> It would have been better if Mozilla had added a better interface to profiles.
Profiles in Chrome and their ease of use (Cmd+Shift+M to open a new window in a different profile) is the primary reason I still use Chrome over Firefox. I have a Personal, a Work, and a Development profile. The development profile is where I install dev extensions like React Devtools, Redux Devtools, etc. because they require full access to all sites in order to function. I don’t do regular web browsing with devtools installed. These tools seem trustworthy, but why risk giving them access to everything I do on the web?
I’ve tried Firefox Containers and can’t find the same power and ease of use Chrome Profiles have.
I see your point now, I was preferring containers because I have this scenario where I want the data separation it provides without the need of reinstalling add-ons, especially on a temporal container/profile. The shared window can be nice on some particular moments where I don't need to have a lot of pages opened and are continuously changing from tab to tab.
Thinking over about you said, now I think I like things from the two worlds, maybe better interface to containers or even better UI for profiles, with options to overcome the containers (maybe should be better for the average user instead of having both).
For the time being, I prefer to have both options (don't have it now) but I think both can be improved.
Upside of Chrome profiles: Use a bright red theme for prod sysadmin profile, and blue for work. So you never type « p... » on your work profile by mistake... Don’t laugh, usage is widespread.
I do exactly this too: I have 3 distinctly different themes for the three profiles I use. A split second glance at the color of the tab bar informs me which profile I'm working with.
I'm not znpy so I don't know why they don't like containers.
But I prefer profiles myself, as I have different extensions in different profiles and I get the two completely separate instances of Firefox, while containers are just separate tabs instead.
I don't think containers are awful though, they are just less useful for my use case than profiles.
I sometimes have issues with the profiles too though. If I have both profiles running concurrently and I click a link from a different application, I get an error that "Firefox is already running" and it freezes up the window with my primary profile.
If you dig around, there is probably a value in `about:config` that lets you tell firefox to always show the profile selector first. Otherwise, add `-P` to the argument fields in your desktop shortcut.
Extensions, mostly. You have to be real careful which extensions you install because extensions run at the window level (mostly) rather than the container level and see across/through containers.
Also things like auto-fill (including password suggestions); if you like that being very specific to context, then you'd want different profiles rather than containers.
I've found I've been using a mixture of profiles and containers, myself, to balance ease of access (containers are fast to launch and can auto-launch per specific sites) versus better extension control and auto-fill/etc separation.
(ETA: As for finger-printing, both containers and profiles are equal on the most common finger-printing: cookies and localStorage. Neither protects you well from IP Address tracking, which is a growing concern, but not the approach of at least the big players like Google or Facebook, yet.)
True, but by using profiles you don't need any extra extensions, it comes built-in in both Chrome and Firefox, you can simply start it with providing the `--profile <path>` flag. Correct me if I'm wrong, but some IT environments also lock down installing extensions from addons.mozilla.org, so the profiles tip would be applicable to more people.
You can just use --profile <name> -- with only the name of the profile.
Also, you can backup/restore/move profiles independently of each other.
Also, you can have different network settings for different profiles (not sure you can do that with containers).
For example I have a profile whose network connections are such that traffic is forwarded through a socks proxy (implemented via ssh). That's basically an ultra-simple vpn. I can then (via a script) automatically launch the tunnel open firefox with the appropriate profile and then exit firefox and gracefully stopping my tunnel.
I remember it used to be a native feature but I'm fairly certain they split it out into a separate addon after a while. Or did they move it back into core?
Partly because Mozilla is continuing to iterate/experiment on the container UI and leaving that to extensions is a way to keep that laboratory open. They seem worried the UI may be too confusing if it was on by default for a lot of users. (Like the era decades ago when -ProfileManager was on-by-default in some installs.)
Mozilla even has two official extensions, trying to explore the space of ease of use/user expectations. In addition to the main multi-container extension they offer Facebook Container which is an extension designed to be more entry level but for folks worried about privacy. (It does what it says on a tin, creates only one additional container, names it Facebook, and automatically moves all Facebook tabs and pretty much only Facebook tabs into it.)
Firefox Containers are awful.
Only firefox profiles can give you true separation.
It would have been better if Mozilla had added a better interface to profiles.