Portable in this case means that it will not interfere with the Firefox installation on the computer system. It is possible to migrate add-ons and settings to the portable version by using Firefox add-ons like the Firefox Environment Backup Extension (FEBE).

This turns the portable version of Firefox into a 1:1 copy of the installed version; Ideal for testing and analyzing the new web browser. Firefox 3.5 portable has been published at the portable apps website from where it can be downloaded. The portable version is only compatible with the Windows operating system although it has been reported that it will work in Wine on the Linux operating system as well.

The portable version can simply be extracted to a folder on the local computer system from where it can be started afterwards. Everything else in the portable version of Firefox works like in the installed version including the installation of add-ons.

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The very same page lists a few known issues of the Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 web browser. This includes a Google Mail bug (can be resolved by reloading the page), no new window creation when dragging tabs on the desktop, choppy OGG audio and video playback on old computers and SSL website loading problems after returning from private browsing mode.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 will access the user profile on the computer if another version of the Firefox web browser is installed. Several of the installed Firefox add-ons are at this time not compatible with the latest beta version of Firefox and will fail to load unless the user forces compatibility with Nightly Tester Tools.

Users who do not want to mess with their default installation of the Firefox web browser can download and use a portable version of the beta instead.

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It pretty much does everything that Firefox 3 can do as well. It is possible to install extensions and themes for instance. Bookmarks can best be imported into the portable version. Just point it to your bookmarks.html file in your Firefox 2 profile folder.

It is even possible to run both the Firefox 3 portable version and another Firefox version at the same time. To do that you need to create another profile for the portable version. Head over to my article that explains how to multiple Firefox profiles simultaneously.

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The main advantage of this method is that the portable version does not interfere at all with Firefox 2, they are completely independent so to speak. This method does have a downside however, none of your settings are imported which means you cannot access your bookmarks for instance. Since it’s only installed for testing purposes it should not matter that much however and you could still move some of the files – like the bookmarks.html file – from the Firefox 2 profile folder to the one of Firefox 3 to be able to use them.

Another possibility is to create a new profile and assign that shortcut to Firefox 3. This still has the effect that both browsers use independent settings and don’t interfere with each other. Since it is a little bit complicated to setup I would probably go for the portable version to test Firefox 3.

Lastly you can simply install Firefox 3 in another directory which would mean that it would use all of your settings.

Below is a list of changes in the new Beta 5 of Firefox 3:

[Improved in Beta 5!] Integration with Windows: Firefox now has improved Windows icons, and uses native user interface widgets in the browser and in web forms.
[Improved in Beta 5!] Integration with the Mac: the new Firefox theme makes toolbars, icons, and other user interface elements look like a native OS X application. Firefox also uses OS X widgets and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates. A combined back and forward control make it even easier to move between web pages.
[Improved in Beta 5!] Integration with Linux: Firefox’s default icons, buttons, and menu styles now use the native GTK theme.
[Improved in Beta 5!] Places Organizer: view, organize and search through all of your bookmarks, tags, and browsing history with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches. Create and restore full backups whenever you want.
[Improved in Beta 5!] Speed: improvements to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimizations have resulted in continued improvements in performance. Compared to Firefox 2, web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office run twice as fast in Firefox 3 Beta 5, and the popular SunSpider test from Apple shows improvements over previous releases.

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