[likeafox]

The one feature I wish FF had is a UI based profile switcher - container tabs, which are now relegated to being an extension, simply are not cutting it for me. Does anyone know if there's a chance of that making it into the roadmap within the next couple years?

[kbenson]

> container tabs, which are now relegated to being an extension

Now? Haven't they always been?

> simply are not cutting it for me.

Do you mind explaining why? I had some problems with them initially (when they first went into production FF), but some small tweaks since then and they've mostly worked exactly as I would want.

The only complaints I have are Google, which I try to relegate to a container, making it really hard to open stuff in different containers because of how they send links in Gmail through a redirect to protect referrer info and making it hard to have separate Google accounts in different tabs (which i could probably resolve mos the issues by not assigning Google to a container by default so some of the switching is more smooth, but ick), and LastPass, which I only really need for work (as I use FF sync for my passwords).

LastPass doesn't seem to be able to deal with containers and work SSO which auto redirects to a container, so I can't even sign in with LastPass without tweaking container domain assignments, and toggling that stuff every time I want to log in is ridiculous.

Other than those, everything works pretty smoothly, IMO. I have 18 containers, of which 6-7 see consistent heavy use, and the most rest are for occasional things and are used once every few days.

[dave5104]

> Do you mind explaining why?

I want full blown segregated browser experiences, a la Chrome's profiles. Firefox's containers are great for what I use them for (sandboxing Twitter and Facebook), but I'd really like an entirely different profile for "work" vs. "personal"--with separate browsing history, favorites, cookies, extensions, etc.

I know Firefox offers that functionality (via about:profiles), but as far as I know, it's not as simple to access in Chrome (clicking an icon and choosing your new profile).

That being said, I still use Firefox day to day, but I sorely miss the ease of access of Chrome's.

[WorldMaker]

I like that Firefox really separates profiles and sort of requires a relaunch, which in some ways is a security blanket of its own. Make a shortcut to "firefox -no-remote -profilemanager" or individual shortcuts to "firefox -new-instance -P {profilename}". Build your own launcher UI in your Desktop or your Start Menu or Dock. Use different icons and really separate "work" from "personal".

(I use a mix of profiles and containers myself and a mix of Firefox mainline and Firefox Dev Edition.)

[uHuge]

Would a .bat/.bash file with `firefox -P "profileWork"` be of help?

[dave5104]

Maybe it would! But I'd prefer profile swapping become a first class Firefox UI citizen like it is in Chrome. Until then, visiting about:profiles is better than finagling with bash, at least for me.

[philsnow]

> they send links in Gmail through a redirect to protect referrer info

The iOS Gmail app does this as well -- is it really to protect the referrer? What's the referrer in the case of a webview? I had thought that it was so they could track what people click on, but they must get that information with even higher fidelity from the native app...

[bzbarsky]

about:profiles is not amazing, but does exist...

[est31]

firefox -ProfileManager ?

[_-david-_]

You can actually just do firefox -p

[monadic2]

What do you mean by "profile"? I'm at least familiar with the word container....