540194 - Provide User Interface for New Profile Manager

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: Startup & Profiles, enhancement)

Description

[David E. Ross]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20100104 SeaMonkey/2.0.2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20100104 SeaMonkey/2.0.2

Bug #214675 proposes to remove the existing Profile Manager.  

Bug #539524 proposes to create a new Profile Manger to replace the one being removed.  However, the implementation of this new Profile Manager will not be user oriented.  It will serve only the needs of test and triage activities.  

The ability to have multiple profiles and to switch easily between them is an important feature of SeaMonkey.  I therefore request that, when bug #539524 is implemented, SeaMonkey have a user interface for that implementation.  

Reproducible: Always




The interface to the new Profile Manager should be accessible from the menu bar just as the interface to the current Profile Manager is accessed.

Comment 1

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

It's still an open question how the application for testing/qa will look like. It could also be that it is a Python script. Until there hasn't been made a decision you cannot 100% depend on bug 539524.

Comment 2

[Jeff Hammel]

(In reply to comment #1)
> It's still an open question how the application for testing/qa will look like.
> It could also be that it is a Python script. Until there hasn't been made a
> decision you cannot 100% depend on bug 539524.

It has been decided that it won't be a python script (at least, that is the outcome of existing conversations, though this would be much easier for me to write) but a real XUL/XPCOM application.

Comment 3

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> It has been decided that it won't be a python script (at least, that is the
> outcome of existing conversations, though this would be much easier for me to
> write) but a real XUL/XPCOM application.

A separate xulrunner application has a ton of bloat which we would bring in here. Is there anything we can't do with an extension? Jeff, but I believe this discussion or diagnosis should happen on bug 539524.

Comment 4

[Philip Chee]

http://jagriffin.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/profilemanager-1-0_beta1/

"ProfileManager is a standalone app that can be used to manage profiles for Firefox and other xulrunner apps. The profile manager which is built into Firefox is going away after 4.0, so this new app will be the best choice for managing profiles in future Firefox versions, but it works great with 4.0 and earlier versions as well, not to mention Thunderbird.

Some of its features:

* easy profile backup and restore
* ability to save/restore profiles to zip archives (which makes it easy to move them between machines)
* ability to manage multiple versions of Firefox, and associate profiles with specific Firefox versions
* allows user to launch any profile with any version of Firefox installed on his system, as shown in the graphic below"

Comment 5

[David E. Ross]

The current plan for the new, separate Profile Manager is that it will NOT be packaged with Firefox.  If this new Profile Manager finally reaches end-user status, my request (per this RFE bug report) is that it be packaged with SeaMonkey.  Furthermore, SeaMonkey should provide an appropriate interface with this new Profile Manager (i.e., via Tools on the menu bar).