Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse
blog.mozilla.orgComments
That portability is a killer feature, but scriptability needs to be improved. The manual says you can do:
>`firefox --profile <path> Start with profile at <path>`
But that will not work as expected if you have more than one profile (which is the whole point). At present the only workable solution is to fiddle with a GUI thru `about:profiles` (or `firefox --ProfileManager`) in order to create the profiles and give them all-important UIDs. And then do:
>`firefox -P <UID>`
It may seem small, but I've found that this is a serious roadblock. I wish it could be fixed so as to make profiles entirely scriptable.
PS: to be clear, after the futzing with the GUI to create the profiles, my script works (well!) at opening windows in the right profile, this way: (1) Check if the given profile is already launched: `ps -eo args | grep -E ".(firefox).(-P $UID)" | grep -v grep > /dev/null` (2) Do `firefox -P $UID --new-instance $url` if it isn't, and `--new-tab` if it is. Inelegant, but very reliable.
What is better depends on the use case. For me, containers are magic, because I can be logged into eg 2-3 different microsoft accounts simultaneously in the same window. With profiles or other browsers I would need to open a different window for each, which would be unnecessary and impractical. This is extremely convenient for me, containers is the feature I cannot currently browse without. Sometimes "separate your data sort-of-but-not-quite" may be exactly what you may need.
I have several sites I only want to open with specific profiles and this workflow is a pain with Chrome. (click link with wrong profile, copy url, close tab, open a new browser, select profile, paste url, open site with correct profile.)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containerise/
> ...firefox.exe" -P "profilename"
and then `taskbar.grouping.useprofile true` so only windows from the same profile are grouped together and some custom recolored Firefox icons for those pinned shortcuts and custom per-profile userChrome.css styling (#TabsToolbar background-color) for easy visual differentiation of a window's profile.
For Windows 10, no scripting is needed. Just the initial GUI profile setup.
> ...firefox.exe" -P "profilename" "https://www.example.com"
from terminal works exactly as expected regardless of how many profile instances are currently running or their state.
You can even have multiple versions of Firefox installed and point them at different profiles. I have some profiles on ESR and some on Standard.
This redditor looks like he's doing close to what you're asking with the caveat of needing an entry in taskbartabs.json to use -taskbar-tab (and maybe Windows OS only) [2]
I don't think it's completely chromeless but you can probably hide everything via custom CSS:
ctrl+shift+i (dev tools) -> f1 (settings)
check advanced settings:
enable browser chrome and add-on debugging
enable remote debugging
Find element IDs or class names and try out CSS rules to your heart's content.
Set toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets = true and put your changes in Firefox/Profiles/$profilename/chrome/userChrome.css.
Remember to turn off the advanced settings when you're done.
[1] https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/browser/components/t...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1ljidwp/progressiv...
I just made a new profile as a test and this is what I did:
...firefox.exe" -P -> create a new profile (ie. "newprofilename")
about:config set `taskbar.grouping.useprofile = true` (when I originally did this for many profiles I believe I copied prefs.js that already had it set)
close and reopen that profile instance. I used ...firefox.exe" -P "newprofilename" but any method of launching the profile should work. It should now be in a separate taskbar group.
Pin that new group to taskbar. Also modify its shortcut target to add -P "newprofilename"
Now you're done.
Also, I didn't set grouping.useprofile on all my profiles, just the profiles I wanted separately pinned on my taskbar. My default profile is pinned normally without grouping.useprofile set.
That's interesting. It didn't work a couple of years ago, perhaps it's been fixed.
Still leaves that initial GUI profile setup.
./firefox -CreateProfile "profile-name /home/user/.mozilla/firefox/profile-path/" -CreateProfile "profile-name"
random_string + '.' + "profile-name"
If you want predictable, non-random directory names, you'll have to specify it.
In my case, I am able to launch several Firefox instances with distinct profiles.
I'm starting to think that setting the `HOME` environment variable is the only way to really make things isolated - this still won't handle `~insertusernamehere` but basically everything else respects it.
edit: I use Simple Tab Groups which is far more featureful - "Send tab to [group/container/etc]" for example is table stakes.
