One thing I really miss in Mozilla Firefox/Thunderbird
Most of the things I miss in the "official" Mozilla Firefox/Thunderbird I have been able to get through the use of extensions. Extension rocks!
But one of the things I really miss is Roaming Profile.
A roaming profile is a collection of user settings which can be seamlessly shared between different machines or applications, or different instances of the same application. This can be useful for users who wish to work in a familiar environment regardless of the specific machine or application they make use of, and who have personal data to which they always wish to have access.
I use Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird both at work and at home. So I like my work and home profile to be in sync. So postings in newsgroups isn't marked as new just because I connect from home if I already read the postings at work. And websites aren't marked as visited at work if I already visited them at home. And my bookmarks are the same, etc.
Currently my solution to this problem is very basic. Just before I leave work I copy the files I need to a remote server. And before I start Mozilla Firefox at home I copy the files from the remote server and vica versa.
Roaming profiles are currently available in Mozilla SeaMonkey but it hasn't been ported to Mozilla Firefox yet. The backend for roaming profiles are there (I think) but the UI isn't working on Mozilla Firefox. Perhaps the roaming profile should be made as an extension.
Relavant bugs are bug 249343 and 310158
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7 Comments
Kind of related ... same extensions on multiple machines:
Comment by Brian King at October 20, 2005 01:47 PM | Permalink
I would really like to have roaming profiles support soon so I can keep setings synchronised across my Mac and my PC laptop, as well as any of the multitude of workstations I might happen to use in my school's computer labs. :/
Comment by Joel Pan at October 20, 2005 02:42 PM | Permalink
I was pointed to Firefox on a Stick (http://portablefirefox.mozdev.org) ...would that work?
Comment by USC Trojan at October 20, 2005 07:59 PM | Permalink
It would work perfectly except for the fact that I don't own a USB thumbdrive nor do I intend to pick one up anytime soon. I'd rather be able to grab my profile off the internet.
Comment by Joel Pan at October 21, 2005 07:42 AM | Permalink
I'd love that! I've thought about it before. It'll be like a power version of the SessionSaver Extension. It's great to hear that it's already made for SeaMonkey. Hope it will be ported to Firefox soon, and hopefully FLock too! :)
Comment by børge at October 21, 2005 07:26 PM | PermalinkBen Bucksch has added some patched to the roaming bug:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=249343
![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://gemal.dk/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 31, 2005 10:10 AM | Permalink
We have developed a Roaming Account for Firefox called OwnArea, it's not a roaming profile due to security/privacy issues I have with that, for now we have not gone into cookies etc.. but we do have the potential to develop down that route should we want to.
The OwnArea account enables us to provide a Navigation protection environment for users (children etc..) that dynamically links into a wider family circle of trust so all family members browsers link and support the child while online.
Your more than welcome to beta test the extension soon by signing up at www.glaxstar.com I'd welcome your feedback :)
Kind regards, Ian hayward Glaxstar Limited