Setting Up a Clean Firefox Profile

Working for ChaCha.com is an interesting and challenging job. A lot depends on how efficiently the Guide can find information and deliver it to the customer.

To that end, I decided that I wanted to run a “clean” version of Firefox, ChaCha’s preferred browser, with only the addons deemed useful for Guides. This would decrease the likelihood of incompatibility issues among various addons, and allow me to keep my “fun” stuff for normal browsing.

While this article has some ChaCha-specific wording, the procedure laid out can be used for any situation where you’d want to create a separate profile within Firefox.

This may look a little intimidating, but really it’s not. What you’re going to do is set up a separate profile within Firefox to use just for ChaCha. A profile is where Firefox stores all your settings: bookmarks, addons, toolbars, etc.

Open Firefox’s Profile Manager

Windows

Press the Windows key + R to bring up the Run dialog (this works in XP and Vista).  In the Run dialog, enter (copy/paste works fine):

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -no-remote -ProfileManager

and press Enter or click OK.

MacOS

Open the Terminal (located under /Applications/Utilities) and type in:

/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox –profilemanager

(I would suggest copy/pasting that – the justification on the blog messes up the code.)

*nix

Open a terminal, use cd to navigate to your Firefox directory and then enter

./firefox –profilemanager

Create an Empty Profile

Choose Create Profile, and this window opens:

 

Once you enter a unique profile name, the Finish button becomes available. The folder location provided by the Profile Manager is fine for our purposes.

Create a desktop shortcut

Windows

Right-click on your desktop, select New, then Shortcut. Copy the following address, replacing “secondprofilename” with the name of the ChaCha profile you just created (enclose it in quotes!). Paste it into the Target field. Name your shortcut something meaningful.

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -no-remote -P "secondprofilename"

 

*nix

Launch the command:

firefox -no-remote -P secondprofilename

Install your ChaCha addons and Guide Toolbar

Once your new profile is created, you can install your desired ChaCha addons. I found it just as easy to reinstall them as to dig through my computer’s files to copy my old profile over; you can avoid installing anything not ChaCha-related. This will also give you a nearly-blank slate for work-related bookmarks.

There’s a handy package over at Firefox’s addon site for Expeditors:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collection/chacha

I would also add NoScript to the list, an addon that squelches those nasties – Flash, JavaScript, possible keyloggers, etc - that add download time and clutter to sites:

http://noscript.net/getit

You’ll want to be sure to allow scripts from ChaCha.com and googleapis.com to run, however. Otherwise the Quick Links page won’t work!

I also placed each of the main ChaCha windows as its own button on the bookmark toolbar and as well as set them as my Home Pages. Open all the windows you’d like Firefox to open when you start it, then go to Tools, Options, Main:

Click on Use Current Pages to set them all at once.

See the little blue ‘S’ in the lower right corner? That’s NoScript. If you run into problems with sites not working, click on that, and a menu will appear with options to allow scripts for that page, either temporarily or permanently. Only allow scripts to run permanently on sites you trust!

Sources:

http://robertnyman.com/2009/07/01/firefox-35-is-released-information-about-having-multiple-firefox-versions-and-web-developer-extension-compatibility/

http://www.callum-macdonald.com/about/faq/multiple-firefox-instances/

Work browser, ChaCha, Firefox