I have had issues with Youtube and Google together. I think I solved it using the "Don't track me Google extension" but I am not so sure anymore
Within the customer profiles, I have containers for things like different AWS accounts (although AWS now has that as part of the console), I can have logins to test systems and production systems etc.
The automation of containers is good too, tied to URLs.
These new profiles seem to be slightly different from the old ones?
[edit: ignore most of the stuff below, see replies]
The new UI doesn't show your other regular profiles and when you create a new profile via the new UI, it also doesn't create a separate profile folder (it's part of your active profile). They're like sub profiles... probably to allow everything to be synced via a Firefox account?
We can still move the profile folder. The difference is that what's created with the new UI is part of that folder (the old about:profiles page is still there and old style profiles are still supported).
When you open about:profiles in both your "new" profiles, you can see that even though it has the same name, the path changes.
So I think in effect they still behave like profiles before, just with some extra logic on top so they have names, icons and so on.
Do you know if there's any way to have old profiles showing on this new UI?
Edit: They seem to be working on this:
A single "Send to profile" option would be such a boon to productivity.
Otherwise it tends to just spawn a new window in the existing instance.
FWIW, that's only true if you care about it having those IDs and being exposed to the graphical interface. If you don't, then you can just run `firefox --profile $HOME/.mozilla/firefox/whatever` and it works. I use a small shell script™ wrapper to run firefox this way and it's quite nice. Also helpful: If you run firefox like that, you can just point it at a new empty directory and it'll populate it as a profile, so it's easy to make new ones too.
PS: probably. It's possible there was a fix. The GUI setup remains unscriptable.
>>`firefox --profile <path> Start with profile at <path>`
>But that will not work as expected if you have more than one profile (which is the whole point).
What won't work? Is that specific to Windows? This just works fine on my Linux box.
I use firefox via flatpak and had no issues so far accessing profile data (in one of the folders in ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/.mozilla/firefox/ - I keep a regular archive of the entire folder as backup).
I don't see it yet, but hopefully soon.
It works really well though. Does exactly what I would expect and hope from such a feature.
but it's nice to see this finally get into Firefox because there are still a lot of folks who also want to maintain things like browser bookmarks, passwords etc in a separate profile. that's the only conceivable useful difference over Containers (which IMHO is slightly better than having to manage multiple profiles)
But thats a massive difference.
I have work profiles and a personal profile. I have password manager profiles for clients (clients will provide their own PM logins to segregate their access) which are different between them, and having separate profiles is huge.
Containers are great, especially for crappy websites that use your sessions for tracking which page you are on, but they are no where near powerful enough.
I use containers to separate system context (partitioning cookies and site data) while remaining in the same user context (e.g. "personal browsing").
I use profiles for when I need different user contexts (different bookmarks and frequently used sites for different clients or projects).
When only one tool is available, you are limited by the constraints of that tool (e.g. bookmarks bleeding over between user contexts when using containers, or having to copy extensions or bookmarks into every profile).
This is the part where the new Firefox profiles fall short. I just checked and cannot create two separate profiles with the same email address. So it's not possible tohave different profiles for different _projects_ at work, for example.
Containers are the way to go with this, but then they are not exactly intuitive. Arc got this right and Zen is showing a lot of promise.
The best I've managed so far is to run separate instances of Firefox with the same Sync Account which appear as separate 'devices'. Nightly with a different icon and theme makes it obvious which is which.
This way if I come across something interesting I want dig into further on my own time, I can bookmark it as well as 'Send Tab To Device -> Home' or 'Phone' depending on where I want to be and what environment I want to have available when I see it later (e.g. read only, or hands on).
Yes, I may be hoarding a lot of tabs but that's a separate issue...
Profiles have been there for years, been using them since at least 2010.
> yes about:profiles has existed for a long time. We have heard feedback from many of our users to make it user friendly and accessible. We are introducing many new additional functionalities in this new profile management experience (avatars, colors/themes, shortcuts, desktop icons, default links/apps per profile, copy profile, move tabs between profiles). Stayed tuned for these updates.
so yes, you are right. it did exist.
