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Portable Firefox and Thunderbird

Posted by michael on Sat Dec 04, 2004 02:55 PM
from the handy-stuff dept.
Mozilla The Internet Portables Hardware
RHLJay writes "-For the Road Warrior on the Go- If you have a laptop, desktop, and/or work PC keeping the information from Firefox and Thunderbird sync'd with each other is hard, not to mention the extensions. Not anymore - John Haller has packaged both Firefox and Thunderbird into 'Flash drive friendly' executables which can be run directly from a USB flash drive. Visit his site for more info. Portable Firefox and Portable Thunderbird."
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  • Been using this for a while (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lordkuri (514498) on Saturday December 04 2004, @02:57PM (#10997410)
    This is damn handy when you're trying to patch/clean a spyware riddled machine. Sometimes it's almost impossible to get stuff working with so much crap clogging up the browser. This thing is uber useful, IMHO.

  • Lateness (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 04 2004, @02:57PM (#10997411)
    Hey slashdot, two weeks ago called. They'd like their news back.

  • Hot damn (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wcitechnologies (836709) on Saturday December 04 2004, @03:01PM (#10997441)
    This is awesome on a number of levels.

    As a computer technician, there have been several times where I have been prevented from getting a vital file off the internet when trying to repair somebody's computer. Usually this is because IE has become a spyware infested rathole.

    If I had the ability to carry a browser with me, use it, download files, etc. without even having to install anything, hot damn, that'd save some time.

  • Looks pretty handy... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eeg3 (785382) on Saturday December 04 2004, @03:05PM (#10997467) Homepage
    Plus with all the modifications they did for Firefox, such as Download History Cleared, Browser History Disabled, Form Info Saving Disabled, No Disk Cache, and No permanent cookies... it won't take up a very large footprint. Mind you, Firefox installed only takes up a meager 8.6Mb.

    Thunderbird on the other hand compresses EXEs and DLLs with UPX [sourceforge.net]. They also recompressed the JAR files (which are ZIP files).

  • Sweet (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DethKing (810045) on Saturday December 04 2004, @03:05PM (#10997469)
    Now I can use firefox at work where the I.S. Nazi's only allow I.E. morons.. I was actually just talking about this with a co worker to see if I could do it... looks like it was done for me!

      • Re:Sweet (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Lehk228 (705449) on Saturday December 04 2004, @05:10PM (#10998142) Journal
        or even better don't try to make an end run around IT at work, eventually it will show up in some sort of log or management console, or someone from IT will walk by with you running firefox. Then you can tell HR how clever you are as they kick your ass to the curb, if IT are assclowns and force everyone to use IE and that causes a virus or spyware problem then IT looks bad, if you run firefox off your thumb drive then you look like a security risk or a "rebel" and you are likely to get canned. Personally I love Firefox and hate iexplode, but not enough to risk getting fired over. (unless of course your job really blows and you want to get fired)

        • Re:Sweet (Score:4, Insightful)

          by rikkards (98006) on Saturday December 04 2004, @05:36PM (#10998255) Journal
          mod parent up. I work for military and the only approved browser is exploder. I would say a good portion of my group uses firefox at home and we all have admin access to our machines due to our roles so installing is no problem and in our cases we are not being audited for software (yet). However we can get a security sweep done of our office at a moments notice and that would be pretty much job termination, none of us are stupid enough to risk our jobs for it.

  • Nice, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nom du Keyboard (633989) on Saturday December 04 2004, @03:05PM (#10997470)
    That's nice, but what I really need is a flash drive that doesn't lose data (like the last save from a MSWord file) when it's unplugged from Win 2K without being "ejected" first. Maybe a flash drive with its own OpenVMS file system.

    Why do I have this bad habit? Because I first started using flash drives on Win98SE, and those manufacturer's drivers always flushed the data to the drive when available. I could unplug them the moment the drive actvity led stopped flashing. When I "eject" the flash drive from 2K, I can see Windows do a final file access to it before telling me it's safe to disconnect. Leaves me really wondering what happens to data in the drive when I get a power failure or BSoD before an eject.

