Hello everybody,
Be careful with this update. You can't return to the previous version because incompatibility in the profile, which is modified by FF 57.0.

@gbrao: thanks for posting about this -- I've added something to the forum about that topic.

@gbrao: Try using Firefox Portable from portableapps.com instead.

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.

Thank you, Midas. I will start to see the forum more closely. I only read the feeds here using QuietRSS and I never see the forum. I'll do it from now on. As always, you are an excellent indication for new applications and utilities.

(obrigado, Midas. eu começarei a ver o forum com mais atenção. eu somente leio os feeds aqui usando QuietRSS e nunca vejo o forum. eu farei isso daqui para frente. Como sempre, você é uma excelente indicação para novas aplicações e utilitários.)

@wagner reatto: Cyberfox has been suggested at the forum -- see https://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=20290. Fui eu próprio... :D

You can test cyberfox. it is very fast! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cyberfoxportabl/

Firefox Portable includes both the 32-bit and 64-bit builds of Firefox and automatically selects the appropriate one for each PC using the same portable profile.

FYI, anyone looking for a ready-made 64-bit portable Firefox should check http://www.m64.info/index.php/firefox-64-bit-portable ...

Please move items unrelated to Firefox to the forums. Thanks.

"and PortableApps.com has operated at a loss since its founding, right? Don't let the facts get in the way of your rant, though."
That's your statement (and maybe the reality) but unless you show us your books... you could make whatever claims you want, it does not make it a fact.

WIkiQUsK - You do realize that PortableApps.com is free, that all our tools are open source and free, that the majority of the apps we package that are already portable aren't fully portable on their own and either leave bits behind or have some things break as you move around (some with quite major bits breaking or being left behind as we are discussing here), and PortableApps.com has operated at a loss since its founding, right? Don't let the facts get in the way of your rant, though. :)

Oh boy, should have guessed i would keep being replied by mr portableapplications businessman and the usual formal defensive, passive aggressive mambo jambo...
Not gonna insist more. So please don't bother to reply again either cause i know your neverending speech quite well already. My original comment was just to point out something that, to me, seemed obvious, and i bet to others as well... I just wish for this site, that i love, to stay independent and not be subjected to this outside pressures...

Oh and good luck on you mr haller on getting money off of people by selling pens with your launchers/wrappers of other people's apps (last time i checked most of them open source, most of them already portable)...

Well, if that's not enough for you, Mozilla calls the -profile switch a way to point to a specific profile. They don't document or support it as a 'portable' implementation as it is not designed to be used as such. If you request a portable version of Firefox, ours is as official as it gets. We negotiated a license to use the Firefox trademarks. And Mozilla sends folks our way when they want a portable version of Firefox to distribute on USB drives. Just because the handful of extensions you use don't break doesn't mean that lots of others do, particularly when a new version of Firefox is released and extension X isn't listed as compatible in its manifest but is actually compatible so addons.mozilla.org lets your install of Firefox know. Additionally, crash logs contain personal data, so while you may not care, I think most users would be uncomfortable with some of their personal data left behind on some random PC. Remember, lots of different users of differing technical abilities use portable software, and most of them won't manually code a batch file to clean things up.

Leaving one unimportant reg entry behind and two empty folders in appdata doesn't break the portability though... Crash logs... who cares.... Then again i have a cleanup .bat file that deals with some specific things some apps and windows leave behind... As for local homepages breaking and extensions incompatibility... never had any problem...

Bottom line is, it should be up to the user if he wants to use a wrapper/launcher or not, and i thought the general view on this in this site was to list the official releases with tweaks/hacks first (if they do work portably even if not stealth), and only after, the alternatives.

WikiQUsK: In addition to local homepages breaking, personal data left behind in crash logs, some registry keys left behind and some folders left behind, some extensions will break and lots of extensions extensions will need to check with addons.mozilla.org for compatibility on every single launch of Firefox without the PA.c launcher. That's why Mozilla points interested parties to PortableApps.com when they ask about distributing Firefox on USB drives.

webfork: Not sure if telling me to post there instead or to just read it. Anyway, read that and I stand by my previous comment, still think the .bat/command argument should be the portablefreeware.com 'official' way.

WikiQUsK: Discussed here: http://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=26348

Why not list the "firefox.exe -profile %~dp0\profile" as the "official" way, and have the pa.com wrapper way as an alternative, like the other wrappers, as usual? Sure, it's not 100% stealth, but it's portable, and that's (thankfully) the way it is with other apps here right?

juvera: this should ideally go into the forums, but yes it's considered portable. Temp file behavior is covered in the FAQ.

