Profiles are a well hidden feature of the Firefox web browser, despite their usefulness. They can for instance be used to divide work related bookmark, add-ons and preferences from those used as a home user, or to provide every user of the system with their own profile that they can customize to their liking.
The majority of Firefox users probably do not know that profiles exist. That’s not entirely their fault though, as it is quite complicated to launch the profile manager to create new profiles. The recently released external profile manager simplifies this, but it is not actively promoted by Mozilla either at this point in time.
And even if you have created multiple profiles, you still have to find a way to launch them when needed. Most users create shortcuts that point to individual Firefox profiles (check How to setup a Firefox Test Environment for detailed information on how to do this).
Switchy is a new add-on for the Firefox web browser that is adding fast profile switching to the web browser. The Firefox extension adds an icon to the navigational toolbar that displays all available profiles on click.
The menu displays the current profile, and all other profiles in list form. A click on another profile closes the browser and reloads it with the new profile selected. Please note that you need to install Switchy in all profiles if you want to use the add-on’s functionality in all of them.
The extension changes the default Firefox profile whenever a new profile is selected in the browser menu. If you do not install Switchy on all profiles, you need to use shortcuts or the command line to switch back.
The extension can also assign websites to profiles. It is not really clear what this feature is for. You can configure the websites to load at startup and to display a notification bar if they are opened in another profile.
Switchy is a useful Firefox extension for users who work with multiple profiles. While it is possible to use desktop shortcuts for that, it is more comfortable the way Switchy provides it.
Firefox users can download the Switchy add-on from the official Mozilla Firefox add-ons repository.
© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: Firefox, firefox add-ons, firefox profiles
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