    • Re:Nice, but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by squallbsr (826163) on Saturday December 04 2004, @03:21PM (#10997554) Homepage
      But in windows you can disable this "feature" by disabling write caching in the preferences. That way it will always write everything when you tell it to. That way you dont need to "eject" the media.

      In WinDoze XP SP2 you can access the device properties from the device manager, under "Disk Drives" - Find your device and right click to choose "Properties", then you can click on the "Policies" tab and tell it to optimize for fast removal...

      I know its in a different place for Windoze 2k, but you will have to find it. You need to disable "Write Caching" then Presto! it will work like previously...
      • What if (as in every case I've seen on win2k, but it probably depends upon the device or controller or something), the write caching option is greyed out, yet write caching is evidently enabled as it still blows rasberries when you yank it out without first having told it to eject it?

      • Re:Nice, but... (Score:4, Informative)

        by ezzzD55J (697465) <slashdot5@scum.org> on Saturday December 04 2004, @03:33PM (#10997630) Homepage
        In linux, doing "mount -o async /dev/ABCD /path/to/mount" should tell the kernel to immeidately flush this buffer to disk immediately.

        That is awfully wrong. async does the opposite; it performs i/o asynchronously, not taking care to leave the metadata in a consistent state. Fast (esp. vs. synchronous on harddisks) but dangerous (esp.. etc). If it helps at all in this setting, you'd want sync.

  • Paradigm (Score:5, Interesting)

    by j1bb3rj4bb3r (808677) on Saturday December 04 2004, @03:08PM (#10997482)
    I would like to see this done for many different apps (browser, email, IM, blah blah), basically anything that requires user preferences... package a small binary and the preferences together such that they can run off the USB drive. With more and more people owning/working with multiple machines, this would be really useful.

  • Still Windows Only? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Noksagt (69097) on Saturday December 04 2004, @03:08PM (#10997488) Homepage
    In the MozillaZine Forum [mozillazine.org], many discussed putting the win32 and linux binaries on a single stick & having them share profiles. Might as well throw in the Mac binaries too & then you'd have something really useful!

  • All you need to do is use Mozilla (Score:5, Insightful)

    by justinarthur (564449) on Saturday December 04 2004, @03:15PM (#10997520) Homepage
    If you need to use both a web browser and an email client on a regular basis in multiple locations, then you don't need these customized builds, there is already something around for you, it's called Mozilla [mozilla.org]. Maybe some of you recent Firefox-from-IE converts have never used Mozilla or think it reminds you of Netscape (Firefox reminds me of IE). Give it a chance though. It allows you to use roaming profiles which is exactly what this article is about. You also aren't wasting your system resources like you are when you run Thunderbird and Firefox at the same time. You generally save over 30MB of RAM by just running the Mozilla Application Suite. This is because you only have one instance of the Gecko engine running instead of two. Oh, and you can plop Mozilla right onto a flash drive from the zip file builds available from the Mozilla.org Foundation.

  • Unison + USBKey = r0x0r (Score:4, Interesting)

    by killjoe (766577) on Saturday December 04 2004, @03:20PM (#10997552)
    Whatever you use make sure to drop unison on your USB key. That way you can sync bidirectionally all kinds of stuff. Try it with home directory, emacs, eclipse etc.

    It's double plus good.

    • Re:Unison + USBKey = r0x0r (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kaimelar (121741) on Saturday December 04 2004, @03:42PM (#10997676) Homepage
      Whatever you use make sure to drop unison on your USB key.

      Unsion can be found at http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ [upenn.edu]

      From the Web page: "Unison is a file-synchronization tool for Unix and Windows. It allows two replicas of a collection of files and directories to be stored on different hosts (or different disks on the same host), modified separately, and then brought up to date by propagating the changes in each replica to the other."

      Seems like the parent post was correct -- this may come in handy on my newly-aquired USB drive.

