As development of Mozilla"s Windows 8.1 Modern/Metro UI version of Firefox continues in its beta stage, one of the programmers on the project has revealed an interesting new feature that should please heavy users of both the Modern UI and desktop versions of the web browser.
In a post on his personal blog, Mozilla"s Brian Bondy revealed today that until recently, the plan was to offer separate profiles for the desktop and Modern ports of Firefox, and use a sync method to bring data from those two profiles together. Now he states, "We"ve had feedback around this, and we"ve found that a better experience would be obtained by sharing a single profile."
Having the same profile for both Firefox versions means that users can keep their bookmarks, logins, cookies, and other browser data without having to deal with syncing issues. There will be two exceptions. One is that any plug-ins for the desktop Firefox browser won"t work in the Modern version since that port doesn"t support those kinds of programs. Bondy adds, "To avoid unexpected problems with changed preferences exposed in one environment but not in the other, we"re planning to keep most preferences separate."
Another minor downside because of this change is that users won"t be able to run the Modern and desktop versions at the same time. Bondy says, "For users who really want to run both at the same time, they can force the use of a different profile using the -ProfileManager command line argument from Desktop Firefox."
Bondy says this change in the Firefox Modern version won"t affect its final non-beta release date, which is currently scheduled for late January 2014.
Source: Brian Bondy"s blog | Image via Mozilla