Filed under: Software, Internet Tools
MultiFireFox 2.0
Given the fact that lots of folks are downloading FireFox 3 as of late, I thought this might be a good time to highlight MultiFireFox 2.0. MultiFireFox 2.0 lets you run up to 5 versions of FireFox side by side.Why would you want to do this? If you're a web developer you probably want to check your work in FireFox 2 as well as 3. MultiFireFox also lets those of you who don't want to jump into the new version of FireFox get your feet wet with the new hotness (or should that be the 'new wetness?'), but keep FF2 close at hand.
MultiFireFox 2 is free, so you can't beat the price and runs on OS X 10.4 and above.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
niclet said 8:24PM on 6-18-2008
Beautiful logo!
Reply
David Martorana said 11:49PM on 6-18-2008
Can't take credit for the icon. It's a GPL licensed icon from GnomeLook.com: http://moourl.com/nq10d
That information can also be found in the "Credits.rtf" file in the download or in the MultiFirefox->About menu.
Ben Kessler said 9:11PM on 6-18-2008
Great simple app by a cool guy - Dave Martorana. Good to see him getting some recognition on TUAW!
Reply
Cowicide said 9:28PM on 6-18-2008
It launches, then asks about profiles for a sec, then without letting me click the OK button to launch the profile manager it crashes. This is in a rock solid Tiger 10.4.9 set up - sigh... in the trash it goes...
Reply
David Martorana said 11:42PM on 6-18-2008
@Cowicide - this appears to be a very isolated problem, with only a few people experiencing it. I'm trying to get to the bottom of it - and I think I've even pinpointed the exact line of code where it exists. However, the error seems to have to do with reading the "profiles.ini" file for Firefox, and I can't recreate the exception.
If you'd like, please feel free to send your profiles.ini file to me at david[at]codecontortionist.com - the file is located:
/Users//Library/Application Support/Firefox/profile.ini
Anyone else that experiences this problem can contact me directly as well! Thanks!
David Martorana said 11:44PM on 6-18-2008
Sorry, that's
/Users/username/Library/Application Support/Firefox/profile.ini
where "username" is your profile name in OS X.
Travis Bell said 10:03PM on 6-18-2008
I know this isn't going to be for everyone but for serious designers/developers I strongly encourage you to take a look at Litmus. Litmus tests in 24 browsers, all in one simple yet sexy web interface. Truly a great tool and (in my opinion) well worth the money.
www.litmusapp.com
Reply
Mike said 9:41AM on 6-19-2008
works nicely the only thing is it always asks me if i want to check for updates on startup regardless what i answer it keeps popping up (i deleted the prefs, didnt fix it)
Reply
jenn said 2:02PM on 6-19-2008
Crashes on startup here too, off to check out litmusapp
Reply
jikespingleton said 2:26PM on 6-19-2008
multifirefox sucks... i just had to delete firefox 2 and 3 completely and lost all of my bookmarks and data.
i just redownloaded ff3 and it wont launch, it says that firefox is already open even though i used appzapper to delete ff2,ff3, and multifirefox...
DO NOT DOWNLOAD MULTIFIREFOX IT WILL SCREW YOUR MACHINE BADLY!!! TUAW TAKE THIS DOWN, ITS CAUSING CATASTROPHIC ISSUES AND DATALOSS!!!
Reply
Tired_ said 8:22PM on 6-19-2008
I don't know if keeping Firefox 2 around is going to be that much of an issue. It's not like IE6...new installations of Firefox 2 are only going to get rarer.
Reply
VLDR said 4:18AM on 6-20-2008
Nice app, but annoying that it asks to check for updates each time you start. And it's still impossible to handle the "default browser" which is currently my biggest firefox annoyance. Links from apps will simply appear in a semi-random firefox instance
Reply
David Martorana said 11:41AM on 6-20-2008
To all those that had crashing issues, please try the download again - after a few people were kind enough to provide crash reports and copies of their "profiles.ini" files, and according to all who tried it, the newest version 2.0.006 no longer causes crashes. 2.0.007 is on its way out soon as well to fix a minor bug.
Also, please do not delete Firefox 2 or 3 or anything else for that matter. I assure everyone that MultiFirefox does not delete anything, nor write to any files. Everything is opened in read-only mode.
So please do not assume that for a second that if you have an issue, you should delete everything on your machine. (By the way, if you delete Firefox with AppZapper, it will delete all your profiles as well, which hold bookmarks, etc.)
Best regards,
Dave
Reply
Shawn said 3:46PM on 6-22-2008
Tried to give this a shot...looks promising, too. On my 10.5.3 machine, I can't get past the "You need to create a profile!" AlertSheet. Clicking the button does nothing, hitting return does nothing, and then I have no choice but to quit. No crashes or anything, it just won't let me get anywhere.
P.S. litmusapp gives me nothing - I need to test my local machine, primarily for intranet web applications - not public, static pages.
Reply
Shawn said 4:26AM on 6-23-2008
In case anyone else runs into this issue, I got it working by manually creating new profiles (run /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -ProfileManager to start the profile manager), and then moving my copies of Firefox directly into the /Applications directory (I generally separate things out when I can...lots of apps).
Tench said 10:42AM on 7-16-2008
Wonderful app, very useful. I'm experiencing a weirdness with it, though. Every time I start Multifirefox and choose my profile, Parallel Desktop is launched as well with a Windows version of Firefox which is on it. Anybody else experienced this? Why would something like this even happen?
Reply
bernano397 said 12:55PM on 8-26-2008
Hi! Version 2.0 (006) is stable on my Powerbook G4 17" with OS X Tiger 10.4.11, whereas Version 2.0 (007) aborts.
Reply