Chris's Wiki :: blog/web/ChromeIncognitoUse Commentshttps://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/web/ChromeIncognitoUse?atomcommentsDWiki2013-11-24T14:04:37ZRecent comments in Chris's Wiki :: blog/web/ChromeIncognitoUse.By Adam Sampson on /blog/web/ChromeIncognitoUsetag:CSpace:blog/web/ChromeIncognitoUse:d2186c8ed8d7f78f7c0e71797c509748082d4700Adam Sampsonhttp://offog.org/<div class="wikitext"><p>I do this with Firefox -- I wrote a script that starts Firefox with a throwaway profile, which it generates by copying an existing "foxtemp-template" profile and removes once it's done: <a href="http://offog.org/darcs/misccode/foxtemp">foxtemp</a>, <a href="http://offog.org/darcs/misccode/offog.py">offog.py</a>.</p>
<p>My usual Firefox profile has NoScript etc. installed, and I've got foxtemp bound to a key combination so I can easily bring up a vanilla browser when I need it.</p>
</div>2013-11-24T14:04:37ZBy Seth on /blog/web/ChromeIncognitoUsetag:CSpace:blog/web/ChromeIncognitoUse:957a7de9b32cab23b169cb3b6a932639d9705149Seth<div class="wikitext"><p>My experience is that not having a default profile running, the oldest running firefox gets the remote.</p>
<p>You're right that I don't use remote-control. I do keep the browsers running for a long time, and there's a default profile running without the -no-remote. I just treat that one as general browsing and all the others as specialized, pasting or typing URLs as needed.</p>
</div>2013-11-22T19:17:08ZBy Chris Siebenmann on /blog/web/ChromeIncognitoUsetag:CSpace:blog/web/ChromeIncognitoUse:5fa7ca7a83d5148cdb5b9866806d6c18ed593e8aChris Siebenmann<div class="wikitext"><p>The problem with Firefox is that if you have multiple Firefox profiles
active simultaneously there is no (reliable) way to open a second window
for a specific profile from the command line. If you run the new Firefox
with <code>-no-remote</code> it just fails with 'Firefox is already running'; if
you run without it, Firefox will remote-open in a more or less random
already-running profile. In theory this is not supposed to happen (the
new Firefox is supposed to distinguish which already-running Firefox to
remote-control based partly on the profile); in practice, it does.</p>
<p>(This problem is of course worse if you vary <code>$HOME</code> instead of
changing profiles, because then all Firefoxes think that they are
the same and will happily remote-control each other even under the
best of circumstances.)</p>
<p>Chrome and Chrome Incognito get this right. You can start a new Chrome
Incognito window when you have a running Chrome instance (incognito or
otherwise). Of course this may not work if you set <code>-user-data-dir</code>; I
wouldn't be surprised if all such Chromes considered themselves equal.</p>
<p>None of this matters if you don't remote-control and reuse existing
running instances of your browsers, but I do this all of the time.</p>
<p>PS: looking at the actual Firefox code involved, it seems that it might
work if you always use a non-default profile name and never try to use
the default profile. I'll have to try this.</p>
</div>2013-11-22T18:59:30ZBy Christian Neukirchen on /blog/web/ChromeIncognitoUsetag:CSpace:blog/web/ChromeIncognitoUse:24768e6ec28419214124878c4052da24bd3bd4b9Christian Neukirchenhttp://chneukirchen.org/<div class="wikitext"><p>I do this as well, and additionally use <a href="http://www.darktrojan.net/software/addons/openwith">http://www.darktrojan.net/software/addons/openwith</a> to move pages from Firefox to Chromium.</p>
</div>2013-11-22T17:43:02ZBy Seth on /blog/web/ChromeIncognitoUsetag:CSpace:blog/web/ChromeIncognitoUse:1ef3c4f8ffd659ad3fb743a2957cbfc5d10de2bbSeth<div class="wikitext"><p>And everyone here thinks I'm a privacy loon for doing similar things with my browsers. For comparison/ideas:</p>
<p>Completely anonymous sessions in chrome (chromium on fedora), with no extensions, config, etc.</p>
<pre>
#!/bin/sh
cfg=/tmp/chromeconfig.$$
mkdir ${cfg}
touch "${cfg}/First Run"
/usr/bin/chromium-browser --incognito --user-data-dir=${cfg}
rm -r ${cfg}
</pre>
<p>I'm really fond of my firefox config, though. Multiple profiles, completely separated (personal, work, high-security, ...). The heart of each wrapper script looks like</p>
<pre>
export HOME=${HOME}/.mozilla.work ; cd
exec firefox -no-remote "$@"
</pre>
<p>Which also keeps a private copy of flash cookies/config in the private HOME. Then each firefox gets its own extensions and config, has separate cache and cookies. One "temp" profile is configured to save no history or cookies. One profile is configured to run proxied through an ssh tunnel.</p>
</div>2013-11-22T17:42:28ZBy Frank Ch. Eigler on /blog/web/ChromeIncognitoUsetag:CSpace:blog/web/ChromeIncognitoUse:4966faf6d4b710e49b0187dd12b8442278d0f0dfFrank Ch. Eigler<div class="wikitext"><p>Have you considered making a separate firefox profile, for this kind of purpose, one that lacks the usual safety-oriented plugins/settings?</p>
</div>2013-11-22T15:59:04Z