... and now my last test:
When you close FireFox, it does delete the temp folder with its temp files.
Therefore, it can be considered as portable?
I would have expected that the temp files and folder to be created in the install folder!

I am following up on my previous post:
- I closed FireFox
- I could delete all the three files
- I restarted FireFox
- FF has recreated the files!

If it is portable, then why there are three files in a folder named:
C:\Users\The_Name_Of_Your_Computer\AppData\Local\Temp\A_Folder_Inside_Temp=in_my_case=nsn4F8F.tmp

newadvsplash.dll
registry.dll
System.dll

When I try to delete these files, I get the message:
"The action can't be completed because the file is open in Mozilla Firefox, portable edition"

Good thing I took someone's advice and renamed my old installation folder "old" because one of my most crucial addons -- Tab Utilities 1.2 -- was incompatible with release 17.0.1 so I'm going back to 15.0 portable.

Thank you JohnTHaller.
The profile folder in FirefoxPortable\Data has many folders/files.
I must take the time to dig in that folder.

juvera: all cookies are stored in the self-contained profile within FirefoxPortable\Data. Always have been.

It may be portable, but it does not prevent storing cookies on the hard drive.

In my top 3 favorite programs and my browser of choice since its arrival back in 2003. Love the customizable interface, variety of good add-ons, open license, and support for open standards.

@ Danix: Link updated ... thanks.

The multilingual version of X-Firefox 5.x is available here http://www.winpenpack.com/en/download.php?view.1316. Please, update the link.

I have the same problem as Mat S...Except I have portable firefox 3.6 . Firefox just automatically opens then closes right away. I see the splash screen, then >*POOF*< ...gone... without ever loading!
To fix this: ( and keep your last session...plugins...etc )
I reinstalled Firefox Portable over my old one ( the same folder desination ) to keep my last session... This solution works very nicely it seems...

Hi, I do have FF portable 1.6.8.0 - since the update it does not start anymore. The logo pops up, closes again and that's it. The process is not shown either. I have deleted compreg and autoreg and the contents of the profile folder as recommended in other forums, but nothing changes. Any idea what else this could be? Thanks again in advance.

Jim: Java must be installed separately. Hopefully the Portable Java also available from PortableApps will be capable of doing this soon.

Does the portable version support applications requiring Java or does doies Java have to be installed separately.

The portable app author needs to figure out a way to seamlessly update Firefox. Theoretically updating like normal should work without any problems.

please update your info:
http://portableapps.com/node/24270

Does anybody know how to get Flash content to work with this? Whenever I hit a page that has Flash content, I'm suggested to 'install missing plugin'. I click 'ok', and the installer goes off to never-never-land, because it's trying to install the Flash player on the system drive, instead of the USB drive.

Firefox Portable 3.6: http://firefox.netai.net

I don't use FF portable for online browsing. But for offline browsing it's useful. Update it with the UnMHT add-on and it becomes a nice .MHT (.MHTML) reader and converter. MHT files seem to be slightly more sophisticated and simpler to use than PDF files which are quite bloated with metaData. The .MHT files look just like web pages, but without some unneeded MetaData and all the info is squished into a single file-no subfolders needed. FF displays them just fine, and the HTML links remain working too.

This is a good way cross-platform way to archive web pages. Internet Explorer comes able to read MHT files "out of the box", so support for MHT reading is ubiquitous as long as the otherwise annoying IE keeps being installed with the Windows OS. The MHT files can be written or read on Mac OS too. No need for another PDF reader if you transition to .MHT files for webpage archiving.

By the way, add-ons can be manually edited to not expire, just set their internal xml version expiration date to something ridiculously high. Browse the web for instructions on how to do that. That makes it possible to use many more add-ons that still have worth and functionality (at your own risk, of course).

@Bob Carney: Internet use and anonymity/privacy are nearly mutually exclusive in this modern age. But you could experiment with re-routing data to a RAM drive. But then, that wouldn't exactly be portable, though, would it?

@Steve: put the add-ons into the same app folder after you download them manually (save as...). next open them up manually using FF, and from then on, FF will know where they are automatically and you'll have them to use. There are some memory management add-ons too.

Oh yea...I'm not that concerned if an application writes a few things to disk, but I don't want a portable application writing stuff OUTSIDE it's root directory. Can Portable FF be configured to write out of %APPDATA%/Mozilla/Profile dir?

