Portable Firefox and Thunderbird

RHLJay writes "-For the Road Warrior on the Go- If you have a laptop, desktop, and/or work PC keeping the information from Firefox and Thunderbird sync'd with each other is hard, not to mention the extensions. Not anymore - John Haller has packaged both Firefox and Thunderbird into 'Flash drive friendly' executables which can be run directly from a USB flash drive. Visit his site for more info. Portable Firefox and Portable Thunderbird."

Comments

Hot damn

[wcitechnologies]

This is awesome on a number of levels.

As a computer technician, there have been several times where I have been prevented from getting a vital file off the internet when trying to repair somebody's computer. Usually this is because IE has become a spyware infested rathole.

If I had the ability to carry a browser with me, use it, download files, etc. without even having to install anything, hot damn, that'd save some time.

Looks pretty handy...

[eeg3]

Plus with all the modifications they did for Firefox, such as Download History Cleared, Browser History Disabled, Form Info Saving Disabled, No Disk Cache, and No permanent cookies... it won't take up a very large footprint. Mind you, Firefox installed only takes up a meager 8.6Mb.

Thunderbird on the other hand compresses EXEs and DLLs with UPX. They also recompressed the JAR files (which are ZIP files).

Sweet

[DethKing]

Now I can use firefox at work where the I.S. Nazi's only allow I.E. morons.. I was actually just talking about this with a co worker to see if I could do it... looks like it was done for me!

Re:Been using this for a while

[Anonymous Coward]

What would also be useful is a PocketPC/WinCE/whatever Mozilla port... Opera isn't even available for it, despite having versions for various smartphones. Have I missed something, and if not, why isn't there one? The closest thing I've seen is Thunderhawk, which I believe uses KHTML. It isn't free, unfortunately.

Paradigm

[j1bb3rj4bb3r]

I would like to see this done for many different apps (browser, email, IM, blah blah), basically anything that requires user preferences... package a small binary and the preferences together such that they can run off the USB drive. With more and more people owning/working with multiple machines, this would be really useful.

Re:Paradigm

[starwed]

Presumably it's only a matter of time until we just have our operating systems and data all on a portable drive of some sort. (Yeah, you can do that now, but it's not the norm.)

Schools and libraries could just provide a basic machine w/o a hard drive or operating system... granted the school I went to in 7th grade did this, but USB drives are a lot handier than floppies. :)

Might be nice...

[david_594]

A nice touch for this would be to have the USB drives autorun launch a scrip that would identify if its plugged into its "home" computer and would then sync up its boormarks with the computer.

Re:Nice, but...

[Creepy Crawler]

In linux, doing "mount -o async /dev/ABCD /path/to/mount" should tell the kernel to immeidately flush this buffer to disk immediately.

This is the setting I use on my thumbdrives and floppes while using Linux.

I fail to find information about Windows asynch-like commands on storage devices.. though Sysinternals did create a WIndwos-like sync command.

That reminds me...

[wcitechnologies]

A few years ago I found that portable version of Internet Explorer, that was just a single executible file.

In light of this new portible Firefox release, I'd like to point out that Portable IE blew goats. It crashed ALL THE TIME, and lacked functional from IE (which lacks functionality anyway!).

I haven't had a chance to use portable firefox yet, but somehow I know I won't be disapointed.

The funny thing is that Portable IE was released by microsoft themselves

Unison + USBKey = r0x0r

[killjoe]

Whatever you use make sure to drop unison on your USB key. That way you can sync bidirectionally all kinds of stuff. Try it with home directory, emacs, eclipse etc.

It's double plus good.

Re:Been using this for a while

[IO ERROR]

This is damn handy when you're trying to patch/clean a spyware riddled machine.

Having never used a USB flash drive on Windows, I have to ask, how do you prevent Windows from writing to the flash drive and corrupting your nice shiny Firefox install? I'd love to carry one of these around, but I want to be sure the OS isn't going to be able to screw with it.

Unrelated: What if W2K can't see USB drive?

