Firefox Workspaces - Mozilla Labs | Concept Series

Firefox Workspaces

2009-10-28T23:16:07Z

I'd love to be able to quickly switch between contexts within my browser, each with its own history, open tabs, (add-ons?), personas, etc. The idea would be to improve my personal productivity by, for example, having "Work", "Personal", and "Fun" workspaces set up. When I want to focus on work, I can just flip to my "Work" workspace that has all my tabs, bookmarks, etc for work. When I'm done for the day, I can just switch to my "Personal" workspace and do stuff there without disturbing the tabs and other stuff in my "Work" workspace, etc.

Creating new workspaces should be as simple as "Edit > New Workspace" or somesuch, so if I decide to start researching something (kitchen renovations, the history of cryptography, Christmas shopping), I can quickly and easily start a new workspace for that task. Optionally, allow workspaces to be password protected (which would be best for the Christmas shopping one).

You can emulate this idea in a way simply by using new profiles, but new profiles are a pain in the butt -- most people don't know how to use them, and you have to restart your browser, etc. People have also suggested bookmarking sets of tabs and flipping between them, but that really doesn't work at all.

Extra bonus points if workspaces can be synced via Weave.

Answer by merond for Firefox Workspaces

2009-10-29T21:49:34Z

you could just build an extension to use the ability of profiles that are already there and make them more user-friendly. Then it would be compatible and be capable of syncing with weave.

Answer by Anorexicpuppy for Firefox Workspaces

2009-11-14T17:01:53Z

This sounds like a simple add-on project. All you need is a new button in the main toolbar with some customized config files. Those files could be synced with weave, so that all computers with the add-on could read them.

Answer by passcod for Firefox Workspaces

2009-11-25T09:45:51Z

Would it? I mean, it may be, but what I would be more looking into is a profile switch without browser reload. Nice interface is just tweaking, the switch seems more complicated. Tell me exactly, it wouldn't be that simple would it?

switchButton.click(function(next_profile) { browser.switchProfile(next_profile); });

Answer by Delavy for Firefox Workspaces

2009-12-28T21:49:43Z

I think profile are not the solution, because to heavy to use : re-install add-ons, theme, bookmarks.. And not simple to use/change. So I imagine a mechanism of "sessions, much simple. You can see and comment it on his page on this lab : Sessions in Firefox : session by navigation themes to split the history .

Sorry, There are no picture on the concept page because the lab don't accept new user post picture (why, I don't no), but they are on the page on my website (the link are on the article).

Answer by Natanael L for Firefox Workspaces

2010-01-12T14:38:16Z

Session Manager can do something similiar - you can have specific sessions with specific tabs saved, and make them auto-saving so that new tabs will be included in the sessions when you open them, etc...

I use it frequently, but not for managing multiple session, just for keeping That Set Of Tabs open at all times.

Answer by lxe for Firefox Workspaces

2010-02-22T09:14:39Z

You don't have to restart the browser simply use the parameter --no-remote

$ firefox --no-remote -P default &

$ firefox --no-remote -P work &

Furthermore you don't need to re-install add-ons, etc if you don't want to.

$ firefox --no-remote -P

Create profile named foo

Make a copy of the profile you want

Copy the filename asdf12345.foo from ~/.mozilla/firefox/

Rename your copy as asdf12345.foo

$ firefox --no-remote -P foo &

I wrote a little bash shell function to do this via CLI:

ffcopy() { echo "Input profile (ex: default)"; read in; echo "Create Output profile (ex: foo)"; read out; firefox --no-remote -CreateProfile $out; foo=echo ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.$out; echo $foo; rm -Rf "$foo"; echo $foo; cp -R ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.$in $foo; }

$ ffcopy