A few questions...1) does Firefox Portable support all of the addons the normal FF version uses?, 2) if so, when I install the addons are the placed in the same directory as FF Portable?

I would love to move away from FF because it's a memory hog. It's like the federal government - once they pass a spending program it will never go away. Once FF grabs memory, it never relinquishes it.

But there are a few things about FF that I love. First is support for ad blocking. As far as I can tell the ad blocking is vastly superior to any other browser. Second all of my bookmarks are in Yahoo and I use the crappy Yahoo toolbar to access them. I've considered moving away from Yahoo bookmarks but it's just not a big deal.

I'm not a power browser user I just want something that I can customize, is fast, is not a memory hog, and can be run portably.

It says that Firefox doesn't keep logs of websites you visit. I was downloading portable classic PSX/N64 games, and opened the OpenFilesView app that comes with HiRen's boot CD v10. It showed certain files were in use.

After opening a few files in the "[USER]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles" subfolders, I found (after clearing private data in Firefox AND using CCleaner) a lot of references in files like COOKIES.SQLITE and PLACES.SQLITE of the website forums, and links to games I had downloaded. God damn stazi.

from their website

"Privacy Controls. Firefox 3.5 includes features designed to protect your privacy online and provide greater control over your personal data.

While using the new Private Browsing mode in Firefox 3.5, nothing you encounter on the Web will be stored from that moment on during your browsing session. Unique to Firefox 3.5, the new Forget this Site feature can remove every trace of a site from your browser. If you want to remove all private data or activity from the past few hours, Clear Recent History, another Firefox-only feature, gives you full control over what stays and what goes."

The auto-update bug has been fixed, you can now just click auto update aka (check for updates) in order to update your portable firefox.

firefox portable sucks! it's really slow.

Does anyone here know why Firefox and other web browsers insist on opening disk/flash files for writing/modifying instead of keeping stuff in RAM until getting approval from the user for writing to storage? Also, has anyone found a portable RAMdisk utility that can be used from USB or eSATA storage to prevent leaving garbage on other people's PCs?

Portable FireFox is a useful and capable browser that allows good control of what is left on the computer (private data etc), IE7 doesn't IMHO.

However I use a script to copy the .\Data\profile contents to c:\TEMP\profile because the profile files are constantly being modified as web pages are accessed leading to a lot of undesired writing on the USB drive.

The TEMP\profile directory can be deleted when FireFox exits.

Meh, I still prefer to use 2.0.0.20.

Personally i love Firefox. It has some really cool plugins and themes, (though quite a few of the themes don't seem to work with FF Portable v3.0.2).

I'm on a crusade to get people to use Firefox instead of Internet Exploder and although there are issues with Firefox, the development team are working to get them sorted so give them feedback about your issues, but don't give them any lip.

Internet Exploder also has some issues, IE7, (i think), is absolutely awful, when i upgraded from an earlier version i completely lost the plot. I couldn't find how to change the layout or anything.

Thank Mozilla for Firefox.

@Michael - download the nightly builds with the ending ...win32.zip and doubleclick on firefox.exe.

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/

---

Later you can create a own profile.:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager

---

More later you copy all files with your own independent profilefolder to your USB stick. Create a textfile named start.doc and write as example.:

start \yourfolder\firefox.exe -profile \yourfolder\Firefox\yourprofilefolder\ (The path to firefox.exe and your own profilefolder.)

Change the filename from start.doc in start.bat and after that klick on start.bat - voila! Your browser starts with your own profile. Some parameters for your start.bat.:

With -turbo your firefox is in 1 second ready.

With -fullscreen your firefox starts always in fullscreen modus.

Good luck!

When I try to download Firfox 3.0.3. I get the Firefox Setup 3.0.3. I open the file then it starts extracting. After it's done...nothing happens

* Tutorial *

How to disable the crash report complete?

The crash report is saved to your OS and send to http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/ - anyone can see it. Your IP, all running processes and many more data from your system and browser - also the responsible url for the crash is saved. Mozilla show not all public.

I mean Mozilla should not know if your browser is crashed visiting a porn site. :)

1.) Open in Firefox folder the file application.ini with WordPad MFC.

2.) Change in [Crash Reporter] this 'Enabled=1' in that 'Enabled=0' and write maybe also the following variable.: MOZ_CRASHREPORTER_DISABLE=1

Finished.

