A look at Firefox's improved Profiles Manager that just launched

[harlan4096]

Firefox has supported profiles for a very long time. This may come as a surprise to many users, as the visibility of the feature is lacking. Veteran users know that they can run Firefox with the parameter -p to start the profile manager. There is also about:profiles, which can be loaded in Firefox's address bar.

From a usability point of view, it compares badly against Chromium-based browsers. That is probably the main reason why Mozilla set out to improve the experience.
The new Profile Manager of the Firefox web browser has just been enabled in Firefox Nightly. This is the first step towards enabling the new manager in Firefox Stable, the version that is most widely used.

Good to know: Profiles add more to the browser than just a fresh coat of paint and a new icon. These act as independent users, which means that they have their own set of bookmarks, open tabs, installed extensions and other customizations.

Here is what you can expect.

Firefox's Profile Manager



A click on the Menu-icon in Firefox's toolbar displays the new Profiles entry. Another click displays all existing profiles, an option to create a new profile, and to manage all profiles.



You can load any profile with a click on its name or icon. This loads the profile in a new browser window without closing the existing one.

Continue Reading...