: Add yours

1. On October 25th, 2006 at 12:07 pm George said:

Blast! This is a much more elegant solution than the one I found yesterday…

This was to save the different versions as Firefox-1.0.app, Firefox-1.5.app, Firefox-2.0.app in the Applicaitons folder, create a different profile for each version and then use terminal to launch the profile manager to run standalone versions.

To launch older versions I use the following in Terminal:
Firefox 1
/Applications/Firefox-1.0.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -Profilemanager

Firefox 1.5
/Applications/Firefox-1.5.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -Profilemanager

It works really well but your solution looks easier so I’ll update to that in due course.

On windows I just save versions in different folders and have not had any problems to date.

2. On October 25th, 2006 at 12:42 pm Stuart Colville said:

@George: If you just rename the folders in Windows doesn’t that mean that each version will use the same profile? Or can you change that in the profile manager?

3. On October 26th, 2006 at 10:58 pm sean said:

Thanks for the instructions!

4. On October 26th, 2006 at 11:02 pm Gand said:

I’ve just release Portable Firefox 2.0r4.0, anyway previous release is also available.
With this last release you can copy your profile saying yes at “Copy local profile” window and select your profile folder. Now Firefox application and profile folder are inside the application bundle.
I think that you can downgrade Portable Firefox r4.0 replacing the included Firefox 2.0 with 1.5.0.7 or what ever version you like; but note that r4.0 need OS X 10.4.
If you wish run multiple version you have to edit script file commenting with # the line with “quitapp” at the end of the file. Remember to back-up your profile folder.

5. On October 27th, 2006 at 1:56 am Stuart Colville said:

@Gand: Great work. I’ve updated the mac instructions above to reflect this newer version.

6. On October 29th, 2006 at 9:33 am milo said:

Thanks for the instructions, used it like described and everything works fine.

7. On October 31st, 2006 at 10:47 am George said:

Yes you are right – I can’t run versions side by side on Windows using that method.

You may have this already but Yousif Al Saif of http://tredosoft.com has recently released an installer that will install standalone versions of IE3 – 6. Really useful for testing sites.

8. On December 12th, 2006 at 1:02 pm Tom Taylor said:

Firefox 3 Alpha has just been released. WOOHOO!

So you mayswell install Firefox 2 as a portable version too: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

And then install FF3 from here: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/?C=M;O=D

Follow the Instructions for ‘Your Platform’ above :)

9. On January 30th, 2007 at 6:35 pm estrai said:

Hey,
I just did like George said (run with profile manager), except that I used another directory for storing profiles for Firefox 1.5.
So, now I have running both 2.0 and 1.5, and after I picked the directory there’s no need to do it again, it always start without prompting for choosing anything.
It looks very funny while I’m switching programs with alt+tab :)

10. On September 26th, 2007 at 12:39 pm derek said:

For PC users with IE7 already using VirtualPC to test IE6, would it not be just as handy to install FF 1.5 on the VPC?







XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>



Using Loggerhead with mod_wsgi|(0)

Here’s a post I wrote over on the Project Fondue Blog about our use of Loggerhead with mod_wsgi under Apache. Loggerhead is the rather nice branch viewer for bazaar branches as used on Launchpad.net.

If you’re not already subscribed to the Project Fondue blog feed then I can recommend it, as there should be some interesting posts coming out of there in the coming months (yes I’m unashamedly biased!).

Ubuntu: Turn off changing workspace with mouse wheel|(1)

I found the changing with the workspace with the mouse wheel really annoying. To disable it go to System => Preferences => CompizConfig (available if the compizconfig-settings-manager package is installed) and uncheck “Viewport Switcher” which is under the “Desktop” heading.

Photos on Flickr

© Copyright 2004-10 Stuart Colville, all rights reserved. May contain traces of Muffin. Powered by WordPress. Hosting by Slicehost.com This page was baked in 0.568s.