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Experimental Firefox Feature Lets You Use Multiple Identities While Surfing the Web (techcrunch.com)
Firefox web browser has a new experimental feature that allows a user to segregate their online identities and sign in into multiple mail or social media accounts side-by-side without having to use multiple browsers. From a TechCrunch report: This new "container tab" feature, which is now available in the unstable Nightly Firefox release channel, provides you with four default identities (personal, work, shopping, and banking) with their own stores for cookies, IndexedDB data store, local storage and caches. In practice, this means you can surf Amazon without ads for products you may have looked at following you around the web when you switch over to your work persona. As the Firefox team notes, the idea behind this feature isn't new, but nobody has figured out how to best present this new tool to users.
As the Firefox team notes, the idea behind this feature isn't new, but nobody has figured out how to best present this new tool to users while maintaining the ability to track the user's online presence across all platforms .
ftfy
CAPTCHA: truest
Every window should be using a fresh cookie store/indexdb. All tabs on a particular window would share these. Remove ability to strip tabs out into new windows.
No need to explain anything to grandma users etc whats happening. It just works.
Now I can troll on Slashdot without opening multiple browsers! This will increase my net comment trolling and 'cute animal liking' productivity at least 100%..
Bye!
I'm not a usability expert by any means, so can anyone tell me why only four identities?
That seems pretty limiting to me, it should be the end user's choice how many identities to use.
Why not something simple like each *window* have separate data that's shared between tabs? Then you don't have any UI changes or usability problems.
Or is "it just works" an Apple patent or something?
Cookies, etc., should never be able to see each other without permission. Let's hope this trend continues.
brwski
"Because without beer, things do not seem to go as well''
It would have made tracking you a bit more difficult. They must have finally worked it out with Google and Facebook.
uMatrix (replacement for Ghostery, AdBlock|uBlock, etc) - blocks by default:
All 3rd party cookies.
All 3rd party scripts.
All iFrames.
(Firefox profiles) just use those.
This is using the profiles, just differently and oriented around tabs instead of user-launched processes.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Why not just have a per-site identity? In other words, tracking cookies become worthless because they can't follow you from site to site. And then within each site, allow multiple identities if desired (think private browsing, only data is retained if you desire it.)
I'm very happy to see Firefox adding a good feature.
In other words, tracking cookies become worthless because they can't follow you from site to site
This effectively does that... just in a tab. Which is a lot easier for the average user to understand.
Before FireFox had profiles, there was the MultiFox add-on. I used it. I liked it. It was easy to use. Unfortunately, Mozilla made a change that made it impossible for MultiFox to work, claiming the functionality was more properly implemented inside FireFox than as an add-on.
Unfortunately, it's taken far too long for Mozilla to do it.
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
Why not just have a per-site identity? In other words, tracking cookies become worthless because they can't follow you from site to site.
You have, in effect, described EFF's Privacy Badger addon. It works heuristically to block cookies from leaking from their original domains, except when told otherwise (some exceptions are included by default -- so-called yellowlist, check out "How does Privacy Badger work?" section). I've been using it for some time and seems to work very well with little breakage. Rarely have to whitelist something.
Precisely the only two things in your list that are actually great, not just visual candy, are I think available in Firefox now:
- Bookmarks sidebar ctrl-b
- History sidebar ctrl-h
Using those all the time.