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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JohnTHaller
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Re: Firefox Portable

#91 Post by JohnTHaller »

SYSTEM wrote:
JohnTHaller wrote:
zorro wrote:But what about the Mozilla-Folder in Local? Does anyone else have this with subfolders (see screenshot in my last reply)?
Read the page I linked above. I addressed this right in the bug report. And it's fixed in the upcoming launcher which is available for download on the bug report page.
Uh, he has been saying that he also gets a Mozilla directory in %LocalAppData%. Your thread in PA.c doesn't mention that.
Ah. SystemExtensionsDev was highlighted in the screenshot, so I thought that was the Mozilla directory being referenced, which is why I was confused. It looks like Firefox's update checker is a bit broken and will create a new empty 16 character directory within LOCALAPPDATA\Mozilla\updates when you open Help About. I'm not sure how often it does this as it doesn't do it every time you open it, but my local machine had 8 empty directories like this. I think it's one per day checked.

EDIT: Updated the new launcher to address these empty directories as well.
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Midas
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Re: Firefox Portable

#92 Post by Midas »

Been meaning to write something about how disapointed I have been with the latest Firefox updates without being able to pinpoint objective reasons for that...

But here's one:
Mozilla's reason for removing descriptions is simple: descriptions are a minor feature, they are limited in use as search does not include the description field, and that they affect the performance of bookmarking operations.

Users should not confuse the descriptions field with the newer description field in moz_places that features such as Activity Stream use. The latter is populated automatically and cannot be edited by users.

Inferring from that, Mozilla deems acceptable to remove a user feature (granted, for lack of use) but is OK with adding features that escape user control. There's a whole UI design philosophy failure debate hiding in there. :(

Little by little, Mozilla is shedding its more user centered development values in order to become some sort of unstable memory hogging (in my recent experience) Chrome also-ran.

And then, there's this...

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webfork
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Re: Firefox Portable

#93 Post by webfork »

I'd like to say that Firefox is just reacting to the current state of computing where to squeeze every last bit of performance out of an application, you need multiple processes and lots of RAM cache. I'm not close enough to machine development to say for sure on that one. I will say I haven't seen Firefox interfere with other applications on low-RAM systems the way Chrome does.

The security bit is more frustrating -- I understand pulling it out of the main menu system but I wish they wouldn't disable it from the about:config menu. There are going to be Firefox installs that some user somewhere wants frozen in time for some reason.

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Userfriendly
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Re: Firefox Portable

#94 Post by Userfriendly »

What kills me is the removal of RSS and Live Bookmarks apparently because 99.9% of people don't dont use or know of its existence... I'm the .1 percent.
https://www.ghacks.net/2018/07/25/mozil ... m-firefox/
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1477667

Thankfully there are people already working on getting functionality back by porting a Chrome addon that was meant to copy one of Firefox's unique features. It doesn't quite 100% work as it should yet. Maybe because there's still some WebExtension API's that needs to be implemented for it to work correctly.
https://www.ghacks.net/2018/07/30/livem ... n-firefox/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... livemarks/
https://github.com/nt1m/livemarks
https://github.com/ali1234/foxish

The problem is Mozilla never made it obvious it existed or tell people how useful it can be. People keep suggesting to use an RSS Reader like QuiteRSS or one of Firefox existing addons like Feedbro or Bamboo Feed Reader and I already do use one of those. They don't understand how different and useful a live bookmark is. I use them to replace bookmarks for websites that have rss feeds. Example, instead of a regular bookmark for portablefreeware on my toolbar, I would have a live bookmark instead because it doubles as a normal bookmark. I mouse over it and boom I instantly see all the new updated apps and forum posts without visiting the site yet. So simple, so fast and so easy. I can do that for over a hundred different sites on my toolbar in minute. Dedicated full blown feed readers can do the job but that requires more clicks.

Here I am still stuck on Firefox 56 or Waterfox. Waiting for full on replacements for addons and features Mozilla keeps killing. Someday, I will make that quantum super speed Firefox my main browser. But everyday Mozilla keeps pushing that day back.

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Midas
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Re: Firefox Portable

#95 Post by Midas »

Userfriendly wrote: Someday, I will make that quantum super speed Firefox my main browser. But everyday Mozilla keeps pushing that day back.
As a decades old Firefox user, that kind of sums my position up really.

I'm keeping my portable SeaMonkey for the time being and don't foresee switching to it in the near future.

I think I'd sooner go back to K-Meleon or some other suitable legacy alternative, even if they break every one of the myriad data-scrapping websites that pack the Web these days. :(

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Andrew Lee
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Re: Firefox Portable

#96 Post by Andrew Lee »

After struggling with Firefox/Quantum for awhile, I have basically given up and moved to Vivaldi.