  • Will it fit? (Score:3, Informative)

    by bigberk (547360) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Saturday December 04 2004, @03:38PM (#10997659)
    If you're running low on space by the time you hit thunderbird, you could also try jbmail [pc-tools.net] which similarly is a secure mail client that can be run straight off removable media (but is very small, 1 mb). but it doesn't share data with firefox. Hell, it doesn't do HTML either (displays as text) which may be a shortcoming or a feature depending on how paranoid you are...

  • How about Linux/Windows sync? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RKBA (622932) * on Saturday December 04 2004, @03:51PM (#10997720) Homepage
    I would be more interested in knowing how to use the same email directory and profile settings with both my Linux version of Thunderbird and my Windows version of Thunderbird. Has anyone ever tried this?

  • Great Combo... (Score:3, Informative)

    by jtmas83 (794264) * on Saturday December 04 2004, @04:09PM (#10997801)
    I've been using Protable Firefox for the past few weeks. This with the addition of the Bookmark Synchronizer Extension [mozilla.org], this makes sure I always have my favorite browser and all of my bookmarks with me at all times.
  • I've made a similar project called "Friedfox". This is for when you (1) don't want to carry your Firefox around all the time and (2) can download from the Internet fairly fast. It is a small Firefox installer that installs to a Windows user's profile rather than the system, so it doesn't require Administrator-level access. In addition, I've streamlined the installer so it's a total of two clicks to install it.

    Since IE will let you "Open" programs from the web, you can instant-launch the installer by going to http://friedfox.mozdev.org/go [mozdev.org].
    You can check out my cheesy web site for it [mozdev.org].

    I plan to set up a separate Internet2 mirror for college students soon. I'll announce this on the mailing list within a week or two.

  • Cool, but.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheTomcat (53158) on Saturday December 04 2004, @04:37PM (#10997979) Homepage
    This is cool, but I currently have the following setups, and I keep them pretty well in sync:

    Laptop - Linux (Primary Work)

    Laptop - Win (Primary Play)

    Desktop - Win (home)
    Admittedly, I have to keep my extensions in sync, but to keep data, here's what I do:

    For Thunderbird

    • I use only IMAPS, and keep everything on my server
    • I don't use the integrated Junk Mail controls. I did for a while, but got sick of having to start from scratch with every wipe of windows/every new install; nor do I use the filters in my mail client
    • I do, instead, use procmail and spamassassin to accomplish similar results. Spamassassin "learns" from INBOX.Junk.confirmed, every night. Procmail filters my list subscriptions, and I use this tip [texturizer.net] to keep Thunderbird in line.

    For Firefox:
    • I don't keep any bookmarks, locally, except my live bookmarks (which, again, admittedly, I need to set up on each instance).
    • Instead, I use my del.icio.us account [del.icio.us] to manage these. I then subscribe to my account's RSS as a live bookmark, and dump that into my bookmarks toolbar. This [mozdev.org] may be helpful, if you'd like to do the same.

    So with these little tricks, I'm able to keep all three environments pretty much in sync. I know, this isn't for everyone -- I don't expect everyone to have 200+MB of IMAP space, or do I expect them to know how to write procmail rules, but it works for me.

    S

  • works for me (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wannasleep (668379) on Saturday December 04 2004, @06:55PM (#10998635)
    Hi, I use it every once in a while.

    It liberated me from taking my laptop with me when I visit geek friends (there is always a free laptop I can use).
    Also, if I am in an emergency and need to read email etc. I use my usb drive that I always carry. Webmail and simply using somebody's else computer are not an option with me as I need to use ssh to forward ports, both for my private email (that I host at home) and my work email/intranet.

    Having said that, it is a little bit slow, although it may be because it is reading from a flash drive, but I can wait.
    They should be documented a little bit better. For instance, they tell you that you can only install it in the main directory of the drive, but if you simply change the .ini file you can really put it everywhere.
    I have not figured out how to handle multiple profiles though.
    All in all, I am very happy with it.THANKS!

  • Developer's Plans PLUS Portable Sunbird & NVU (Score:5, Informative)

    by CritterNYC (190163) on Saturday December 04 2004, @07:59PM (#10998950) Homepage
    Well, I guess the cat is fully out of the bag now anyway. I was planning on mentioning this on Slashdot once I got everything over on MozDev finally (my server went over my bandwidth limit last month just from all the blog and tech site mentions... first time that's happened since I released Portable Firefox back in June).

