Quite often, I find myself wanting to run multiple versions of Firefox: to test out a new feature in Nightly, make sure my add-ons work in Aurora or maybe track down a bug in an earlier version. Using the Profile Manager, it's possible to have numerous versions of Firefox running side by side.
I started writing a tutorial, but it quickly got too complicated. So, I decided to write a script that would download, install and set up profiles for any version of Firefox. About halfway through, I stumbled upon a script called "install-all-firefox" by Max Glenister. It did a lot of what I wanted, so I forked it and worked from there.
How To Use It
Note: Currently this is OSX only
curl -L -O https://github.com/omgmog/install-all-firefox/raw/master/firefoxes.sh
chmod +x firefoxes.sh
./firefoxes.sh [version] [locale] [no_prompt]
Version and locale are option. If you don't use a locale, it will try to figure out your locale. If you don't have a version, it will install all available versions of Firefox.
If you want to see what's available (and what you have installed):
./firefoxes.sh
What It Does
- Figures out your locale (or allows you to specify it).
- Finds the file on the FTP server, and then downloads and installs it.
- Sets up a new profile and modifies the launcher to open the Firefox version with that profile.
- For versions using the same icon (Firefox 4 and Firefox Beta use the same icon, for example), it adds the version to the icon and name.
- Changes the settings so future versions (Nightly, Aurora, etc) check for updates regularly while numbered versions (4.0, 5.0, etc) stay where they are.
About Gregory Koberger
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