At this time there are essentially three levels of indirection: "legacy" profiles -> new profiles -> containers, that is we can have multiple legacy profiles with each having multiple new profiles, each with an independent group of containers in them.
To choose a legacy profile, use the -P CLI option (with or without a profile name). Once firefox starts, you can switch between the new profiles stored inside the current legacy one using the new UI.
Actually, I have wanted better profile support for a while to segregate addons. There are plenty of addons that I want to use occasionally that require full data access. I generally do trust them, but even so, I keep these in a separate profile just in case. That is something that can't be done with containers.
Seconded, except I don't trust most add-ons and don't want to have to trust them.
I want an easy way to launch a disposable browser session in any browser, totally isolated, with add-ons chosen (and downloaded) at launch time, and then erased of with the rest of the session when its last open page is closed.
The new Profile Manager (that doesn't yet entirely replace the old one, both exist side-by-side for the moment) uses icons and colors to better differentiate profiles at a glance.
Additionally links to the new Profile Manager are now in the Account menu and feel a bit more like an "account chooser" (comparable to Chrome's experience, especially) and lot less like a power user feature hidden behind a page address that people might not know ("about:profiles").
That's what I fear happening, and I will not like it.
> comparable to Chrome's experience
If I wanted to have "Chrome's experience" I would have used Chrome. Profiles is one way Firefox has been vastly better. Selecting the last used Profile is one press on Enter on startup and selecting a different one is a matter of pressing up/down a few times and pressing Enter or typing the first few (unique) characters of the profile name and pressing Enter. I can't think of a UI that would be faster, I think this has already reached the maximum UX for decades. This all works nicely, because it looks, feels and behaves like a native window (don't know if it is).
> lot less like a power user feature hidden behind a page address that people might not know ("about:profiles").
Why is everyone comparing it to the "hidden debug site" instead of the old profiles UI? Yeah no shit, about:profiles is not discoverable to the average user, much like all the other about: pages, but why would anyone not debugging the browser use it over the normal profiles UI?
> Beyond its UI having basically been frozen since Netscape Navigator 4-ish modulo XUL shenanigans?
I don't think this is a bad thing. I vastly prefer native(?-like) UI, way more over yet another Metro-UI clone with sluggish behaviour and no keyboard bindings.
"about:profiles" wasn't a debug view, it was the "normal" profiles UI; it was the only way to get to the ProfileManager without closing Firefox and reopening it with a CLI flag. For most of its life in Firefox it never had a menu item or toolbar button.
> I vastly prefer native(?-like) UI, way more over yet another Metro-UI clone with sluggish behaviour and no keyboard bindings.
Firefox has never used native controls. They were "XUL" controls for a long while, but that had several major revisions. (Netscape had some XUL predecessors, probably some port or fork of a Unix toolkit like Qt or Tk?) But the trick to XUL was it was always the same renderer as HTML for the most part. Then in the somewhat controversial at the time decision to kill off XUL Firefox moved to just HTML everywhere.
The new Profile Manager seemed to have keyboard bindings and didn't feel sluggish to me. The one loan complaint with it is that it doesn't have a way yet to surface profiles made before using the new Manager, but I assume that will come with time and expect that's one of the things to fix before the new one replaces the old one.
I did not knew that. I have used the ProfileManager for years and have not know of "about:profiles". Where is even the button on that page to launch the ProfileManager? I only see options to launch a specific profile or Restart with or without Add-Ons. This doesn't really look like the official page to handle Profiles and more like an afterthought.
Also about:profiles currently tells me this, because I started another profile:
> About Profiles
> Another copy of Firefox has made changes to profiles. You must restart Firefox before making more changes. This page helps you to manage your profiles. Each profile is a separate world which contains separate history, bookmarks, settings and add-ons.
What kind of useless behaviour is that? I can't open another profile as soon as another profile was opened? Honestly the claim, that this is supposed to be the primary interface to Profiles doesn't sound believable. This seems to be more something like a diagnostic tool/power user tool to access half-way internals in the same spirit as about:processes or other about: pages.
