Profile transfer application

[JohnCleland]

Firefox needs an application (app/applet) that easily transfers Firefox profiles from one computer to another without requiring the user to do everything manually, needs a network or syncing capability. A simple, automatic function that:

- installs on removable media (i.e. usb device)

- copies the profile from computer A onto the removable media

- copies from the removable media to computer B

In this modern computer age there is no reason for users to have to hunt for instructions and do everything manually. This especially true for inexperienced users.

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[tornuggla]

I'm not sure I understand your use case completely.

Do you have the need to use FF with your profile on some network that is disconnected from the internet, so that you can't sync your profile by just logging in? This would make sense to me.

More over I like the idea of having my profile offline alltogether. That should be the main option here. When you create a profile, you get to chose to have it online at all or not. That way I would feel much safer to use it on my employer's computer for example (although I know it's probably perfectly encrypted and all that... ). And by the click of a button in FF you should be able to load an offline profile, and another button to make it online, or sync it back online.

Possible use case:

I have an online profile, synced between several devices. When I know, I'll soon need to use it on someone else's device I do the following: on my device, in FF, I'd click "export profile to file...". Then, on my friend's or employer's device, in FF I'd click "import profile from file..." and I'd get the following choices:

( ) Keep local
  [ ] No cache
        Check this if exposing your data is 
        risky for you or other people. 
        Without cache, you might experience
        slight delays when FF uses your 
        profile information (opening book-
        mark folder e.g.).
  [ ] Don't clear cache on exiting
        Check this if trust other users of 
        this device and also are going to 
        use your profile soon again on this 
        device. Without this, Firefox will 
        automatically clear it's cache and 
        history when you exit the current
        session.
  [ ] Do not update file with current session
        Check this if you want to temporarily 
        save profile information (such as a 
        specific set of containers or bookmarks), 
        but do not want to add these to your 
        original profile. Without this, Firefox 
        will save any changes to the original 
        profile file and you can use that file 
        later to sync those changes to an online 
        version of that profile.

( ) Quick sync
     If you use this, you probably have a large 
     amount of profile information compared to 
     the speed or cost of your internet connection. 
     This way, your information is loaded from the 
     local file, but changes will be synced to the 
     corresponding online profile.

And another use case is then of course the complete offline profile, that is, when you create the profile you  might have roughly the checkboxes from "keep local" above.

No need to say you should need to type in the profile's password for opening the file, that is, the real technical extra is the local encryption on exporting (or creating) the profile, as opposed to sending you password to an online Mozilla server.

Kudo that, anywayz!