If you find yourself interested in checking out the latest build of Firefox 3 on Windows, but are concerned about messing with your current Firefox 2 installation, then this is what you’re looking for. Yes, this has been written about and documented in several other places on the web. But I just got around to checking out Firefox 3 myself and so decided to put the steps together that I followed in order to run both Firefox 2 and Firefox3 Beta 4 simultaneously.

The way I did things will NOT mess up your current Firefox 2 profile, and it will allow you to tell the difference between both versions in your various task lists. This is nice if you’re into comparing memory and CPU usage between the two instances.

On with the steps!

1. Download the latest build from either the FTP site or from the web site - the web site provides a link to all of the languages, while the FTP site contains nightly builds in English.
2. Run the installer and select Custom setup to ensure it’s installing to a DIFFERENT directory then your current Firefox installation
3. At the end of the install, de-select Run Firefox now
4. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to your newly installed Firefox 3 directory
5. Locate the Firefox.exe and rename it to something else. I renamed it to Firefox3-BETA.exe. The reason for this is so you can tell the difference in your Task Manager (for instance) between Firefox 2 and Firefox 3.
6. Go to Start => Run and type: firefox.exe -profilemanager -no-remote
7. Click the Create Profile button and name your new profile. I named mine Firefox3-BETA.
8. Click Exit
9. Create a shortcut to your Firefox3-BETA.exe (or whatever you renamed it to) on your desktop, Quick Start, dock bar, or wherever you’d like.
10. Now we need to add some command line parameters to the shortcut in order to use our new Firefox3-BETA profile.
11. Edit the properties on the shortcut and add the following to the END OF THE TARGET line:
    -P Firefox3-BETA -no-remote
12. The entire target line should be something like this:
    “C:\Program Files\Firefox3\firefox3-BETA.exe” -P Firefox3-BETA -no-remote
13. Now using this shortcut you can run both Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 simultaneously AND easily tell the difference between them in your various task lists. Enjoy!

CAVEAT 1:
Because I renamed the Firefox 3 executable, updates to Firefox 3 *may* be broken. Simply rename the executable back to firefox.exe and edit your Firefox 3 shortcut and it will all be fine - however, you won’t be able to distinguish between Firefox 2 and 3 in your task list by name alone.

CAVEAT 2:
I noticed that of the add-ons I use not a single one was FF3 compatible - yet. My short list of add-ons:

Noia 2.0 (eXtreme) theme
Adblock Plus
Adblock Filterset
Better Gmail 2
Download Statusbar
Flashblock
Foxmarks
FoxyTunes

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Posted: March 31st, 2008 at 8:59 am.
Tags: Mozilla, Tech.
Filed under: Techie Stuff.
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