Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by callahad 3144 days ago
Thank you for choosing Firefox.

1. Are there any specific extensions you need? Happy to add them to our outreach list.

2. Sorry about Hangouts; follows a trend of Chrome-only product launches/re-launches from Google (five this year so far). Wish we could do more, but if Google's OK shipping things that only work on one browser, that's their prerogative.

3. Firefox also has completely separate profiles, in addition to container tabs. The UI isn't as polished as in Chrome, but it works: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...

5 comments

> 1. Are there any specific extensions you need? Happy to add them to our outreach list.

for me, vimperator/pentadactyl and tab groups. i can't use a browser without them so i won't be upgrading :(

Tab Groups is the reason I won't be upgrading :( Hopefully someone will take on the task of upgrading/rewriting it.
> 3. Firefox also has completely separate profiles, in addition to container tabs. The UI isn't as polished as in Chrome, but it works: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...

Chrome allows users to simultaneously run multiple profile instances, each with it own profile. Firefox didn't seem to support that.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... (or a similar addon) might bring me back to using Firefox.

With Chrome, one set up a profile shortcut to a given profile, and then all tabs/windows within the instance corresponded to the same profile. This meant hitting Ctrl+T to open new tabs, rather than having to click and dig through a menu to pick the right profile.

I'd like the containers addon to support easy shortcuts. Maybe on hitting ctrl+t, one can then press 1-5 (or some other selector) to determine which profile the new tab opens in. Alternatively, more safely and less confusingly, just having windows sticky to a specific profile, so all new tabs predictably open into the same profile.

Firefox does support multiple isolated instances, just without a prominent UI. You can use the Profile Manager (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...) or command-line flags to launch and manage separate profiles.

The UX around multi-account containers is still being worked on, but the contextualIdentities WebExtension API (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/AP...) allows add-ons to interact with containers, so a third party developer could create exactly the experience you've requested.

In case anyone comes back and sees this thread, instructions for launching different profiles simultaneously can be found here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Opening_a_new_instance_of_Firefox_...
> 3. Firefox also has completely separate profiles, in addition to container tabs.

hey callahad, thanks for shiming in. My biggest pain with profiles is that you cannot use separate profiles at the same time. A Firefox instance can only run one at the same time, making it useless to run e.g. a work and a private profile together. Container tabs also do not help here because they share the same history which I do not want for privacy reasons.

Nonetheless, thanks for a great release!

> A Firefox instance can only run one at the same time, making it useless to run e.g. a work and a private profile together.

I may be misunderstanding what you mean, but I believe you actually can do that. If you navigate to about:profiles, there should be a "launch profile in new browser" button that runs multiple profiles at the same time, each in their own, isolated Firefox process.

To make this a bit easier, you can create desktop shortcuts which launch a specific profile like `firefox --new-instance --profile Work` (on Windows, use --no-remote instead of --new-instance).

> 1. Are there any specific extensions you need? Happy to add them to our outreach list.

LastPass please. I'm sure it's on your list already, and I'm sure they know about it too but every little helps.

I am happy to use pass/keepass (whatever version) but the family says only LastPass is acceptable.

LastPass updated a few days ago -- I'm using it with FF57 now!
> Are there any specific extensions you need?

Keysnail. It requires the ability to override C-n, though.