problem description: testing with different versions of ff can be problematic, especially when almost always you launch them from kmeleon's context menu, reasons for that:

1- unlike km, firehoax doesn't recognise profile.ini to build own profile in same directory
2- so only way seemed to run with command paramater -p profile -no-remote
3- this causes problems, because if you forget a version minimised and opened it again from k-m
4- with command parameter it will give an error message: not responding
5- without parameter, even bigger problem as that version will immediately run from the "default" profile..updating extensions for an older version and causing all kind of crap
6- if more than one version is running, you won't be able to run a specific version from km and will use the firefox version running from the main profile.
7- if you accidentically
run a version directly from its folder without the parameter it will cause profile corruptions (no.5)

ultimate solution:

for e.g you have 4 different versions of ff:
firefox 1.5 - firefox.exe
firefox 3.0 - firefox.exe
firefox 3.1 - firefox.exe
firefox 4.0 - firefox.exe

first you rename the binaries to their equivalent versions
firefox 1.5 - leave as is
firefox 3.0 = firefox3.exe
firefox 3.1 - firefox31.exe
firefox 4.0 - firefox4.exe

this is important so windows loads each one in separate process

now this is the crucial part:
leave ff1.5 and go to the other firefoxes folders
in each one of them, you'll find a file called: application.ini

open application.ini in notepad, you'll find app part:

[App]
Vendor=Mozilla
Name=Firefox
Version=3.0.5
BuildID=2008120122
Copyright=Copyright (c) 1998 - 2008 mozilla.org
ID={ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}

rename firefox to anything you like
e.g

[App]
Vendor=Mozilla
Name=Firehoe
Version=3.0.5
BuildID=2008120122

but remember that name will have to be unique for every version.

do the same for other firefox versions but with different names.. anything you like.

what that does is, instead of mozilla cramming all profiles for different versions inside same 'firefox' folder(using the same profiles.ini), it will create new folders(with the newly assigned names) inside the mozilla directory directly.. so you no longer need command paramaters cause every version will automatically use its own profile and will avoid mishaps in profiles and you can run as many instances of ever version as you like without problems because each will be identified as a separate program







Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/13/2010 10:04AM by disrupted.

Very handy dicovery - this solves many of my problems with different Firefoxe and probably SeaMonkey versions too.

Question: Have already tried whether strings like Firefox3.1 are a sufficient change?


I will not have time to test concept before afternoon.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2009 07:34AM by guenter.