Also opening the Profiles Manager through some other Firefox instance seems a bit pointless to me, because you normally use Profiles to have process isolation and prevent one frozen Firefox instance from blocking another to start.
> it was the only way to get to the ProfileManager without closing Firefox
You can open the Profiles Manager without closing Firefox?
> For most of its life in Firefox it never had a menu item or toolbar button.
That seems to be an easy change that doesn't need redesigning the Profile mechanism.
> Firefox has never used native controls.
I suspected that, that's why I added a question mark and "-like". I ment that it feels, behaves and conforms like a native tool and is really usable and integrated.
Also are you sure about that? Because when I change my GTK+/GNOME theme, it also instantly changes the layout, icons, colors, etc. in the Profile Manager as well as in the other Firefox Chrome at runtime. Normally only GTK+ programs do that, not even KDE programs do it and certainly not some customly rolled UI toolkit. For example programs like Google Chrome(ium) give a shit about the OS theme. So if Firefox really uses some self-made UI toolkit, than they did a REALLY good job, because it looks and behaves exactly like all the other GTK+ programs. But I always thought that Firefox uses a GTK+ fork.
But neither this post, nor the splash screen which links to this, nor any of the menu options, actually say how to use "profiles". I can't find it in an internet search either, instead coming up with Firefox's old about:profiles solution. Nor is it enabled using the little user icon in the browser bar, nor is it activated with the same shortcut as Chromium profiles.
I eventually found it in their knowledge base, and it appears to be locked behind a sign in button under the profile icon? Or my (up to date) browser lacks the button? This is such a confusing experience.
This update seems to fix those problems, by copying Chromium's UX.
I disagree. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45844108
> Can't be invoked quickly using two keyboard shortcuts
Yeah true, you have to instead click on the Firefox logo or type Firefox into the application launcher.
> does not divide into simple and portable folders
I have used the same profile folder over SSH across Linux and Windows, so I don't think that's true.
Glad it's getting an update, hope it doesn't ruin a decent feature.
Profiles WITH container tabs is pretty killer, dont' think Chrome has anything like this.
Containers then can be used to separate multiple logins into the same website: e.g. you're testing a multi-user app and want to login as admin and user at the same time - containers make that easy without having to mess with incognito/private modes (those will forget your login as soon as you close them).
Then I use containers for isolating sensitive accounts within those profiles (bank, work Google Drive, etc).
I also use temporary containers to make it easier to be logged into the same site with multiple accounts at the same time between tabs - like admin and user accounts for our company’s app - which also make it easier to clear sessions and data.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...
The two most exciting things to me:
1. You can now launch and manage profiles from a menu hidden in the account menu (feels like the wrong place to put it, but shows up for me even though I'm not signed in)
2. Mozilla actually cares about profiles again. The feature felt mostly abandoned before, nearly inaccessible without command line flags or the very bare-bones and ugly about:profiles
So far I see that it is easier to create/open/swap between different profiles (before the easiest way was literally the terminal). There is a small icon next to firefox dock icon on macos for each profile that you can choose, which I do not remember before. So you can easily distinguish which icon corresponds to which profile window. And that you can edit the theme for each profile easier.
They like to click and icon and create/switch profile. Chrome, edge and many other browsers had this feature for ever. Not having ability to easily switch profiles is only reason I did not switch to Firefox full time even though I quite like the multi containers extension in Firefox for managing bazillion AWS accounts.
You just have to add the -p in the shortcut properties.
I think the new profiles will cause some confusion (at least initially) because these profiles are not listed on the old about:profiles page and the old profiles are not listed on the new UI.
Still, a good improvement for me. I no longer need to use the dev/nightly channels or 3rd party browsers based on FF just to have different bookmarks/settings/extensions. I'll need a way to add old profiles to the new UI though.
./firefox -CreateProfile "profile-name /home/user/.mozilla/firefox/profile-path/"
./firefox -profile "/home/user/.mozilla/firefox/profile-path/"
Disclaimer: I don't use macOS, but I'm sure it's similar to Linux in that regard. You'll need to change paths, of course.