If you start now firefox from a USB stick your browser create no longer several files on your system (..\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Crash Reports\) and sending them to Mozilla is also stopped. Mozilla ask you before it will send but internet teach me its better to be paranoia.^^

@Gregg

This problem is gone with 3.0.3 - i had the same slow speed.

If you press the alphabet backwards then press ctrl alt 1-10 followed by F3, F6, F7 this will open the windows server.
Enjoy. shhh its a secret :)

Perhaps it's just my PC and installation, but this v3 is very sluggish. It wasn't just the time it took to load pages, but the app appeared to continue sucking resources even after the page was loaded! Even after tinkering with published speed-improving adjustments, there was no noticeable improvement. I went back to v2. Has anybody else had this problem? I'd like it to work well, as I like the zoom feature.

maybe it's just me, but FF3 has a 1-2 second delay between every single click. It drove me insane, so I went back to FF2. Too bad, because I love all the new features of FF3.

normm & Firefoxer: If you're trying to use Firefox Portable as your default browser, you should set it with DefaultMyFFP, available at http://cubegames.net/downloads/dmffp.php - using Firefox's own setting will break things.

"no name": All the installer does is extract the files! Extracting it yourself will mess up the subfolders, so the portable wrapper won't find the Firefox executable.

normm: this is an issue no-one can help. Thunderbird portable works this way too, unfortenatly :((
I wish someone knows a solution.

I'm sure there will be a portable version of 2.0.0.15 as well.

@ Win98_lover
@ Firefoxer

There will be a new version 2.0.0.15 wich still works with Win98.
Realease date: July 1
See: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases/Firefox_2.0.0.15

Fortunatly 2.0.0.14 portable is still available!
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=151265&package_id=249833&release_id=593061

Thor's comment is correct that FF3 requries Win2000+ (at least according to this Mozilla page: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/system-requirements-v3.html. I guess I will stick with Opera.

firefox 3.0 portable it is NOT portable, when you should it install! package provided by portableapps is not working just unzipping it. actually, it is not unzippable wit winzip or winrar (it is 7z installer). and after that (ie: "unzipping" it with uniexctract) it just says: mozilla firefox, portable edition, cannot be started, you may wish to re-install to fix this issue. (error: firefox.exe could not be found). yea, we can dig in configuration files, but it is not the solution! or what???

nate, Here's how to export passwords. 1st export them using febe. It usually is named "usernames-passwords{profile}.fbu". Rename/change .fbu to zip. Then unzip it. 2 files named "key3" and "signons2" are in the unzipped folder. Copy the 2 files to the new firefox folder that contains the passwords. I don't know the name but I tried them all. I think it's the profile folder.

When I double click on an internet shortcut firefox launches the .exe bypassing the portable launcher.
I lose all my custom settings, bookmarks, themes, extensions, etc.
It creates a profile folder in the Documents and Settings\username\Applications Data... etc, and elsewhere.
How to avoid this and launch the portable version with all my settings intact?

Why I can't run several copies of FF portable from different drives? Or if this is inpossible (but why?) - how can I run several profiles of FF together?

@szp - yea! look in ->FirefoxPortable.ini and ->readme.txt
the splash screen setings live in the .ini

FirefoxPortable.jpg

Hello. Is there any way to change SPLASH SCREEN to my own image?

I use this portable version off of my hard drive. but i was always running into a bookmark/profile prob. so i started to copy the fire port direct to another local drive as a back up. until one time i had the prob and loaded a backup copy that had a prob .... HA.... so i started 2 b/u dirs. 1 i never touch. ....... so one day im skimming through my add/remove software list and see the OOOriginal install of FF, thought i would remove it. do you know that NONE of my 3 portable FF progs would start !! on 2 seperate drives. in 3 seperate folders. WoW. luckily im in favor of over kill and i had a cd b/u ..... but WhY do i have to go through this?

after i read http://www.winpenpack.com/main/e107_plugins/faq/faq.php?0.cat.5.3
i added
[FileSystem]
Cache=.\Cache\$AppName$
to FirefoxPortableSettings.ini in FirefoxPortable\App\DefaultData\settings
and apparently it doesn't write anything in user/AppData
It just creates a some temp stuff in (AppData\Roaming\Mozilla), while a session is opened and after that deletes it, also CCleaner no longer shows me which FF files should i clean, but probably someone should thoroughly check this (it works for me on vista & ff portable 2.0.0.11)

Running App\firefox.exe will run it in normal mode I think. So you lose the portability as it might create entries in the registry or APPDATA etc. I haven't tried it though.

