Updated 4/18/08

For those of us who work on the ‘front end development’ side of things, there’s a careful balance we hang in regarding new browser releases. The short version is that as new browsers approach their release candidate status, we need to be checking and double checking our work in them to make sure that their change logs don’t break our work.

At the same time, there’s a known issue with the fact that, more often than not, running the latest beta or release candidate alongside with the production version (and, if you’re a really good developer, one previous version back from the most current production release to take care of things). Internet Explorer is notorious for this and I recall the headaches I went through beta testing it. I essentially resolved to (and continue to resolve to) use multiple virtual machines, one for each version of IE.

Well if you’re on a Mac and into testing Firefox 3 Beta without wiping your profile for Firefox 2.x, check out Dave Martorana’s MultiFirefox.

He’s created a little launcher app that, when copied to your Apps folder along with the accompanied Firefox3.app file (appropriately renamed so it wont overwrite the stable version), will let you create and/or select an additional profile, as well as the version of Firefox that you wish to use. It’s clean, it’s simple, and it works.

You can download the dmg (2.0(003) updated 4/18/08) (again, this is mac only), or the zip of the source (2.0 updated 4/18/08) if you want to dig around the guts or, ahem, port to windows? It’s written in Python, because that’s what Dave’s a rockstar in. It’s been rewritten in Cocoa Native, because THATS what kind of rockstar Dave is. That’s not all, though, actually…aside from being an active contributing member of the IndyHall community, Dave also wrote some bitchin’ javascript a couple of weeks ago that got me out of a bind. We’re still testing that but plan to release it as a jquery plugin. Dude knows his stuff and takes a challenge on head first.

Updated DMG and source, v2.0(003) (4/18/08)

4/18/08 Changelog:
Updated to include Firefox 3 Beta 5
Full rewrite to Cocoa native (severely reduced filesize)
Auto-update for future versions
Auto-detect of all versions of Firefox available
Supposed support for OSX 10.4 (untested)

3/14/08 Changelog:
Updated to Firefox 3 Beta 4

2/25/08 Changelog:
Fixed minor profile bug
Rework of Firefox launch code
Added about screen
Decreased filesize

DMG Download (17.98mb, includes FF3 Beta 5)
Zip of source (661kb, does not include FF3, uncompiled launcher code only)

Dave maintains this project at his site, CodeContortionist

Tags: dave martorana, firefox, firefox 3, firefox 3 beta, indyhall, launcher, multi profile, multifirefox, python

ive been experiencing a noticeable downturn in firefox performance recently…not only performance, but general experience getting effed up over time and required restarts of the app. tab performance, cursor performance…everything was just out of whack but could be remedied by a restart of the browser.

on a whim i decided to disable firebug and only enable it for specific sites on an as-needed basis. I guess it makes sense, all of the extra stuff it does in with the page cache that things could get out of whack or slow down. Maybe it’s a placebo. Maybe I did something else and its a coincidence.

Any takers?

Tags: firebug, firefox, performance, tweaks

Neil Lee’s optimized firefox builds for Deer Park were my a must-have for mac, and he has finally updated for Firefox 2.0.

Ive been using 2.0 since a couple of weeks into RC3…first at home on my iMac, and once I was satisfied, at work as well. And satisfied I am. It’s no secret that I can’t live without this browser, moreover, many of its extensions are SO important to my daily work. Even though Safari has some similar tools, FF is just more elegant about the whole thing. And, I’ve gotten really, really good at developing in Firefox and knowing how the same page is behaving in other browsers…most of the time, anyway.

Though, despite all of its awesomeness, the Mozilla builds are notoriously slow as crap on macs…I mean, they’re usable, but they get laggy and lack the “snap” my windows machine has (when it’s not busy crashing), or safari’s performance in its native OS X. Luckily, Lee’s custom builds for Intel, G5, and G4 macs fill in that gap. I just installed is Intel build, and its really the most refreshing experience my web browser has given me in a while. All of the wonders of FF2.0, but with all the snap of Safari (even gives Camino a run for its money, performance wise).

Speaking of…I have Camino installed…but I wish i could make it my primary browser, or even give it a permanent home in my dock. But its blatant lack of support for Firefox Extensions (i understand the technical limitations of why that is…its just unfortunate) makes it useless to me. Sure, pimpmycamino helps, but really, its barely a band aid.

My only complaint, really, is that something is up with tabbrowser preferences…though tabmix has been suggested as a replacement.

Notice that I didnt say a single thing about a certain blue E that recently released its 7th incarnation. I’m saving up all of my muster for that write up once i get my breath back. But its coming.

And on the topic of coming, I finally have the designs for weknowhtml.com, thanks to Dan at Enhanced Innovations. The site looks incredible…I’ve started development, and am going to work feverishly to launch with the November 1 CSS Reboot. So keep your eyes peeled for that.

A Linux Users Group at OSU created a 220 foot wide Firefox Logo crop circle.

Is this to say, Linux users are like aliens, firefox users are aliens, aliens use firefox, or linux guys have WAY too much free time?!?

Check out more photos in their photo gallery.

Ok, so the pun was bad, but i had to get it out of my system. Allow me to explain. my google analytics showed a spike of visitors the last couple of days, specifically on friday. It seems my post on the new safari tools has caught the eye of someone important, as it looks like Chris Messina posted it to the Ma.gnolia.com web dev blogs group. To mangle a quote by Ron Burgandy, “i dont know if you know this, but he’s kinda a big deal”. Chris is an open-source advocate, and is largely responsible for the mozilla based browser, Flock (even though he no longer works there). Actually, i found THIS list of stuff he’s done, and considering he’s only 2 years older than me, i have some serious catching up to do. But yeah, Chris likes my blog. I get the feeling that Chris is a humble web-pseudo-celebrity and will probably call me out on this, but hey, if he’s reading my blog, i think that’s awesome. Thanks for the traffic. Leave me a comment or something, let me know what you think, i’d love to talk shop.

So my recent switch to mac has left me happy with a number of new applications…be they applications that replaced old “wanna-be” text editors (i can’t live without textmate) or a launcher extraordinare that brings my productivity levels to a new high that i never imagined possible. On the other hand, things like microsoft office for mac leaves me mostly annoyed, but luckily my need for applications within it are minimal. One thing that stayed pretty much identical across the platforms was firefox. My extentions carried over, and development procedures were pretty much the same…. safari sat in my dock for browser testing, but thats about it…all of my development powertools were firefox only. Until today.

First came the new javascript debugger. Drosera looks a whole lot like firebug to me, and is built into the nightly build of webkit. What does that mean? It not only works for Safari, but ALL webkit based applications like Xylescope…which has already proven useful for CSS inheritance debugging. Thats a pretty powerful tool right there. Could things get any better? I thought no…but then, i found Safari WebDevAddtions v1.0b19.

What is this, you ask? Well…take all of the most useful tools of the web dev toolbar for firefox…and bring em over to safari.
Check this out:

This first shot looks like i should be able to edit things inline on the page. I’m not sure if this is a PPC only thing, because this feature crashes my browser. No big deal, because while thats cool i dont see it being very useful.


This shot lets you pull up some cool stuff, most notably, the headers. This can be useful when strange bugs are occuring on a page due to data being served incorrectly.


This lets you turn off pretty much anything by element…with a few items that are selectable.


And my personal favorite, outline. I can’t live without this feature in firefox for XHTML/CSS debugging…and now that it’s in safari…well, i dont think safari will become my default browser but wow, it REALLY earned it’s spot in the dock today.