(Fun fact, you can even switch to the Developer Edition default profile from regular Firefox with the -ProfileManager though that is not generally a good idea because Developer Edition is intentionally a half-step version or two ahead of "retail" Firefox. Developer Edition assumes you don't mind being a little bit closer to the bleeding edge. Still not the same as using Firefox Nightly as your daily driver, but still often a "power user preview" version.)
sorry I couldn't quite parse this
Both bookmarks that I'd just created and, just to clarify I'm not losing my mind, the full profile because I had to reinstall ublock origin.
I had to pull it from backups.
I found it confusing that there are now two different sets of profiles and had panicked at first when my original profile was apparently gone.
The only weirdness is when you have multiple windows of different profiles opened at the same time and you open a link from a different application it may open it in the last used window which may not be the one you wanted. But then you can of course just drag and drop the tab from one window to the other.
No need to go to about:profiles. Use a separate shortcut with a -profile option added.
I had to click the other link https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-management to understand that this is all about simple UI improvements to make it easier to work with existing profiles.
The blog post is more than confusing, it is misleading. HN should link to the support page instead of the blog post.
They are seriously dropping the ball here in terms of communication and it just makes Firefox seem stale.
Even further back — Netscape had profiles! https://web.archive.org/web/20000816175642/http://help.netsc...
It's like saying you have a responsive website, but only if I edit the layout in the DOM.
Just add -p in your shortcut to start on the profile manager.
That whole "Profiles don't/aren't just $THIS; they're also $THAT" construction is classic LLM output. Then you've got the weird confusing inconsistencies like calling profiles a new feature when they aren't and there's also the rule of 3 ("avatars, colours, naming", "set boundaries, protect your information and make the internet a little calmer"). It all feels machine-written. Even the comparison of tidying your tabs to setting boundaries seems meaningless. It's just the sort of empty parallels AI loves to make.
It's a short article but I really had to power through it because with every sentence I kept thinking, this is not written by a human. If it is AI-generated slop, that'd explain why some parts of it doesn't make any sense.
Is pure marketing speak, which is also what I find a lot of LLM generated text sounds like
I cannot even always quite formulate, what irks me about its output so much. Except for that "it's not X, it's Y" pattern. For non-English it may be easier, because it really just cannot use idioms properly, it's super irritating. But I wouldn't say it doesn't know English. Yet it somehow always manages to write in uncannily bad style.
Contrasting, rule of three, etc. are basic writing techniques that are common among good writers because they are good. This is the reason why AI learned to use them - because they work very well in communication.
The problem comes from that LLM prefers it way too often.
And I suppose it would be a bit difficult to change it to actually be good: even if it just used it once per session, it might still choose to use it on every session, as it cannot see how much an idiom has been used in other ones.
I mean, I've been using about:profiles for ages, but it would definitely be nice to have a bit more polish (e.g. every now and again I forget that a newly created profile is automatically promoted to default)
[edit] well seems I have to eat my words - there's a switch in about:config named "browser.profiles.enabled" that toggles a profiles menu item with some UI that apparently has existed for years. Nice!
I can't have profile without having a "Sign In" button in my toolbar. Mozilla… please. How is it possible, to ship a feature and do that…
The one thing I'm missing is "incognito" profiles - e.g. spawn a temporary profile (without any identity attached) easily when I'm researching/navigating unusual sites and kill it once I'm done. Having multiple of these would be a great improvement over normal incognito windows (which share identities).
Just add -p in the shortcut properties to start on the profile manager.
One thing I really want is a comprehensive system for transferring/syncing only certain data between profiles. Profiles contain some data that is specific to, well, a particular browsing profile (like open tabs), but also data that is really more specific to me as a person (like font preferences). And then each extension can have its own settings or data that I may or may not want to transfer. I always have to look up old articles on Mozilla wiki and hope they're still accurate when I want to transfer certain data/settings between profiles while neither nuking everything nor copying everything. It would be great to have a sort of "data browser" that let me pick and choose certain data and then create a new profile from that.