Firefox/Quantum uses way more memory than before, and I suspect doesn't return memory to the system as quickly as it should, making everything sluggish on my machine. It routinely creeps up to 3+GB footprint until I restart the browser. Chrome and Vivaldi, in contrast, do not have this issue. I'm using Vivaldi instead of Chrome because it has tons more features, including a web panel that sorta works as a tree-based tabber.

Firefox has always been my browser-of-choice, and it's really sad that I've been forced to abandon it...

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webfork
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Re: Firefox Portable

#97 Post by webfork »

So many sites are "mobile-first" now, they put all their energy into a mobile app and the website is a second thought. As such, the Firefox "Test Pilot" Side View is a lot better than similar "multi-pane" plugins I saw ~10 years ago:

https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/its-a- ... side-view/

Several sites I've tested (Twitter, DI.FM, several news sites) are actually easier to navigate and generally better via the smaller "mobile" view. I'm frustrated it doesn't yet work with the Private Browsing view, hopefully that's on the way.

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Midas
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Re: Firefox Portable

#98 Post by Midas »

Yet another functionality downgrade, IMHO, notwithstanding any technical reasons supporting it: :(

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webfork
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Re: Firefox Portable

#99 Post by webfork »

Andrew Lee wrote: Wed Aug 01, 2018 6:12 pm Firefox/Quantum uses way more memory than before, and I suspect doesn't return memory to the system as quickly as it should, making everything sluggish on my machine. It routinely creeps up to 3+GB footprint until I restart the browser.
While I haven't had any issues on my Win7, 10 or Mac machines, if you've had issues like Andrew around Firefox using too much memory, you can reduce the overall footprint in the Options menu. Scroll down to Performance and uncheck the recommended settings before lowering the content process limit to 1 (as below). Then restart your browser.

Image

Results: RAM usage dropped to 600 megs of RAM from around 900 megs at startup. None of my machines have a graphics card so I couldn't test the results of unchecking that box. If you tend to work only with a few tabs, this will free up RAM without a serious performance hit.

On a related note, for those that regularly work with LOADS of tabs (20+), I've been really enjoying Tree Style Tabs to group and hide tabs together. Unfortunately it doesn't turn off the top bar so there's a fair amount of wasted screen space duplicating info, but I'm finding it's worth it to stay organized.

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SYSTEM
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Re: Firefox Portable

#100 Post by SYSTEM »

webfork wrote: Sat Jan 19, 2019 2:50 pm On a related note, for those that regularly work with LOADS of tabs (20+), I've been really enjoying Tree Style Tabs to group and hide tabs together. Unfortunately it doesn't turn off the top bar so there's a fair amount of wasted screen space duplicating info, but I'm finding it's worth it to stay organized.
On that note, Vivaldi supports stacking tabs together and placing the tab bar to the left or right side natively (and doing that does remove it from the top).
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zorro
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Firefox Portable Launcher

#101 Post by zorro »

Unfortunately since version 65 Firefox creates "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Mozilla" (%systemdrive%\ProgramData\Mozilla\updates\...) - the portable launcher leaves the folder behind.
I hope John T. Haller reads this and fixes the launcher, however I'll register on PortableApps and place the issue there.

Already tried to modify the launcher by adding

Code: Select all

RMDir /r "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Mozilla\"
...the script compiled without errors but the folder remains after closing. Also tried to give the launcher admin privilegies ('RequestExecutionLevel admin'), without success.
:?:

Special
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Re: Firefox Portable Launcher

#102 Post by Special »

zorro wrote: Mon Feb 04, 2019 11:54 am Unfortunately since version 65 Firefox creates "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Mozilla" (%systemdrive%\ProgramData\Mozilla\updates\...) - the portable launcher leaves the folder behind.
Any idea what this file does?

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zorro
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Re: Firefox Portable

#103 Post by zorro »

I think it's the same as the one in AppData - the whole path is %systemdrive%\ProgramData\Mozilla\updates\somecrypticfoldername\empty - so until now only empty folders. Apparently has to do with changes in Windows 10.


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Mike.S.G.
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Re: Firefox Portable

#105 Post by Mike.S.G. »

The fix, at least for now, appears to be...

For those with the dev, nightly builds, etc is the xpinstall signatures required set to false tweak.

The rest of us need to re-enable telemetry and studies, close then open Firefox. I'm using the policies file so I had to set telemetry and studies disabled to false, save policies.json, and close NPP. Firefox started up as if nothing had happened. I disabled once again in policies.json - all seems fine again, as if nothing happened. We'll see how long this lasts.

Update: My second install of Firefox needed no changes, once I fired it up (on my flat panel tv) everything began to reappear without any intervention. We'll see how long this lasts before the digital dictators issue a new edict letting us know what they deem acceptable or not.
Last edited by Mike.S.G. on Sat May 04, 2019 5:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

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