[freenet-dev] Firefox and Freenet

[Colin Davis]

> Ideally we want an external profile option - something where the settings are 
> kept outside of the firefox directory, where firefox will always default to 
> the default profile, without asking the user.
>   
>

Well.. If you wanted to go that way, you could use the -no-remote 
option, which allows two Firefox processes to run at once. We could then 
use -profile to manually load a profile.

On Windows:
firefox.exe -profile "c:\progra~1\freenet\myprofile" -no-remote

On Linux:
./firefox -profile "\tmp\freenet\myprofile" -no-remote


This would work either with the pre-installed version of Firefox, or 
with a bundled version.
Bundling works even if Firefox isn't installed, and ensures you know 
where the binary is.. But it wouldn't auto-update. If you did want to 
bundle, you could use the Portable Firefox versions for Windows/OSX, and 
just use the standard .tgz file for Linux, passing it the profile from 
the freenet directory.


If you were to just start Firefox with a command-line option to specify 
a profile, that likely eliminates the "tresspassing" argument entirely, 
and makes bundling less necessary.

The way I see it on bundling, the Pros are:
No default plugins, so no leaks through SWF/PDF/etc. Easier to know
You know exactly where it is, and don't need to search the HD.
You know what version it is, so you can trust the behavior.

The cons are-
It doesn't auto-update. You'd need to either update over freenet, or 
leave old versions in place.
It adds to download size.


-Colin