    In the past couple days, I've added launchers and instructions for Portable NVU [johnhaller.com] and Portable Sunbird [johnhaller.com]. Ready-to-use, fully-compressed packages will be forthcoming over the next week.

    The releases are Windows-only for now. The launcher uses the Nullsoft Scriptable Installer System [sourceforge.net] at the moment, which isn't compatible with Mac OSX.

    I'm currently working on automating the full build process and switching to 7-zip for compression. Once done, I'll be releasing Portable Firefox and Portable Thunderbird in all localized languages supported by Firefox and Thunderbird.

    Future plans include:
    - Sync utility, running from the portable install, to copy bookmarks, extensions, cookies, etc back and forth
    - Multi-OS install on the portable media, so the applications will run from every computer you use.
    - Support for Enigmail/GPG out-of-the-box (Another developer has repackaged Portable Thunderbird with these included. I'll be updating my launchers to support this by default)
    - Single, combined launcher for all products
    - Full theme support
    - Lots more?

    • Re:Amazing (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Fred_A (10934) <fred@fredsho[ ]org ['me.' in gap]> on Saturday December 04 2004, @03:04PM (#10997459) Homepage
      Why did I have to read half the page to figure out what version of FireFox/ThunderBird he had packaged though ?? (of course it's windows, I wonder why I even wondered, duh)

      OTOH I suppose it's easier to find a random Windows PC than a real computer nowadays... (gratuitious flaimbait, I know)

      • Re:Amazing (Score:5, Informative)

        by numark (577503) <jcolson@nospam.ndgonline.com> on Saturday December 04 2004, @03:14PM (#10997516) Homepage Journal
        Not really weird. It appears that Firefox, when it doesn't recognize what you typed in the address bar as an actual address, tries to use Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" system to get to the actual page. For instance, type "quicktime" in the address bar, and you'll get sent to apple.com/quicktime, since that's the first result on a Google search for "quicktime". The problem therefore lies in Firefox not recognizing the extra "http://" as extraneous, and instead acting like it's a search term. It just so happens that the first result for a search on "http://" with Google is Microsoft's home page.

          • Re:Amazing (Score:3, Informative)

            by numark (577503)
            I made a slight mistake in my previous message. Typing simply "quicktime" will send you to apple.com/quicktime/download/, whereas Quicktime.com goes to simply apple.com/quicktime/ (no "download" subdirectory). I thought the same thing as you at first, but it still works differently. I just tried "litigious bastards" in the address bar, and it did in fact forward me to sco.com (I'm using Firefox 1.0 final). HTTP.com brings me to an ad site, not Microsoft like "http://" does.
      • I recommend changing the "I'm feeling lucky" search behavior to a normal Google search

        Insert into user.js (using ChromEdit extension):

        // Change to normal Google search: user_pref("keyword.URL", "http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q =");
    • and then get a shit load of spyware, viruses, etc. at the same time? No thanks.

    • Re:Why don't you just use Internet Explorer? (Score:5, Informative)

      by f4llenang3l (834942) on Saturday December 04 2004, @03:08PM (#10997484)
      Honestly, have you actually tried Firefox? It loads quickly, and it doesn't require any configuring, at least on my machine, aside from standard installation-type stuff, it didn't. Unlike IE, though, it has several bonuses: You can configure it to do all kinds of cool and useful things if you're a Morlock instead of an Eloi (thank you Neal Stephenson), using any of a variety of useful tools; it comes with tabbed browsing; and it's pretty much adware-spyware-popup proof, unlike IE, every version of which (until XP SP 2) came with a handy "Always Trust Content from the Gator Corporation" checkbox. Bottom line is, Firefox is a much more flexible, streamlined browser, to suit a variety of needs, including those of the eloi who don't want to mess with all the messy details behind the pretty pictures on the screen. Comparatively, IE doesn't allow nearly as much useful flexibility, although you can get the Google toolbar if you are hard up (though that basically comes integrated in Firefox).

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