One of the regular features I hope to have in the months leading up to the launch of Firefox 3 (anticipated date: as soon as it's done) is a discussion of all my favorite changes (both large and small) and a few ways to make the most of them. So as a sort of easing-in, I'm going to discuss today how to install Firefox 3 beta on your computer and still have Firefox 2 and also where to get some of your favorite extensions.
If you're not a "power" Firefox user (and even if you are) you may not know about profiles. Profiles are folders stored separately from the main program that store all your personal data: bookmarks, history, cookies, saved sessions, extensions and even things like the cache. Firefox comes with a great little utility that lets you manage profiles and if you have a few, you can use it or command line options to switch between profiles.
The issue is if you're running Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 at the same time, the profiles aren't entirely compatible and you'll be subject to weirdness if you try to use a single profile (which is the default) and switch back and forth between the two versions. On the other hand, if you make a new profile for Firefox 3, you will be missing your passwords, your bookmarks and it'll take a little longer to get started with Firefox 3. And who wants that? So here's what I suggest: make a new profile, copy over the relevant files and then install Firefox 3. Seems easy enough? Let's get going. A note, a lot of these steps involve having Firefox completely closed. If you want to follow along, copy these steps to a text file or print them out. A second word of caution, I use Windows, and while I try to offer the equivalents on other operating systems, I can't promise that they're accurate.
Step 1: Using Firefox 2, make yourself a new profile.
Close Firefox all the way. The fastest way to do so is to use File>Exit. (On Mac, Firefox>Quit Firefox). If you're paranoid or if you find the later steps don't work, check that the Firefox process is closed. In Windows you do this by launching the Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del), on the Mac, it's called Activity Monitor, in Linux, kill. Then make a new profile. In Windows, go to the Start menu and select Run (Windows-R is my favorite shortcut) and enter
firefox.exe -ProfileManager. (On Mac, Linux, follow the steps here.) Click Create Profile and make a new profile in the default location with the name ff3 Click Finish. Select the ff3 profile and check Don't ask me at Startup. Then start Firefox.And now you have a brand new Firefox profile. Totally empty and kinda sad... this is about to change.
Step 2: Copy some of your files over.
Close Firefox all the way. Now find your profile folders. In Windows, they're stored at
%Appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles which is a string you enter into Start>Run to find the appropriate folder. In Mac, ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox, Linux, ~/.mozilla/firefox. Once there, you'll see two folders: one xxxxxx.default and one xxxxxx.ff3 where the xxxxxx is a random string. Basically, you want to copy a bunch of files from the .default one to the .ff3 one. The files are:bookmarks.html, cookies.txt, formhistory.dat, history.dat, key3.db, signons2.txt, mimeTypes.rdf. If you saved words to Firefox's personal dictionary, you'll want to copy persdict.dat as well.
Step 3: Install Firefox 3.
Now if you start Firefox again, you'll find that you start with the new profile but you have all your bookmarks and history and cookies. You're ready to roll with Firefox 3. Time to download it. You can get the installer here. Close Firefox all the way and run the installer. Select a custom install (for Windows). I don't like the default location, so I install to
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 3\. Click through and start Firefox 3.Step 4: Edit your shortcuts (Windows only).
Now you need to make sure that you only launch the old default profile with Firefox 2 and the new ff3 profile with Firefox 3. To do so, edit the shortcuts in your Start menu as follows:
- For the Firefox 3 one:
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 3\firefox.exe" -P ff3 - For the Firefox 2 one:
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -P default
-no-remote flag. However this will force that shortcut to spawn a new process and hence you can't use that shortcut to launch new Firefox windows in an existing process.Step 5: Get extensions and make them compatible.
One big downside to using a beta product (like Firefox 3) is that it's not well supported by outside developers. So you may find that your favorite extensions aren't supported by Firefox 3. There are three ways to get around this in order of preference: 1) Don't use the extension. You may find that the functionality you were trying to get in the extension is actually built into Firefox 3. Awesome! 2) Use a development version of the extension. These are written to support Firefox 3 and are also undergoing development. You can often find development builds on the developer's website and I've linked to a few below. 3) Disable compatibility checking. (You'll probably have to do this anyway but using a Firefox 2 extension in Firefox 3 can have unpredictable results and often won't work even if you force Firefox to allow you to enable it.)
To disable compatibility checking, I use the Nightly Tester Tools extension by the awesome Mossop. It adds a button to your Add-ons manager that edits the extensions to make them appear as compatible with your current version. Easy, fast. This should be your first extension. However, like I said above, especially if you're using an extension written for Firefox 2, don't expect it to work even if you disable compatibility checking.
As for other extension, search for dev builds. Here are the links to some of my favorites (other favorites like Greasemonkey and Chatzilla are compatible or update rapidly on addons.mozilla.org so no extra links needed.):
Due to a large number of UI changes, very few themes are available for Firefox 3 and none of the Firefox 2 ones will work.
Step 6: Get help, help us.
Hopefully, you won't need this step, but one new feature of Firefox 3 will be online support. This means many help documents will be maintained by the community of users. We're making progress at: support.mozilla.com and that's the first place to look. If you've searched and you're still stuck, you can try the forums there or if LiveChat is open, Live Chat. I'm one of the senior LiveChat staffers so if you do try Live Chat, say hi! If you really love Firefox, consider volunteering by writing help articles or staffing the forums or LiveChat. We'd really appreciate it.
Ok. There you have it. How to install Firefox 3 in 6 easy steps. I'll put together some screenshots later if you think they're needed. Once you have Firefox 3, you can follow along as I explore some of my favorite new features in upcoming episodes. Stay tuned!
-- Cww