Splash: Am I missing something? If I run firefox.exe in \App\firefox there is no splash. Seems that firefoxportable.exe is just a starter? Any problems bypassing it?

Is it possible? to create a new Profile with firefox portable
if so any help anywhere?

To Simon (and anyone else who cares): you can turn off the splash screen by editing the FirefoxPortable.ini in the same directory as your FirefoxPortable.exe.

DisableSplashScreen=true

If it's portable why did I lose access to all my plugins now that I've moved it to my flash drive? My plugins are still listed but greyed out.

Looks like it can be thinned a bit.Why would it need an uninstaller for starters when you can just delete the created folder?

\FirefoxPortable\App\firefox\uninstall

Prefer it to a normal install ATM.Once tweaked, addons and bookmarks installed just copy and paste the whole folder to another partition as a backup.

These "Thinstall" apps are the way to go!

it's still too large and becomes too slow with all its upgrades... sorry for all those developers which work to it.

The prefetch directory is a WinXP trick to speed up app loading and has got nothing to do with app portability. Try searching "prefetch" on Google and you'll get tons of links on the subject.

Hi!
is it normal to have references to Firefox Portable written in my "WINDOWS\Prefetch" directory?
(filenames such as "FIREFOXPORTABLE.EXE-0B323CAE.pf" appear)

My GAIM Portable does the same, so maybe i fool myself somewhere...?
thanks
(by the way, this is under Win XP)

There was a bug in the auto-update, that made the auto update feature non-portable. It has been fixed and you can auto update without an added entry in add/remove.
Although the manual way is probably the safest.
But you should be able to do either with the current version.

3rd alternative (can't believe it hasn't been mentioned yet:
Free The Fox: http://www.mai9.net/blog/prog/firefox/free-the-fox/

Don't let the fact that it hasn't been updated in a while fool you: running several builds of Firefox with it from USB, including latest nightlies of FireFox 3.0a. (with profile copied over from 2.x build /w nightly tester tools -> all extensions & themes)
Autoupdate naturally works with it, for other builds just download the 7z or zip archive and replace

You are not supposed to update FireFox Portable using auto-update, I think. The Firefox Portable website says: "To upgrade to a newer version of Firefox Portable, just install a new copy of Firefox Portable right over your old one. All your data will be preserved."

Also can Firefox be made not to put "pluginreg.dat" in C:\Documents and Settings?

When portable Firefox updates it adds itself to the add/remove programs list. Can this be fixed?

if you want firefox portable without splash screen then just go to sourceforge and download the last firefox portable pre-release (beta or RC) and update it automatic to the last version (2.0.0.1)

last time i checked it was on one of the beta versions and there was no splash screen at all even after update!!!

but don't count on me, maybe they changed those test versions and you cannot update them (but still check it anyway)

go to: https://sourceforge.net/projects/portablefirefox/

download page "all": https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=152554

go to: "Firefox Portable Test" or "Pre-Releases"

download page "Firefox Portable Test": https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=152554&package_id=168950

(copy posted by AlephX, hoping that shimi-yeh does not complain)

I realized I have the same problem my saved form information and passwords did not work after importing using FEBE.. you have to activate the options in firefox portable as most of the save functions were turned off for me on install

Nate _ This may be the problem: FF 1.5.0.7 clears the saved passwords on closing if it is set to clear private data even if the "Saved Passwords" box is unchecked. Try also unchecking the box marked "Clear Private Data when closing" and check the box marked "Ask me before clearing." That seems to work.

Nate -- I'm using the U3 version of FF 1.5.0.7 (updated to 1.5.0.8). I had no trouble importing passwords from the fully installed version by opening the U3 version, clicking on File>Import and selecting "Netscape 6, 7 or Mozilla 7x", then selecting "Saved Passwords." Have you tried this and failed?

I am having a trouble restoring/importing the saved forms, passwords and so on from firefox 1.5.0.7 on winxp sp2 (installed on HDD) to firefox portable 1.5.0.7 on winxp sp2(installed on USB Flash drive). I have no trouble importing the bookmarks, but it is the saved passwords & logins I REALLY need to export/import. Has anyone been able to accomplish this?

I have tried copying the firefox profile from the original computer to the profile in firefox portable's folder in the thumb drive. I have tried to use mozbackup. I've googled and read just about every forum I could find but I'm still searching for the right answer. Anyone able to help? This is for work :(

Thanks in advance,
Nate.