How to run 2 different Firefox versions using the same profile
Is it possible to run 2 different Firefox versions using the same profile and still have browsing history saved? I used to be able to do that up until a week ago. What happened was I was using Firefox version 3.6.28(a very old version of Firefox) which I need to use sometimes and then the current version, 36.01. Earlier I would use both my versions of Firefox and the history would be saved if I used both versions but now when version 36.01 came out, its not saving for some reason. Is this a bug? The history is saving during the current session, but say I close out of Firefox and then go back to Firefox, it will still be saved but when I go to my old version of Firefox, the history is saved but then after I close out of that the history on my new current version is all gone and it starts me all fresh, is there a way to get rid of this so that the history will always be saved even if i switch between versions? I could do that before up until Firefox 35.01 but Firefox 36 isnt saving the history from the old version, is this a bug or not? Now I have to create a separate profile for each Firefox so the history I use on the old version is only saved on that version and the history I have on the new Firefox is another profile so that history from the 2nd profile remains but I dont want that. I want to be able to use the same profile so that the same browsing history can be saved using both versions like it was before, I hope people can understand my problem. If not I can further explain, thanks.
All Replies (4)
Those versions are too vastly different from each other to even think of using the same Profile for both of them, and to not expect to have problems such as you are experiencing.
@ the-edmeister, I understand that the 2 versions are completely different, however how come the history was saving fine when I switched between firefox 3.6.28 to the current one which was Firefox 32, 33, 34, 35 etc? Like I'm surprised how come now at Firefox 36 this problem started, Firefox 36 isnt that much different from Firefox 35 but yet Firefox 35 was still saving my browser history from the old 3.6.28 version, my 3.6.28 version never upgrades but the new Firefox keeps upgrading whenever there is a new release out automatically and then all of a sudden when the new version of 36.01 came out all my history was gone, so isnt Firefox 35.01 also very much different from 3.6.28 as much as 36.01 is? I hope you got what I meant, thank you for helping.
You should never use the same Firefox profile folder with different Firefox versions. You can never predict what happens and with Firefox 3.6 and current releases it will never work. The SQLite version used in current releases is a much later version then used in 3.6, so this will never work. There are also the password files (logins.json in the current release and signons.sqlite in 3.6) and there are a lot more differences like the safe browsing database and disk cache (cache2 in current releases). You can't use Sync either.
That makes sense but I guess my question now is, when I was using Firefox 35.01 which was the version before 36, it was still saving the history from firefox 3.6, and isnt firefox 35.01 also very different from firefox 36? Did something happen in firefox 36 that changed saving history from older versions? Because Firefox 35 is almost as new as Firefox 36 is, so shouldnt that have also not been saving my history from the old firefox 3.6?