302150 - proxy settings should be specifiable as per-window, per-profile, or per-user

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Networking, enhancement)

Description

[t t]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050720 Firefox/1.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050720 Firefox/1.0.6

many people use more than one proxy, such as one for work and one for home. 
they should be able to keep all of their settings, chrome, user css, etc. but
still have 2 windows open using 2 different sets of proxy settings.

the generalization of this request is to allow settings to be per-tab,
per-window, per-session, or global.  this is similar to buffer-local variables
in emacs.  it would be a clean design.

this is in keeping with a general need for users to be able to selectively
create and copy profiles.  if your profile is perfect but you want one exactly
the same as it except for a single setting, it should be easy.  likewise, you
should be able to choose which parts of an existing profile to keep and which to
copy when you create a new one, without manual copying or editing of files. 
allowing settings with these specificities is part of a general ability for the
user to control ff.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[t t]

i.e. the per-session settings shadow the global settings, and so on for windows
and tabs.

Comment 2

[Jaime Mitchell (use [e-mail] for email)]

Are you asking to be able to run multiple profiles at the same time?

Comment 3

[Jaime Mitchell (use [e-mail] for email)]

*** Bug 302267 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[t t]

i apologize for any duplicate bugs.  it is completely unintentional.

i don't think there was any indication that i did that.  nothing was out of the
ordinary except that i kept being asked for login details even though i uncheck
the ip box and use cookies.

however, i got another error.  i made a comment (and changed the title for
clarification) and lost the ENTIRE comment -- all my text -- because of an
internal bugzilla error (i reported it to admin as it requested).  the back
button did not restore my text.  then in trying to fix the problem, i kept
getting mid-air collisions.

i hope things are set straight now.

Comment 5

[t t]

ok, things seem to be working now.

i seem already to be able to run 2 profiles simultaneously.

what i need, specifically, is to be able to have windows a b c where window a is
unproxied, window b is proxied to host/port 1, and window c is proxied to
host/port 2.  new windows should be proxied to host/port 1 by default.  i should
not have to create a new profile or a new user to be able to do this, since
doing so would mean that future changes to other settings do not propagate to
the other windows.

but i hate kludges, so i want *generally* for ff settings to be able to be
specified by the user or by an extension like proxybutton as per window, per
profile, or per user (i.e. the settings apply to all profiles for that user and
changes to the value of the variable apply to all profiles for that user).

if a setting is made per-user, then new profiles have that setting.  if it is
per-profile, then new windows have that setting.  if it is per-window, then new
tabs have that setting.

a per-window setting of a variable overrides the per-profile setting for it.  a
per-profile setting overrides a per-user setting.

it sounds much more complicated than it is.

by default, all settings should be per-profile because that is the current case.
 if a user or an extension adds a per-user or per-window setting, then shadowing
occurs as above, otherwise there is no difference from the way things are now.

Comment 6

[Patrick McManus [:mcmanus]]

In general, per window settings is not something we are doing project wide. However this is something an addon could do.