If you are new to the concept, I suggest you take a look at the following guides that will get you started. Only this much: Most Firefox users use profiles to separate work related activities from private activities. This reduces the browser’s memory usage and accessibility, among other things.

• How To Create Multiple Firefox Profiles For Specific Tasks
• Run Multiple Firefox Profiles Simultaneously

Profile Switcher is another extension for Firefox that you can use for various profile related tasks. You can access the extension’s functionality with a click on the Firefox menu button. The two entries Launch another profile and Open profile manager have been added to the menu. The current profile name is displayed in the browser’s status bar as well. You can right-click the name to display the very same menu.

The add-on ships with a button that you can drag and drop to one of the Firefox toolbars instead if you prefer to work with the Profile Switcher extension this way.

The open profile manager menu lets you open Firefox’s built-in profile manager in normal mode or safe mode. You can use the profile manager to create, rename, delete or start profiles. Keep in mind though that Mozilla plans to remove this tool from Firefox to replace it with an external launcher.

The launch another profile menu allows you to launch one of the available profiles directly from within the Firefox web browser. Depending on how you have configured your profiles, you may be able to run multiple profiles at the same time or only one. If the latter is the case, you need to close Firefox before you can open the new profile.

The Profile Switcher add-on can be downloaded from Mozilla’s official Firefox add-on repository. The same add-on is also available as a version for the Thunderbird email client.

The built-in profile manager has been used by Firefox users to configure and run multiple user profiles on the same computer. This was helpful for web developers for instance who wanted to separate work from their regular browsing (no need to run slow loading applications like Firebug under the regular profile).

The new standalone version of the Mozilla Profile Manager improves upon the built-in tool. The program detects all installed Firefox versions automatically and displays them along with their associated user profiles in the application window.

Users can add portable program versions to the application. This is done with a click on the Manage Firefox versions button and the selection of Add in the new window. This makes it possible to add portable versions of the browser to the profile manager.

The profile manager indicates the default profile in the interface as well. One of the interesting features here is the ability to link user profiles to specific Firefox versions.

Another new feature is the ability to run Firefox with a temporary profile that’s created for the session. This profile gets deleted once the browser is closed.

When you look at the options you will notice that there are four to select from.

• Rin Firefox in offline mode – Starts the browser in offline mode without Internet connection.
• Run Firefox in safe mode – Starts the browser without add-ons, settings or themes.
• Start Firefox with a console – Loads a console with Firefox
• Start new instance – Can be used to run two instances of Firefox with different user profiles at the same time.

The Profile Manager can be used to backup and restore some or all profiles on the current computer system. It is in addition possible to create a new profile or copy an existing profile.

The profile manager is configured for the Firefox browser by default. Thunderbird or Seamonkey users need to use a command line argument to change that. This is done by adding the name of the program to the command, e.g. profilemanager thunderbird to manage all Thunderbird profiles on the system.

Wonder why Mozilla is pushing for the change? Mozilla employee Benjamin Smedberg has this to say about it:

Startup time is *not* a reason for this change. The code complexity of named profiles and their poor interaction with OS integration and remoting features is the primary reason for this change.

The new profile manager makes it easy to link profiles to versions of Firefox which makes it easier to work with multiple profiles and multiple versions of the browser on the same computer and under the same user account.

The Mozilla Profile Manager can be downloaded from the official Mozilla ftp site. (via)

What’s your take on the new Mozilla Profile Manager?

Preferences and bookmarks are generally benign and it is an easy way to customize Firefox to your own specifications.
If there are other users on your PC, they and you might benefit from creating new user profiles in Firefox. You could also use this to create multiple profiles for yourself to adapt the browser to certain tasks. Having more than one user accessing a browser always causes confusion in terms of preferences and bookmarks. It even makes signing into your email account(s) annoying because you have to switch between passwords and usernames. Avoid these conflicts by utilizing the Firefox add-on called Switchy. This will allow you to create new profiles and alternate between them with ease.

Download Switchy for Firefox from the following URL. If you are not using Firefox as a default browser, it would be best to switch to it now and copy/paste the URL into the browsing window.

Click Add to Firefox. You will be prompted to restart the browser after installation. You may also get a warning from Windows that the author has not been verified and that this could be malicious software. Since it comes from Mozilla.org, this is unlikely, but you can run a security scan to be certain even after it is installed. The Switchy button will be added in the upper right adjacent to the URL bar.

