Firefox - web browser

Submit portable freeware that you find here. It helps if you include information like description, extraction instruction, Unicode support, whether it writes to the registry, and so on.
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webfork
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Re: Firefox Portable

#61 Post by webfork »

So there's a torrent client (Torrent Tornado) written as an add-on for Firefox but unfortunately it falls into the adware category:
  • Image
... and here's what happens when you select "No":
  • Image
I might be okay with some ads being shown above the torrent downloads but additions to my browsing? I'd also like to see a 3rd button that's just a link to Paypal or similar service.

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Midas
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Re: Firefox Portable

#62 Post by Midas »

Quick post to mention the new mothership... I mean, Mozilla logo, in case you missed it: ;)

Image


More info:

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Re: Firefox Portable

#63 Post by webfork »

Midas wrote:Mozilla logo, in case you missed it
I don't love it but I also don't have the same feelings of loathing that I've seen from some sources on the topic.

I guess they want to get away from a dinosaur since that's THE term used derisively for old tech.

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Re: Firefox Portable

#64 Post by webfork »

I know a lot of users on the site like FLAC so it's nice to see Firefox cover it. Also, more good privacy features.

Also, Firefox comes back a bit as other browser falter though not everyone agrees on the data.

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Re: Firefox Portable

#65 Post by webfork »

Two really amazing add-ons for Firefox I found:
  • Tile Tabs - basically puts multiple pages into panes on one browser window, great for when you're working in a lot of web-based tools.

    screenshot
  • Print Edit - helps you zap elements (like adverts) as well as print to PDF. You can modify formats for better sizing and different fonts. In addition to being a solid tool for saving ink by cutting stuff you don't want, this has a page editor. There's a LOT under the hood here.

    screenshot

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Re: Firefox Portable

#66 Post by SYSTEM »

webfork wrote:Tile Tabs - basically puts multiple pages into panes on one browser window, great for when you're working in a lot of web-based tools.

screenshot
BTW, Vivaldi has a similar (albeit less powerful) feature built-in.
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Re: Firefox Portable

#67 Post by webfork »

Another in a series of "which browser is best":
  • The Guardian - likes Firefox for Windows 10 for "its ability to handle a ridiculous number of tabs, plus the fact that it’s not written with user-exploitation in mind."
  • The Register - likes Firefox because we don't need a web mono-culture.
It does look like Firefox might be #2 for battery life, which I thought was grasping at straws but keeps coming up in the tech press.

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Re: Firefox Portable

#68 Post by webfork »

If you've been avoiding Firefox for it's RAM use or lack of a multi-processor architecture, you might want to try version 54, available now.

Firefox hogs less memory and gets a speed bump in its latest update
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/14/1580 ... ess-memory

More:
https://www.cravingtech.com/firefox-use ... ox-54.html

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Re: Firefox Portable

#69 Post by Midas »

A previously unknown trick to quickly access 'about:config' keys and values was posted to Ghacks.net:

Further notes: I have checked that this works in SeaMonkey v2.46, too; from the article's comments, I discovered you can even do RegEx, try it... :shock:

Code: Select all

about:config?filter=/refer|book|edDB/i

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Re: Firefox Portable

#70 Post by Midas »

Ghacks.net just posted an excellent overview of different Firefox versions startup times and memory consumption:

Main findings are that startup time increased significantly from Firefox 20 to Firefox 51, decreased in Firefox 52 to 54, and then fell sharply to the lowest ever value in Firefox 55.
For memory usage, the findings where equally impressive. Memory usage increased up until Firefox 54, and fell sharply in Firefox 55.

OTOH, not so great news for Firefox from the market share front:

Firefox Marketshare is 'Falling off a Cliff', Says Former Mozilla CTO

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Re: Firefox Portable

#71 Post by Specular »

I saw elsewhere that comparison article posted a few days ago. I'm not sure if it was tested with a clean profile so it's hard to say if other addons/settings were affecting performance. I know for my own profile it's literally about twice as fast to render pages and graphics on a fresh profile. Also with the move away from XUL addons entirely soon in v57 and multi-process enabled by default there won't be the same conflicts and speed should be even better in the future... though at the heavy expense of a loss in functionality.

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Re: Firefox Portable

#72 Post by freakazoid »

I just tried v56 nightly just to see what it would be like and Firefox eats memory. Roughly around 300-400 MB for an empty tab, while running a mix of legacy addons and WebExtensions (update: problem was due some legacy extensions! disabling them fixed the memory leaks).

I set the multi-process limit (dom.ipc.ProcessCount) from 4 to 1 and there were still at least 3 to 4 processes running...

Chrome has had a headstart with multi-processes and is recently showing memory usage improvements with v59+. While Firefox offers more configurable options, I'm not sure if Firefox can bridge the gap.

It would have been smarter for Mozilla to start a new browser instead of building on top of an existing browser and trying to retrofit it to use Chrome's extensions API.
Last edited by freakazoid on Tue Aug 08, 2017 8:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.
is it stealth? ;)

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Re: Firefox Portable

#73 Post by Midas »

Something else you need to take heed before upgrading to Firefox 55:

Firefox 55 is the next release version of the browser; the planned release date is August 8, 2017.

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Re: Firefox Portable

#74 Post by webfork »

So a user posted the following:
I just noticed that when FF Portable is closed it leaves behind a folder in AppData :
C:\Users\XXX\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Pending Pings

Using v55 btw.

If I delete the Mozilla folder in AppData, run and immediately close FF Portable, that folder is left behind.
I've confirmed this on Win7x86. Since this is probably just a temporary issue, I thought I'd post in forums. I'll post something to the entry and the PA site if it doesn't get resolved in the near-term.

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Re: Firefox Portable

#75 Post by webfork »

Refreshing your Firefox installation

I don't know what was going wrong but on a recent system reinstall, Firefox was running incredibly slow, even in safe mode, and especially on Github. I tried re-downloading and it worked fine so I began the task of moving over my old files. Exporting and importing bookmarks is super simple, but the website logins and master password requires two files:

Code: Select all

\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\key3.db
\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\logins.json
Copy these to the same subfolder of the new Firefox extract. Works great.

I should also note that I haven't had to do this in 7 or 8 years so I don't think it's an issue with either Firefox or PortableApps.

(More info and where I got this data.)

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