The other disappointing thing to me is how they talk about profiles (and container tabs) as related to different usage patterns like work, home, etc. I mean, yeah, that's cool, but what I really want (certainly from container tabs, sometimes from profiles as well) is site isolation. I don't just want one profile for my work Gmail and another for my personal Gmail. I want one container tab for "everything Google", isolated from the rest, to minimize Google's tracking. But, like I said above, I still want all my personal preferences uniform across these profiles/containers.
You store browser preferences in it and firefox copies said preferences to prefs.js on startup (overwriting on conflict).
I use Tree Style Tabs extension (obviously), so maybe the feature is coming from there?
You can definitely drag and drop a tab from one window to another, target window can be in a different profile.
You can select multiple tabs with SHIFT and then drag and drop them to the other window, no problem.
Seriously, what the hell Mozilla?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-management#w_is...
We're doing profiles and containers wrong. There are numerous other free software that demonstrate better examples. Why do we have two solutions when both are about isolation of data and execution? Browsers should take inspiration from how the Linux kernel does it using namespaces (and similar facilities in other kernels, eg: BSD jails). Divide isolation into different contexts like the different types of namespaces. There should be different contexts for isolating: - cookies policies and sharing - local data - extension availability and sharing - network access (direct internet, proxy, VPN, TOR, etc) - password stores - lifetime (permanent, limited-time, single-use) - web api availability (like no-js contexts, no-drm contexts, etc) - browser features - browsing history - sync accounts - bookmarks - tab configuration and state - theming - ad block profiles - website URL affinity (eg: don't open FB here, open YT only here, etc) - resource allocations (like CPU, RAM, etc) - redirection profiles (like to invidious, xitter, etc)
Different profiles/containers can be created by mixing and matching these isolation contexts. For example you can have two different profiles that sharing password managers, but one for use with VPN and one without. All the current uses of profiles and containers can be met with this concept - including private browsing. You could even have TOR browsing in the same browser. While at it, you could even simulate resource allocations like cgroups (already mentioned in the list).
All these might make you wonder if it isn't too complicated for ordinary people to use. Solutions for that exist in the OS space too. We have tools like docker, lxc and even bubblewrap to wrap over these low level complexities and present a simpler UI. In the browser, you could have different higher level plugins to setup profiles easily in specific manner. We can click 'private browsing' that will isolate a profile in every context by default (and offer to share anything else as it seems fit to you). You could have plugins that maintain different profiles for each of your gmail/workspace accounts. You could have a plugin that allows you to temporarily share OIDC SSO across profiles (currently an annoying problems with browser containers.) And finally, the power users may be able to script these low-level isolation contexts just the way they want it.
The next is how pages are displayed. Today we have full-window pages with multiple pages supported by tabs. But those who use browsers for anything serious, besides watching cat videos or doom scrolling on social media know how frustrating it is to not be able to browse two pages side-by-side. Some browsers like Zen do support that workflow, while others can get it using extensions. But we could go much further. Dividing windows is a solved problem that's very well done in applications like Blender, Emacs, VSCode and other IDEs. You should be able to divide the window into any arbitrary layout, with each pane (a subdivision of a window) showing one of the open pages. Emacs shows this with the concept of windows (which are panes) and buffers. Blender gives the same facility. The browser must be able to hold hundreds of such layouts along with their page assignments. To make it easy for the common user, these layouts can be presented as tabs to the user. Web pages should also be presented as a single-pane layout for that page, so that the user is able to close it easily without having to think about the distinction between a page, a tab and a pane like the way you need to know on Emacs.
Each page can be a different process with its own profile assignment and browsing history tree. The GUI should be a separate process. The amount of code shared between those processes should be based on security considerations. This way, we can have browser user profile, office profile, private browsing profile, developer profile and TOR profile all on the same window.
But the window layout shouldn't stop there. Currently, the menu bars, tab bar/sidebar, toolbars, address bar etc consume too much space. Imagine if it was the same case for desktops? Desktops take only a tiny fraction of the screen space in the form of the status bar or the dock. Even that is optional in many cases and can be hidden when not in use. The best way to layout the pages on a window IMHO, is how the tiling window managers do it. Browsers like Firefox already treat the UI like HTML+CSS. But it's on a different plane from the page UI - so much so that you need to start the debugger console in a different mode to control it. But if the tabs, status bars and menu bars used the same layout as regular pages (but with special UI control privileges), you'll get numerous options to design it the way you prefer and hide them easily.