By clicking this button, you will be able to access the Profile Manager and alter different parameters. When you first open the Manager, which is the second bar from the top, you will see “default” as the only existing profile. Click “create a new profile” to begin the customization. The default profile is the one that you are currently using. You may choose to rename the default profile and use that as your own. Give it a new name and you are finished.

Creating a new profile is simple. After you have either kept or changed the name of the default profile, click Create Profile.

Click Next when the Create Profile Wizard starts and then give the new profile a name.

Click Next and you will see the new profile in the Choose User Profile window.

Add websites to a profile by using the “Add new websites” option in the left pane. As for other specifics such as browsing history and preferences, all of them can be added by the user as they use their profile to browse. Notice that you have the option to check “Don’t ask at startup”.

If you leave this checked with a user selected, Firefox will not prompt you to choose a user profile at startup. With multiple users, do not leave this box checked. You also have the option to work offline with a profile. Startup options can be customized for each user.

Overall, this is a nice add-on for Firefox running on a PC with more than one user. It offers not only privacy, but also a certain level of convenience.

You may have also noticed that you can only run one version of the browser at the same time. This can be a issue if you sometimes want to run multiple versions of the web browser at the same time.

Download Firefox

Before I start explaining how you can optimize your configuration the way you want it, I’m listing the available Firefox downloads to make sure you got the latest versions of the web browsers.

• Firefox Stable Download [link]
• Firefox Beta Download [link]
• Firefox Aurora Download [link]
• Firefox Nightly Download [link]
• Mozilla Profile Manager [link

]

Go ahead and download and install all the Firefox versions that you want to use on your computer. I also suggest you download the latest version of the Mozilla Profile Manager, as we will use the program to configure different Firefox profiles.

Install the different versions of the browser. Note that they all install into different folders on the system with the exception of the beta which installs in the same directory as the stable version. You need to change the installation folder of the beta by selecting Custom during installation.

I also suggest you create desktop shortcuts for all versions of Firefox that you have installed on the system. You do that by opening the folders in the file manager, right-clicking the Firefox executable and selecting Create Shortcut from the context menu.

Firefox profiles

Depending on your situation and needs, you may want to run all different Firefox versions with one profile or multiple profiles. A profile basically consists of user specific settings and data. This includes installed add-ons and themes, the browsing history, bookmarks and pretty much everything else that is created or added by a user.

Start the Mozilla Profile Manager. You will see a list of profiles available on the system. We only need to create profiles in the manager. It is theoretically possible to use the Profile Manager to launch multiple versions of the browser at the same time. This would however mean that you need to run the Profile Manager every time you want to do that. There is a better way of doing it which I’m going to highlight in a bit.

You create new profiles with a click on New. You can alternatively copy an existing profile. This basically creates an identical profile for use in another version of Firefox.

All you need to fill out in the Create Profile window is the name of the new profile. I suggest you pick one word names without spaces as this will make upcoming steps easier.

The new profile is then shown in the Profile Manager window. Repeat the steps until you have created all the profiles that you want to use.

Configuring Firefox

Now that we have installed the Firefox versions and the profiles that we want to use, we need to associate the different versions with their profiles. This is done by editing the shortcut link directly. I suggest you keep the default profile associated with the stable version of Firefox.

Right-click the shortcut and select Properties from the context menu. Locate the Target field in the menu.

Lets first take a look at the available start-up parameters.

• -p: Launch the Firefox profile selector on start.
• -p profilename: loads the selected profile automatically on browser start instead of the default profile.
• -no-remote: Allows to run the version of Firefox next to others

You add the commands at the end of the Target line after the closing “.

A full line would look like the following:

“C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox Beta\firefox.exe” -p secure -no-remote

The path obviously changes with each different version of the browser. The selected profile in this example is called secure. Please note that profiles are case sensitive, and that you need to need to enclose multiple words in “word1 word2″.

Once you have gone through all shortcuts, you can simply start one or multiple Firefox versions with clicks on the shortcuts.

The Firefox Profile Manager Software

Mozilla some time ago made it clear that they would drop support for the built-in profile manager in favor of an external program conveniently called the Profile Manager. The Profile Manager is available for all operating systems that the Firefox web browser runs on. While it is still possible to use the built-in profile manager with the current versions of Firefox, it is likely that it won’t be there forever. So, download the Profile Manager software to create and manage Firefox profiles.