[pdkrocul]

I'm having a problem at work. My desktop machine was just refreshed (lease ended on old machine, so I was issued a new machine). It looks like the IT department has disabled USB devices under W2K (I'm guessing they're worried I might be too productive). If I plug in a jump drive, or a palm pilot, W2K doesn't sense it. But, if I reboot with the USB device plugged in, the BIOS will see it (and, if I remember correctly, W2K will see it after the reboot). Does anyone have an idea what I can do to enable the USB devices under W2K?

Re:Been using this for a while

[lordkuri]

That's a damn good idea. I'd pay decent money (hint hint) for a "Firefox for PalmOS" to use with my Tungsten.

Re:What size flash drive is necessary?

[aldoman]

Realistically no more than 64MB, but you mightaswell just go for a 256MB one as it's only a few dollars more for a lot more space.

How about Linux/Windows sync?

[RKBA]

I would be more interested in knowing how to use the same email directory and profile settings with both my Linux version of Thunderbird and my Windows version of Thunderbird. Has anyone ever tried this?

Re:Been using this for a while

[lordkuri]

let me rephrase that...

I'd give a large donation (hint hint) for someone to port it and GPL it. Firefox shouldn't be sold, IMHO.

Re:Been using this for a while

[RevAaron]

Try NetFront, which is a pretty good browser. Or, if you're using vanilla WinCE or WM2003, IE isn't bad, though it does suck eggs in PPC 2k and 2k2. But either way, if you're using IE on any CE OS, you should be using ftxBrowser, which adds tabs, configurable hotkeys and a better bookmarks system. One of the first things I install on a new CE installation.

Re:really mobile

[ryen]

maybe with Remote Desktop or X11 forwarding?

Cool, but..

[TheTomcat]

This is cool, but I currently have the following setups, and I keep them pretty well in sync:

Laptop - Linux (Primary Work)

Laptop - Win (Primary Play)

Desktop - Win (home)
Admittedly, I have to keep my extensions in sync, but to keep data, here's what I do:

For Thunderbird

• I use only IMAPS, and keep everything on my server
• I don't use the integrated Junk Mail controls. I did for a while, but got sick of having to start from scratch with every wipe of windows/every new install; nor do I use the filters in my mail client
• I do, instead, use procmail and spamassassin to accomplish similar results. Spamassassin "learns" from INBOX.Junk.confirmed, every night. Procmail filters my list subscriptions, and I use this tip to keep Thunderbird in line.

For Firefox:

• I don't keep any bookmarks, locally, except my live bookmarks (which, again, admittedly, I need to set up on each instance).
• Instead, I use my del.icio.us account to manage these. I then subscribe to my account's RSS as a live bookmark, and dump that into my bookmarks toolbar. This may be helpful, if you'd like to do the same.

So with these little tricks, I'm able to keep all three environments pretty much in sync. I know, this isn't for everyone -- I don't expect everyone to have 200+MB of IMAP space, or do I expect them to know how to write procmail rules, but it works for me.

S

Running from read-only media?

[space_man51]

Does this Portable Firefox run off of read-only media (i.e. can you run it right off a CD-ROM, not CD-RW)?

(Some people mentioned read-only USB memory above, but I didn't get whether or not it actually worked).

Also, is there a Linux or OSX build somewhere that runs from read-only media?

Thanks in advance.

Seems useful

[Massamune]

This is really handy for those cases where you want to take your customized browser with you. Using the bookmarks off my thumb-drive I never have to worry anymore. Not to mention I can take this to the library or wherever I want and I can use firefox there isntead. An excellent idea.

Re:does anyone know of a more unixish method?

[elemental23]

rsync would do it, but Unison will do it better. Like rsync, it can run over SSH and will only copy changed files. Unlike rsync, it will get you two-way synchronization, so you can change one file on one end and another file on the ohter end, and both locations will up updated with the changes. It's also available for *nix, OS X, and Windows, and can sync files across all platforms.

Which reminds me, I haven't synced up my laptop yet today...