To take it a bit further, I really like the concept of Wayland layer shells that allow you to make UI overlays. If you can make the controls into overlays, you could have per-pane controls like address bars and nav buttons that can be collapsed into small non-intrusive semitransparent UI buttons. This way, the UI can be truly full screen, easy to setup and easy to navigate.
I know that this is a tall order to achieve. But it costs nothing to dream, I guess.
Profiles are about separating Settings and user history, not for security isolation. If you want to do that use the OS?
> Today we have full-window pages with multiple pages supported by tabs. But those who use browsers for anything serious, besides watching cat videos or doom scrolling on social media know how frustrating it is to not be able to browse two pages side-by-side.
Why should the browser implement a window manager, when the window manager already exists? What stops you from putting two tabs side-by-side right now?
> But the window layout shouldn't stop there. Currently, the menu bars, tab bar/sidebar, toolbars, address bar etc consume too much space.
You know, that you can put the menubar into the OS panel?
Where does it say that? Using profiles is currently like using different browsers altogether. How does that preclude security isolation? All that aside, how did you reach the conclusion if you read what I wrote? I was talking about a single unified mechanism to consolidate the various types of isolations, security or not, in an easily understandablr manner. There are also some very annoying papercuts that I believe will be solved with that.
> If you want to do that use the OS?
> Why should the browser implement a window manager, when the window manager already exists?
If you haven't noticed, the browser has grown in the past quarter of a century into a full-fledged OS-level platform with a complex GUI, a few dozen technologies, equally numerous APIs, a decent sandbox and an entire VM to run applications written in any of a few dozen programming languages. It's easier to write a small OS compared to a small browser. Implementing window managers inside a browser is not very hard or unusual. Some browsers do it in their main UI too. I was suggesting an extension of that concept. If it can improve the UX of a browser, why insist on gatekeeping it to the OS window manager?
> What stops you from putting two tabs side-by-side right now?
Where have you ever seen that done satisfactorily? Forget the numerous bars and panels all over the place that take up so much space. When have you ever been able to share information seamlessly like in a single window? It's so frustrating that it's a joke as a solution.
> You know, that you can put the menubar into the OS panel?
On which platform? How many WMs/DEs you know offer that facility? Unlike on MacOS where you can do that, window managers have a few dozen menu bars that aren't even compatible with each other. How many OS panels will each browser have to integrate with? Here instead, I'm suggesting the use of a technology that's already there - the web engine. In fact, that's how most browsers implement their main UI already. But it's not quite well integrated with the engine, at least in Firefox. My suggestion was to remove that limitation. You're objecting to something that's already there.
If you need something to be upset about browsers, there are plenty of egregious changes being pushed down the throats of the users. In contrast, I wasn't suggesting anything that the user has to accept without questions. It's also something that can be done with the building blocks already available. In fact, the changes you object to are already being partially implemented by many projects and are well-received by users as far as I can see. If we are this cynical about trying out great ideas from other platforms, what sort of progress are we expecting anyway?
I will never object to new isolated features that are opt-in, don't break other features, don't clutter up the UI and worsen the performance. I'm also willing to take compromises for new features. Sadly this is not the experience I get from modern software development and especially anything Web-adjacent like browsers.
I only pointed out how I don't think these should be priorities or think they are already solved.
> Using profiles is currently like using different browsers altogether.
Using profiles is like using a different configuration and different runtime state with the same browser. This doesn't sound too far of from isolation, but I think security that is rolled in user programs and not backed by the OS is fundamentally futile. It is nice to have another option, but I wouldn't count on if for real security. And it seams to be a bit unnecessary, when the OS already provides process and user isolation, that are seldom able to be bypassed.
> If you haven't noticed, ..... browsers become complicated OS ...
Yes, and I don't like that, but this is orthogonal here.
> why insist on gatekeeping it to the OS window manager?