The profile manager is offered as a portable version which displays all existing Firefox profiles on startup. One of the first things that you may need to do is to manage the Firefox versions if multiple versions are installed or available on the system. You may also need to do that if you have installed a beta, aurora or nightly build of Firefox.

You create new profiles with a click on New which opens the create profile window. Here you can add a name, location to save the profile and Firefox version the profile is for.

Once you are done creating all the profiles that you plan to use, you are ready to configure the launch options for the Firefox web browser.

It is alternatively possible to launch one of the profiles with a click on the Start Firefox button after selecting the profile in the upper half of the interface. It is possible to have different profiles running at the same time on the computer.

All new profiles start as default Firefox installations which means that you need to customize them on first run. Install add-ons, customize the layout and settings to streamline the profile for the job at hand.

What are the major benefits of running different profiles for different work related tasks?

• Customization: You can use a different set of bookmarks, toolbar buttons and settings for each profile.
• Memory usage: You can install add-ons only in some profiles and not in all, to save memory.
• Sync and Backup: You can sync and backup the profiles independently.
• Multiple Firefox Instances: You can run multiple instances of the Firefox browser at the same time. It is furthermore possible to run multiple versions of the browser as well.

Are you working with profiles?

Firefox needs to be closed to be able to start the Firefox profile manager. I usually fire up the run box using Windows R and type firefox -profilemanager. If you have troubles let me know and I explain it in details.

Firefox can be started as usual which loads the first profile. The command firefox -p profile -no-remote can be used to start Firefox that is using another profile where “profile” is the name of that profile. If you wanted to start the profile securep you would use the command firefox -p securep -no-remote

I would probably create a shortcut to Firefox on the desktop using the parameters if I would be using it more often. To start the profilemanger and select a profile from that gui remove the profile name from the command, e.g. firefox -p -no-remote

Update: Mozilla announced plans to retire the built-in profile manager to replace it with an external program. When that day comes, profiles can only be created with the new profile manager.

This new program does however come with several new options that make it interesting. You can for instance assign specific Firefox versions to specific profiles and configure the browser versions to use the -no-remote start parameter so that multiple versions of the browser can be run next to each other.

The four profiles that I’m currently using are default, secure, seo and test. The default profile is the one that I’m working most of the time with. It contains some solid add-ons like Adblocker, CS Lite and several others that I need during my default sessions. The secure profile is using many add-ons that add security to Firefox. I use that profile only to visit my bank’s websites and other secure sites, mostly financial websites.

The SEO profile uses several huge add-ons like Firebug, Rankchecker, Search Status and some SEO plugins that I use to find out important information about websites. I also use this profile when I change the code or design of one of my websites.

The test profile last but not least is basically only there to test new add-ons, extensions, plugins and Greasemonkey scripts. I usually install them in the test profile first to see how they work with the other installed add-ons and if they show erratic behavior.

The profiles are independently of each other. This does increase security because I do not visit other websites that could attack the browser with the secure profile, this does add speed because I moved all those big SEO and webmaster related add-ons in the SEO profile and this does speed up normal surfing because I only use a few add-ons in that profile.

Adding profiles to Firefox:

Before you start you need to close all instances of Firefox. If you do not do this you cannot start the profile manager. Once that is done you need to open the command prompt by typing Windows R and cmd.

Now navigate to your Firefox profile, the default location is c:\program files\mozilla firefox. This means you enter cd c:\program files\mozilla firefox

Start the profile manager with the command firefox.exe -profilemanager

Only one profile, the default one will be visible. Just add another profile by pressing the create profile button. All you need to do is to add another unique name and the new profile will be created. You can move the location of the profile if you like as well.

Working with Firefox profiles:

Now that we have the profiles we need a way to select the profiles during startup. One way would be to uncheck the box Don’t ask at startup. This would have the consequence that Firefox would always display the profile manager when you startup Firefox giving and you would have to select the profile manually.

I do prefer a slightly different approach. I usually work with the default profile and I therefor decided to keep the box checked and create a shortcut, a second one, that would open the Firefox profile manager whenever I needed to change the profile.

The easiest way to do this is to right-click the desktop and to select Create Shortcut from the menu. Now enter the path “c:\program files\mozilla firefox\firefox.exe” -profilemanager in the box and you are ready to go. Whenever you double-click that icon the Firefox profile manager will start.

An even more advanced parameter would be to add the profile name to the mix which would start that profile. Just add “Profile Name” after -profilemanager to gain that effect. Please note that this parameter is case sensitive.