Maintaining Multiple User Profiles:
Since I have been using both Firefox 2, and Firefox 3.0 (currently yet a beta version of this forthcoming release), I maintain various Mozilla Firefox user Profiles on this Windows XP system. Why the implied relationship between different versions of the software, and multiple user Profiles? Firefox 3, much like Firefox 2 upon its release, does not allow necessarily the same Add-ons to be installed for compatibility issues. The user's add-on collections are unique to each Profile, so I can keep a profile packed with extensions which are compatible with Firefox 2, and another Profile which is mostly devoid of any add-ons except those which are verified compatible by Firefox 3 upon each individual add-on installation.
Using the add-on, Profile Switcher, I am able to switch between my user Profiles easily (and rapidly). The ability to switch between Profiles easily is an asset when it comes to testing Firefox 3, because of the aforementioned differences in add-on compatibility. Therefore, if I start Firefox 3 but have been using a Firefox 2 Profile, I can switch to one of my Firefox 3 profiles, thereby avoiding the problems associated with attempting to use incompatible add-ons.
Uncertain of what add-ons I had setup in my Firefox Default profile (the profile created when Firefox is first installed), I decided to try switching to the Default profile, and using it with Firefox 3. On startup, Firefox checks for compatibility for each of the items in the add-on collection associated with the current user Profile. Somewhat to my surprise, several of the extensions did have available Firefox 3 compatibility upgrades. Firefox 3 prompted to install the updated versions of those select extensions, and upon my choosing the affirmative, the updates were installed, and the browser continued on to opening-- having disabled those extensions of the Profile which were not able to be updated for compatibility.
- Yahoo! Mail Notifier
Among the extensions which were updated for Firefox 3 was Yahoo! Mail Notifier, an add-on which stores a Yahoo! account holder's ID and Password information, thereby logging into the account into the background, and reporting to the user through iconic messages, the status of that user's mailbox.
Though I haven't been much of a Yahoo! mail user lately, I was nevertheless delighted to know that more add-ons have been upgraded for compatibility with Firefox 3. However, when I attempted to use the extension to check the mail account (through one possible action-- double-clicking the statusbar icon), I encountered an alert pop-up, informing me of a problem with the account login. I captured the alert in a screenshot, proceeded by clicking OK, then another alert popped-up. Again, i captured the alert message as an image, and proceeded, finally accessing the account.
The Yahoo! Mail new interface, however, did not function properly. Yahoo! Mail has some sort of built-in (likely client-side scripting) application which detected, in this instance, that I was ‘…taking a long time to log into…’ my account, and recommended that I log into the Classic Version (i.e. the older version of Yahoo! mail which is without the extremely JavaScript enhanced features).
Logging into the Classic Version of the account did solve the problems, and no more browser alerts popped up, however, refreshing the page (i.e. reload button) resulted in the service switching back to the New Yahoo! Mail, and thereby did cause the alerts to pop-up again.
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