> bunch of hacks, such as containers, which are cumbersome to use. Firefox's "solution" forces you to switch Github tabs between personal and work containers constantly.
Rarely have I had to that. Until I added rules to open certain URLs in specific containers.
> Chromium provides separate windows with different profiles, and Firefox should follow Chromium here.
Absolutely not. Profiles are a poor "alternative" to containers. How do I add a rule to pin URLs to specific profiles? How would that even work, if it did? A new window for some links? Re-use some random window with the same profile? How do I switch to it? Switch back? Don't tell me to use the Window Manager via Alt-Tab. I organise tabs into windows by shared context.
Then there's the whole issue of sync. Profiles don't share anything. Each profile needs to be configured individually. I like not having to add uBlock Origin to every browser profile. I like not having to think if I have my password for this rarely visited site in this profile or another one. Or a bookmark. Or form info.
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Just because containers have no use to you / you couldn't find a use for them, doesn't mean the rest of us also shouldn't have the luxury of using this feature. Feel free to use Profiles as you'd like. Leave what works for us alone.
Firefox's "answer" to profiles is to run essentially two (or more) copies of the browser rather than only copying the profile-specific parts of each profile. This leads to a lot of wasted CPU cycles and RAM and is a very suboptimal solution compared to what Chromium and Safari do these days, not to mention that the ability to create and switch profiles is not included in the UI by default and requires an extension to access.
I think you may be mixing up profiles and containers.
Profiles do have a built-in UI at about:profiles or by launching Firefox with -P, neither of which requires an extension. Admittedly this UI is a bit basic, but a better version is being rolled out (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-management). Running multiple profiles side by side does indeed involve running multiple instances of the browser.
Containers are an internal API and need an extension like Multi-account Containers to provide a GUI (though this is an official extension by Mozilla), however they don't require running multiple copies of the browser.
Just tried it out - definitely an improvement UX-wise, but it still essentially runs two copies of Firefox rather than only isolating profile-specific features.
>This feature is separate from the about:profiles experience, and we currently have no plans to change how about:profiles works. You may continue to use about:profiles if that is better for your workflow.
Patently false. Been using profiles for years.
> bunch of hacks, such as containers, which are cumbersome to use. Firefox's "solution" forces you to switch Github tabs between personal and work containers constantly.
Rarely have I had to that. Until I added rules to open certain URLs in specific containers.
> Chromium provides separate windows with different profiles, and Firefox should follow Chromium here.
Absolutely not. Profiles are a poor "alternative" to containers. How do I add a rule to pin URLs to specific profiles? How would that even work, if it did? A new window for some links? Re-use some random window with the same profile? How do I switch to it? Switch back? Don't tell me to use the Window Manager via Alt-Tab. I organise tabs into windows by shared context.
Then there's the whole issue of sync. Profiles don't share anything. Each profile needs to be configured individually. I like not having to add uBlock Origin to every browser profile. I like not having to think if I have my password for this rarely visited site in this profile or another one. Or a bookmark. Or form info.
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Just because containers have no use to you / you couldn't find a use for them, doesn't mean the rest of us also shouldn't have the luxury of using this feature. Feel free to use Profiles as you'd like. Leave what works for us alone.