To me that is the opposite of gatekeeping, because now this is available and consistent to every program and not just specific to a single one.
Per program window handling used to be common, but has been largely abandoned, because most people don't work that way. MS Windows has had (and still has) MDI. This is a nice concept in my opinion, but it largely went away for reasons. Some setup programs still ask you if you want to install the program in MDI or SDI mode, but to my knowledge no new program does it and users seldomly use it. MacOS also has remnants of this with windows that are bounded by the borders of the parent window.
This approach has a fundamental flaw though. So you do a lot amount of work and now you can display multiple websites side-by-side in a single OS window, but as soon as you want to do the same with the text editor, the Office application, the Video player or any other program, you are lost and need to use the OS window manager. Now you have red-flavored and green-flavored windows, that are incompatible and not interoperable and this is kind-of stupid.
Instead we went the other way, and in my opinion for a good reason. So for example on MS Windows tabs are treated the same as windows, they get listed in the window switcher and get screenshots just like real OS windows. I think this is a better approach, because now all the windows can be modified and moved the same and also have vastly more features than isolated applications could ever provide. Think of how to implement "Always on top" in the browser.
> Where have you ever seen that done satisfactorily?
Yes, everyday on my computer? I either click on the tab and do "Move Tab" > "to New Window", or just drag the tab away from its position and then press Windows - Left/Right Up/Down, wherever I want the tab to be.
> Forget the numerous bars and panels all over the place that take up so much space.
The chrome isn't that much and can even be reduced to a tiny line, when you turn it into a popup. Granted, this could be a button, but that's not a large change and the functionality is already available with an oneliner. In fact I recently added exactly this feature.
> When have you ever been able to share information seamlessly like in a single window?
Whenever I want it?
> It's so frustrating that it's a joke as a solution.
Not to me. Can share what frustrates you?
> On which platform? How many WMs/DEs you know offer that facility?
Well you already listed MacOS, and I was able to do it in the past on GNOME/Mate, but just tried it and it still exists, but is broken, so I am sad. I was under the impression, that this used a portable API, because it did work across a lot, of UI toolkits.
> But the window layout shouldn't stop there. Currently, the menu bars, tab bar/sidebar, toolbars, address bar etc consume too much space. Imagine if it was the same case for desktops? Desktops take only a tiny fraction of the screen space in the form of the status bar or the dock. Even that is optional in many cases and can be hidden when not in use. The best way to layout the pages on a window IMHO, is how the tiling window managers do it. Browsers like Firefox already treat the UI like HTML+CSS. But it's on a different plane from the page UI - so much so that you need to start the debugger console in a different mode to control it. But if the tabs, status bars and menu bars used the same layout as regular pages (but with special UI control privileges), you'll get numerous options to design it the way you prefer and hide them easily.
What you describe sounds like what KDE supports out of the box. You will be pleased to hear, that the corporate browser vendors Google and Apple have forked the KDE browser, so you can expect that browsers to be highly customizable. /s
> there are plenty of egregious changes being pushed down the throats of the users.
I just fear that this all starts as a good intention, but becomes yet another thing pushed down the throats of users. The browser chrome is one of the last remaining things, that work and look exactly like the native UI, and I don't want to loose that last bit. Also have you heard of the line of death? I don't think we want to loose that. See https://textslashplain.com/2017/01/14/the-line-of-death/
It’s not feasible to isolate these “per site”.
A way you might get around this (if acceptable) is to run one profile from a beta or developer version of Firefox which has a separate app path & icon and may result in the behaviour you want.
That's what these changes aim to fix. You're getting a Chromium-like profile switcher/manager.
> Containers are better
Containers are very good... for container stuff. Profiles allow us to have different bookmarks, settings, extensions, themes, etc. Different tools for different jobs. I use both!
You can still use the old profile manager. At the pace Mozilla moves, it will be there for years.
> If you look at about:profiles and compare it to the new UI or to what Chromium has offered for years, then I think you'll understand that the new UI is much better for the average user.
No I think this looks way worse, than the native UI, they have had for decades and hope they don't remove the old UI, so it startup doesn't become slower and more annoying.