rbdietz Posted July 10, 2006 Share Posted July 10, 2006 Hi, ya'll. It's been quite a while since the last time I posted, but I've lurked now and then.Lately, I'm looking into Portable Firefox and am wondering if there is something similar for the Linux and Mac versions of Firefox?Assuming their existence ( Linux Portable Firefox and/or Mac Portable Firefox ), could the installations share the same profile?If you created a new profile using the manager in one OS, will the profile managers in the other OS's recognize that new profile?There are scripting languages like python(?) that run on Windows, Mac and Linux.Presumably you could have a script that could be used to launch the correct version of Firefox for the current OS?I've installed Firefox on a few Windows machines and the installer has always found the neccessary stuff to connect to the internet without any special intervention.I assume this means that someone has already written most of the code (at least for Windows) to configure firefox to the "current system at the time of installation" and it might not be a huge problem to adapt that code reconfigure (portable) firefox for the "current system at any give time"?Does this add up to - Firefox Thumbdrive Appliance?Plug the usb-thumb drive into virtually ANY computer (Windows, Linux, Mac, ... doesn't much matter).Look in the root of the thumb drive and run the script that: Asks the script interpreter which OS this is. Launches FireFox_ISP_Config.exe Lauches the appropriate version Firefox. Wouldn't this be simple enough for mom, dad and aunt sally?Is anybody here using portable Firefox?Any thoughts about the above ramblings?What are the gotcha's that I haven't considered, yet?Thanks,Bob Dietz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teacher Posted July 11, 2006 Share Posted July 11, 2006 Why not just use one of the extensions that allows you to update your bookmarks each time you log on, no matter what computer you are using? Those work cross-platform! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Webb Posted July 11, 2006 Share Posted July 11, 2006 I would hope that somewhere between steps 1 and 2 you would launch a cross platform unencryption program, if such a thing exists. I would never carry around an unencrypted thumb drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rbdietz Posted July 15, 2006 Author Share Posted July 15, 2006 Why not just use one of the extensions that allows you to update your bookmarks each time you log on, no matter what computer you are using? Those work cross-platform!Sorry to be so long in getting back to this. (I would have sworn that I replied to both these messages two days ago. Must have previewed my replies and neglected to actually post them. Sigh)When sitting at a strange machine you're pretty much limited to whatever browser is installed. Virtually all of the strange machines that I end up sitting at are windows machines with IE. No Firefox. No Firefox extensions.Thanks for the thought anyway.Bob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teacher Posted July 15, 2006 Share Posted July 15, 2006 In that case it would not hurt to see if portable firefox is not portable cross platform. I really don't know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rbdietz Posted July 15, 2006 Author Share Posted July 15, 2006 I would never carry around an unencrypted thumb drive.I think you have to assume that the thumbdrive may become infected as soon as it's plugged into a strange machine and that it will never - ever be truely secure. After all, the infected machine can copy the contents of the drive to it's own hard disk where encryption can be hammered on indefinitely. FWIW here is a link to the Safe Portable App-ing page. (The checklist there doesn't look very complete to me.)Right now, I'm experimenting with portable firefox on a thumbdrive and only using it on three well known machines with strong anti-virus protection and strong anti-spyware protection etc. I don't think I'll be keeping passwords or sign-on names on the thumbdrive in any form. Because of the sign-on names restriction, I may have to use a subset of my normal bookmarks. I'm sure there's other stuff to worry about as well.So far: Installed portable firefox on a thumbdrive. Copied selected parts of the profile on my main machine to the appropriate place on the thumb drive. Including bookmarks, extensions and themes. Browsed the web briefly. (Firefox takes a long time - 30 sec? 40 sec? - to start from the thumb drive even on a highspeed USB 2.0 port. Was prompted to up-date to the latest version of firefox for security reasons and let that happen. (Figured that might cause a problem, but what the heck this is a test installation.) Portable firefox still works but takes longer to start and a whole lot longer to shut down. I think the history got turned back on be the automatic firefox update???Also FWIW. Apparently they are now making U3 thumbdrives with a built-in laucher for portable apps.When I get a little further with my testing, I post a little more about this in a new thread.Thanks for your thoughts,Bob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.