Download the New Firefox 3 But Don’t Install it Yet
Mozilla has just announced their release of Firefox 3. Are you going to help break the world record? This newest version of Firefox is said to be much faster and will consume far less memory than it’s predecessors with a few extra enhancements to boot.
The claims alone make Firefox 3 definitely worth the upgrade as long as you keep your existing Firefox 2 because you might loose some of the add-ons that made your experience with Firefox 2 so great.
How To Run Firefox 2 and Firefox 3
So, how do you install Firefox 3 and make it work with Firefox 2? I’m gonna tell ya how…
- Right click on the shortcut of Firefox 2 then click “properties”. Add “-profilemanager” (without the quotations) at the end of the shortcut path. Click OK. Run this shortcut to launch Firefox Profile Manager.
- Create a new profile which you will name “firefox3″ or whateva. Uncheck the “don’t ask at startup” option.
- Right click and goto the properties of the firefox2 shortcut again. Remove the “-profilemanager” which you just added and replace it with “-p default” or whatever your default profile was named. This forces Firefox 2 to open the original profile. makes sense, right?
- Start the install for firefox3. When asked which set up type you would like, choose the Custom option.
- Upon completion of the installation you will need to uncheck the “Launch Firefox Now” option because there is still something else that needs to be done before the launch.
- Goto the Properties of Firefox3 shortcut. Add “-no-remote -p firefox3″ (or whatever you called your new profile in step 2 above) to the target. It is the “-no-remote” that will let Firefox run a separate threaded instance. The “-p firefox3″ is what’s going to force firefox3 to run the newly clean profile.
- Double click your Firefox 3 icon. You will then be prompted that Firefox is not your default browser. DO NOT click yes. Uncheck the “always perform this check when starting Firefox” and click NO.
- Now you can run both Firefox 2 and use all your existing add-ons and the new Firefox3 at the same time. Simple right?
Plenty of other benefits of installing the new Firefox 3 here
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/features/
This is false, I have installed Firefox 3 and all add-ons that are compatible are carried over, while those that are not yet compatible are carried and disabled until an update is available.
there’s a few key add-ons in Firefox 3 that aren’t working for me yet:
Screengrab!
RoboForm
Dictionary Switcher
Firefox Google Bookmarks
Delicious Bookmarks
Azoogle Toolbar
iMacros
remember the Milk for Gmail
Social Media for Firefox
Smart Digg button
I installed FF3 RC3 this afternoon, to a separate directory (c:/program files/firefox3) and it ran just fine, while leaving FF2 intact. However, I MUST have Tab Mix Plus add-on before I jump to FF3. Otherwise, my other extensions (Forecastfox, Stumble, Foxmarks, PicLens), seemed to work fine in FF3.
yea Mike, the majority of add-ons are ok but the main one’s I use often aren’t compatible yet.
I already learned the hard way. On Ubuntu, I had everything running smoothly. After installing a beta version of FF3 during routine updates, I lost almost all extensions. It sucked…especially no Tab Mix Plus
I’ve got a separate box running Ubuntu 8.04… Firefox worked fine, but Tab Mix Plus (with mouse hover), ForecastFox, and Stmple are absolute requirements.
Install Google Toolbar (already updated to be compatible with FF3) , and you’ll be able to use Google Bookmarks - works quite fine.
Just downloaded FF3 final release. Installed it to “c:/programfiles/firefox3″ so I can launch either FF2 or FF3 independently.
I still must have the ‘Tab Mix Plus” features before I switch to FF3, especially the ‘mouse hover’ and ‘3row tab bar’ features. I like being able to see all my tabs at a glance, and then just hovering my cursor over a tab to bring it up… can’t believe Mozilla didn’t catch on to these features.
Note: After installing FF3, I had to re-customize FF2’s toolbar to add the ‘back/fwd’ arrows… must be because of the new icon used in FF3.
You know what, I haven’t used Tab Mix Plus in the past but now that I see it on their page:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1122
Something definitely I want to use with FF3.
I found a fix for the RoboForm add-on for Firefox 3:
http://www.roboform.com/dist/roboform-firefox-3.0.xpi
Hope that helps.
That’s cool Erin. Thank you.
Help! I installed and lost my ASX file ability. I used to watch streaming video from a Korean site and now it just opens a white window - something involving JAVA perhaps? Anyway, I uninstalled 3.0 and put 2.0 back on, but it’s still gone.
Can anyone help with the ASX issue?
I posted once, but it didn’t take. Long story short: 3.0 did something to my ASX capability. It won’t open except for a white window - perhaps a JAVA issue? HELP!
Has anyone else had problems since installing FF3? I can’t seem to logon to hotmail every time, get message “The connection was refused when attempting to contact msnia.login.live.com.”
Please edit step 6
Add “-no-remote-p firefox3″
There should be a space between “remote” and “-p”.
I copied exact your text so it didnot work at first. Took a while to figure out that typo preventing Firefox3 to use new created profile.
Great post. Thanks a lot.
you’re right Chuong, I’ve editted the instructions above. My typo.
Nice catch.
You didn’t say install FF3 into a different folder from FF2:
4. Start the install for firefox3. When asked which set up type you would like, choose the Custom option.
5. Upon completion of the installation…
what do i have to do to get the choose a profile window open (step 2)
sorry i worked out how open choose a profile window but why custom install (step 4) ? do i have to install firefox 3 into a different folder ?
Nothing of this sort happened to me, the only thing that I had to re add was the dictionary
Thanks for the guide, but you totally miss out an important detail.
You probably think this is obvious, but you tell us to select custom install, without telling us to change the install directory.
Yes Alex, that’s what I posted on 22nd June. I think Ken’s stopped looking at this page. Hasn’t been updated for quite a while.
Mike, I didn’t spot your post ’til I had posted.
For anyone who *has* overwritten their firefox 2 installation, it is possible to reverse these instructions to add a new firefox 2 install (change *it’s* directory) which uses your old profile.