Use Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition
You may have spent years, months, or mere days getting your Firefox just the way you like it, but when you use a computer at work, school, or at someone else's house, you're stuck with the way theirs is set up, or more often the defaults. Wish you could take your settings and accounts with you wherever you go? Read on.
Steps
- Download the latest version of Portable Firefox, as it's often abbreviated, from PortableApps.com.
- Plug in your USB device. It needs to be recognized by Windows as a drive. Note the drive letter.
- Install Portable Firefox to the drive letter that Windows assigned your device to.
- Portable Firefox is designed to work with PortableApps.com's menu platform, but this is for convenience. The menu is not required for any of their apps to run.
- To copy your local Firefox profile to your USB device:
- Follow the instructions on this page to locate your profile. Open the folder which starts with a series of random characters and ends in Default, or your profile's name if you have more than one.
- Run Portable Firefox once and answer the setup questions. (Always run FirefoxPortable.exe from the installation directory; NEVER run firefox.exe from the subfolders. This launcher ensures that Firefox runs correctly in a portable environment, and cleans up after itself when it is finished to ensure no personal information is left behind.) Now close Portable Firefox.
- Open your USB device, and browse to the installation folder, then Data, then Profile.
- Delete everything from the Profile folder on your USB device. Take care that you are clearing the right Profile folder.
- Copy everything from the local profile folder to the Profile folder on your USB device.
- Start FirefoxPortable.exe again to ensure that Firefox Portable is using your local profile.
- To install Flash and Shockwave to Firefox Portable:
- Browse to Adobe's Flash homepage and download and install Flash. You must have the regular version of Firefox installed to do this, but you only need to do it once.
- Browse to Adobe's Shockwave homepage and download and install Shockwave. You must have the regular version of Firefox installed to do this, but you only need to do it once.
- Browse to your local profile directory as outlined above. You're looking for a folder called plugins. If that search isn't fruitful, consult this MozillaZine article. If that isn't helpful either, search your Windows drive for NPSWF32.DLL. Open the folder it's stored in.
- Open your Firefox Portable plugins folder, located in the Data folder.
- Copy every file from the local plugins folder to the plugins folder on your USB device.
Portable Extensions
- While no extensions have been reported to be incompatible with Firefox Portable, some extensions will extend the portability of Firefox Portable beyond the defaults. These extensions are:
- Adblock Plus - Many computer problems are a result of the ever-increasing greed of the advertising industry. While some advertising agencies, such as Google, are content with plain-text ads, some write software designed to damage your computer, and blocking all ads contributes to leaving somebody else's computer as you found it, should they be so kind as to let you use it. By blocking ads, you will prevent unwanted problems from ever loading.
- FoxyProxy - If you start Firefox Portable on a computer at work or school and it can't access the Internet, yet Internet Explorer can, you need to configure Firefox to use the computer's network proxy. To do this, open Internet Explorer, go to Tools, then Internet Options, click the Connections tab, then click LAN Settings near the bottom. Copy the information to the relevant fields in FoxyProxy and be sure the proxy is enabled. Now Firefox Portable should be able to get on the network. Just disable the proxy when you leave, since it will only work on that network.
- Gmail Manager - If you don't trust the network you're on, it might be a good idea not to be typing your passwords in. If you still want to check your email, and you use Gmail, this is for you. Set up your accounts on a trusted system, and this extension will securely check, and connect you to your email. Its best feature, of course, is that it will tell you how many unread emails you have. There's a similar one for Yahoo! Mail if you use that.
Tips
- If you enjoy taking Firefox "on the go" on an USB device, you might also be interested in Run Software Directly Off a USB Flash Drive which tells you where you can get other "portable" software that can be carried on a USB device - including email and instant messaging programs, mp3 and video players, and even WWW servers!
- If you have passwords saved on your USB device, protect it carefully, as in the event it's lost, whoever finds it will have access to all of your passwords. Consider a master password. To set this, start Firefox Portable, go to the Tools menu, choose Options, click Security, and under Passwords, check Use a master password and type and then retype your master password. Restart Firefox Portable. Next time you start it, you will be prompted for the password. If you fail to provide it, you can still use Firefox, but your passwords will not be available to you. (In this case restart Firefox Portable and try again.)
- If the guest computer you are using is running Windows 7, your USB device may not come right up. Click the Start menu, click on Computer, and browse to your USB device, and run FirefoxPortable.exe from there.
Warnings
- Some system administrators might not appreciate you using Firefox Portable on their network, since it erases personal information. If they tell you that they need to monitor your surfing habits, e.g. at school or work, tell them Firefox Portable's privacy features are only for your protection, and remind them that it does not tamper with the network access logs at the server level.
- The search bar may stop working. This is an uncommon problem, but it can happen. You can still highlight a word or phrase and search for it using the currently selected search engine, but you can't search from the search bar itself. To remedy this, exit Firefox Portable, go into the Profile folder, and delete any file whose name starts with formhistory. Start Firefox Portable again and try to search; it should be sorted.
Things You'll Need
- USB device (flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod, cell phone)
- USB cable (unless using a flash drive)
