[CLOSED THREAD] Portable Firefox

sheehan · Post by **sheehan** » June 17th, 2004, 6:37 am

FlashBanG
i did the setup in XP, but need it to work in win2K. I am using the Batch file; it doesn't create all of the entries that would normally happen by launching the EXE directly. Noneletheless - i'd like it to not impact the APPDATA directory at all.

CritterNYC · Post by **CritterNYC** » June 17th, 2004, 8:07 am

The pluginreg file DOES appear to be created, even when running from the batch file. Someone else had brought this up to me offline. I don't see that there is currently a way to supress this. Check out bugtraq for anything related and, possibly, file a bug requesting the ability to suppress it.

gutzalpus · Post by **gutzalpus** » June 17th, 2004, 9:19 pm

I suppose this is somewhat off topic, but how exactly do you recompress JAR files? I'd like to do this to reduce the size of my Thunderbird install for USB use as well.

chris_s · Post by **chris_s** » June 18th, 2004, 7:46 am

ok I just also confirmed that pluginreg.dat is created in "application data"
also a Talkback folder and when a page with flash is visited a Macromedia folder

in order to get it not to use the hard drive at all this works for the firefox.bat file in the root of the usb drive it will create an "application data" folder there.

@echo off
echo Starting Firefox...
set USERPROFILE=%cd%
cd firefox
start firefox.exe -Profile "profile/"

rem end firefox.bat

I tried set APPDATA first but that did not work so firefox must be using the %USERPROFILE% variable.
it may not be a bad idea to also add the line
set APPDATA=%USERPROFILE%\Application Data
right after the set USERPROFILE line incase some other plugin uses the %APPDATA% variable.

using %cd% may cause a problem on win 9x I do not think that it exists.
I think that came up in the old thread for 0.7 0.8

I admit that this brings back some of the hackishness of the old method but even fixing it inside firefox it may still have to be done for plugins.

chris

chris_s · Post by **chris_s** » June 18th, 2004, 7:48 am

I read a review of some flash drives yesterday that may be of intrest to users

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/004/flash/flash-1.html

chris

CritterNYC · Post by **CritterNYC** » June 19th, 2004, 12:58 am

gutzalpus wrote:I suppose this is somewhat off topic, but how exactly do you recompress JAR files? I'd like to do this to reduce the size of my Thunderbird install for USB use as well.

A JAR file is nothing more than a ZIP file with a renamed extension. To recompress a JAR file, just rename it to a ZIP extension, open it in your favorite program (Winzip, 7zip, etc etc) and create a new ZIP at high compression.

CritterNYC · Post by **CritterNYC** » June 19th, 2004, 1:00 am

chris_s wrote:in order to get it not to use the hard drive at all this works for the firefox.bat file in the root of the usb drive it will create an "application data" folder there.
...
set USERPROFILE=%cd%

Unfortunately, messing with environment variable affects other apps than Mozilla. I'd argue that leaving a plugins file on the host PC is better than possibly messing up other running programs and processes.

CritterNYC · Post by **CritterNYC** » June 19th, 2004, 1:21 am

I've altered the packaged version to no longer include the Flash plugin. It turns out we can't re-distribute it due to Macromedia's restrictive licensing. The new version (sans Flash) is now 5.8 Mb. I have included directions for adding the Flash player to the USB install of Firefox (which will violate your license agreement, by the way) on the page.

http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_firefox/

FlashBanG · Post by **FlashBanG** » June 19th, 2004, 10:42 pm

It seems another user has successfully gotten thunderbird to run on a usb flash drive.. Aside from the fact that both standalone apps now have portability built into them, it seems that user has alsocome up with a way to use a JS file to launch th eprogram that will take care of the drive letter problem, and also has some other goodness inside..

see for yourself:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 309#590309

John.. When you have some time to repackage TB, will you also be hosting it on your site? Though that other user has managed to get it running, he hasnt optimized it for portable media like you have portable firefox (recompression, etc..)

Thanks,

FlashBanG · Post by **FlashBanG** » June 19th, 2004, 10:44 pm

By the way, this puzzled me..

The package was 4.1 mb a day or so ago, and then in the latest version, you removed Flash, and it balloned to 5.8 mb? Have you added any other components? Why the increase in size?

Thanks,

CritterNYC · Post by **CritterNYC** » June 20th, 2004, 8:24 pm

FlashBanG wrote:It seems another user has successfully gotten thunderbird to run on a usb flash drive.. Aside from the fact that both standalone apps now have portability built into them, it seems that user has alsocome up with a way to use a JS file to launch th eprogram that will take care of the drive letter problem, and also has some other goodness inside..

see for yourself:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 309#590309

Nice, I like the JS. I hadn't considered doing it as a JS. I'll consider this in place of the batch file.

I'm still trying to get some time to do a TB package. Client work has taken precedence and I've been a little busy.

Thanks for the heads up FlashBanG!

CritterNYC · Post by **CritterNYC** » June 20th, 2004, 8:29 pm

FlashBanG wrote:By the way, this puzzled me..

The package was 4.1 mb a day or so ago, and then in the latest version, you removed Flash, and it balloned to 5.8 mb? Have you added any other components? Why the increase in size?

I'd never gotten it that small that I recall. I still have all the ZIPs locally...

Fireforx 20040604: 6.44mb
Firefox RC: 5.87mb
Firefox RC-B: 5.87mb
Firefox 0.9: 6.21mb
Firefox 0.9-B: 5.80mb

The jump between the RC and the final is at least partially attributable to using an extract of the EXE (RC) installed files vs the full ZIP (final) version as well as changes in which icons were compressed. Between 0.9 and 0.9B is the removal of Flash.

Alycobaba · Post by **Alycobaba** » June 21st, 2004, 9:44 am

Question... I tried installing tittlebar tweak 1.5.5 using the installation program. My problem is when i then take it to a different computer using my pendrive it is looking for the directory on my computer. How do I go about manually installing this extension so i can take it with me? Thx!

FlashBanG · Post by **FlashBanG** » June 21st, 2004, 12:01 pm

CritterNYC wrote:
FlashBanG wrote:By the way, this puzzled me..

The package was 4.1 mb a day or so ago, and then in the latest version, you removed Flash, and it balloned to 5.8 mb? Have you added any other components? Why the increase in size?

I'd never gotten it that small that I recall. I still have all the ZIPs locally...

Fireforx 20040604: 6.44mb
Firefox RC: 5.87mb
Firefox RC-B: 5.87mb
Firefox 0.9: 6.21mb
Firefox 0.9-B: 5.80mb

The jump between the RC and the final is at least partially attributable to using an extract of the EXE (RC) installed files vs the full ZIP (final) version as well as changes in which icons were compressed. Between 0.9 and 0.9B is the removal of Flash.

Ah, my fault, i think i might have confused the installer builds (4.7mb) with the portable ones :-)

FlashBanG · Post by **FlashBanG** » June 21st, 2004, 12:07 pm

Alycobaba wrote:Question... I tried installing tittlebar tweak 1.5.5 using the installation program. My problem is when i then take it to a different computer using my pendrive it is looking for the directory on my computer. How do I go about manually installing this extension so i can take it with me? Thx!

Please see the instructions in this thread:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 743#572743

You will need to change all the absolute paths to relative in files: extensions.rdf and chrome.rdf in your profile.

[CLOSED THREAD] Portable Firefox

pluginreg.dat

Re: pluginreg.dat

Change to packaged version

Extensions....

Re: Extensions....