OS X: Install Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 on the Same Computer

Tagged: Mozilla Firefox

Are you dying to try out firefox 3 but not ready to give up firefox 2? You can have them both fat and happy on your apple os x system. Here is how to do it.

When you install firefox 3 normally in os x, the process will overwrite your firefox 2 installation. Especially during the beta phase, you may not want to completely upgrade just yet. Here is how you can have firefox 2 and firefox 3 on your system.

1. Download firefox 3 (currently in beta)
2. Click on it to start the installation process
3. Instead of dragging the firefox icon to your application folder, drag it to the desktop top.
4. Select the firefox icon and press enter. Rename the firefox application to something more appropriate. I used firefox_beta_3, for example.
5. Drag the renamed application to the application folder.

6. Run firefox 3.

You will not be able to run firefox 2 and firefox 3 at the same time. If you want to uninstall firefox 3 and revert back to firefox 2, just drag the firefox 3 icon to the trash.

Using this method, FF3 will share FF2’s profile. This is what I prefer but you are exposing your old cookies and bookmarks to beta software. If you want to protect your FF2 profile, just create a new one before running FF3.

1. Open the Terminal
2. type cd /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS
3. type to run the ProfileManager: ./firefox-bin -ProfileManager
4. Create a new Profile and select it.

Now all your firefox installations will run the new profile. If you decide you no longer want to run FF3, then repeat the process to revert your profile back to your default before you delete FF3. If you want to continue to run FF3 with your old profile (and bookmarks, etc), then switch the profile over to your old default profile.