Windows XP Portable Firefox! For USB drive and more

[Quadophile]

Portable Firefox is a fully functional package of Firefox optimized for use on a USB key drive. It has some specially-selected optimizations to make it perform faster and extend the life of your USB key as well as a specialized launcher that will allow most of your favorite extensions to work as you switch computers. It will also work from a CDRW drive (in packet mode), ZIP drives, external hard drives, some MP3 players, flash RAM cards and more.

This is an unofficial package. It is an official build, but has been modified and a specialized launcher added to make extensions portable. No warranty is expressed or implied.

To install, just download the ZIP and unzip it to the root directory of your USB drive. It will create a "firefox" directory and all the requisite directories underneath. To use Firefox on your drive, launch it with the PortableFirefox.exe file in the firefox directory. DO NOT launch the firefox.exe file directly, as this will create a profile on your hard drive or use an existing one. Additionally, be sure you've closed any local copies of Firefox and that they've finished shutting down. Otherwise, a new window of your local install will be launched. This is a feature of Firefox itself to prevent multiple copies running at the same time.

Portable Firefox

 

[Me__2001]

great find quad

 

[Quadophile]

Glad you found it useful.

When you get a chance to use it, please come back here with your comments or opinion, I would like to get feedback as it helps to understand the software better. Thanks

 

[Quadophile]

I had very good feedback at another forum where I had posted the same message. Here it is for those who need more information than already provided.

I downloaded Firefox Portable and expanded the zip file to a 128mb Disgo. The installation is laid out quite neatly with one main folder created for the entire app and obviously a few sub folders to contain the program data.

The installation is based on Firefox 1.04 which at the time of writing is the most current version available. Loading the program is a simple case of opening the contents of the keydrive, navigating to the PortableFirefox executable and running it.

In terms of speed, obviously there's going to be a performance hit since keydrives in general are slower than an average hard disk, and in this case, the Disgo used is only a USB 1.1 variant so it's performance is leisurely

Once firefox had initialised it performed well, and certainly didn't thrash the keydrive which i had been concerned about it doing. The installation only takes 7mb (but will obviously get bigger with use) so it'll sit comfortably on even the smallest of devices.

FirefoxPortable seems fairly self contained and certainly adding favourites didn't interfere with my regular Firefox installation. I will check it's portability on a few machines, especially those without Firefox already installed.

Themes and extensions are as yet untested (by me), but the documentation seemed to indicate that it all works, with the exception of Java, which must be installed on the client machine.

More later... once i've had a good play

The member had also posted an image which is what it looks like on his machine.

 

[Cache-man]

I might have to give this a try for when i get back to university in september, as the computers on campus force us to use IE, and we are unable to install Firefox ourselves as we arent admins. Having portable firefox on my USB, should prove very handy.
Well spotted Quad!

 

[Me__2001]

I might have to give this a try for when i get back to university in september, as the computers on campus force us to use IE, and we are unable to install Firefox ourselves as we arent admins. Having portable firefox on my USB, should prove very handy.
Well spotted Quad!

this is exactly what i have in mind for at school, i'll be back on june 20th after my exams finish

 

[Me__2001]

you can also download it from majorgeeks

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4424