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Comment by sebazzz | Hacker News Reader

Firefox Multi-Account contains are awesome for software development and testing! At my work we usually work at tools which have three roles: user, reviewer, administrator so I generally have three containers for these user accounts. This means I can be logged in with all the accounts I need for testing in the same web browser without resorting to private mode (which does not remember cookies between sessions anyway).

In addition, I use the temporary container add-on[0] which also uses containers, but throws them away after being used (like reference counting).

These two tools have seriously improved my ability to both develop and test applications without the hassle of logging out and logging in all the time or needing any tricks when needing multiple clean browsing sessions.

[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...

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A few more usecases that I've added to my workflow since discovering container tabs:

* Work/personal separation

* Multiple AWS accounts

Also, I am very impressed with how well they're integrated into Firefox. For example, opening a link in a new tab will preserve the container. CMD+Shift+T will restore a recently closed tab and remember its original container. I really like the color coding too.

I think the reason why it is so well integrated is that it used to be part of the standard installation of firefox and only later moved into an addon.

Containers actually still are integrated in the standard installation of Firefox and can be used even without an addon. You just need to turn them on in about:config:

privacy.userContext.enabled to true

privacy.userContext.ui.enabled to true

privacy.userContext.longPressBehavior to 2

I love using containers with privacy.firstparty.isolate set to true too for extra protection.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers

Thanks a lot for this.

I never understand why Mozilla doesn't allow to enable this in the settings.

This add-on is a GUI to the underlying mechanism. They even say you can choose to use the non-GUI lower level hooks. They think this GUI is a nicer user experience

Here is my use case.

* Work/Personal * Multiple AWS Accounts * Bank * Facebook (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/facebookcontainer/) * Shopping * temp (test, disposable )

The only time I use private windows is when there is a glitch.

Use a different Firefox profile for work/personal.

Sign-in to personal (while at work) to sync bookmarks if firewall allows. Depending on whether you trust your employer you could sync further personal settings.

Don't sign-in to work profile and no work bookmarks or settings/logins get shared.

Don't get me wrong: multi-account containers are a blessing for those rare days when you absolutely have to log-in to facebook.

What are the differences between a profile and an account?

I suspect the mapping between accounts and profiles is 1:1, but you can have a different profile which is not associated with an account.

Sounds like I need to move some of my devtesting back to FF. The ability to open a new session with a fresh disconnected session (so no shared session cookies) is one of the few things I miss from bad-old-IE (as simple as "File|NewSession"). Very useful, as you say, for testing workflows between different users.

Of course you've always been able to setup multiple profiles for FF, but that is setup that I was usually too lazy for given it could be done ad-hoc in IE.

I have to agree with you on temporary containers. I spend most of my time in temporary containers. I trade the annoyance of having cookie popups literally every time I visit a page for not actually having to worry about the impact of those cookies.

I have it configured such that middle-click opens links in new containers, and left-click opens in the current container.

For annoying cookies popups you can try this https://addons.mozilla.org/it/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-abou...

Or just use ublocks existing filters that catch these...

The lists for cookies in uBlock Origin never worked for me, I don't know why. It was the first thing I activated on new uBlock installations, now I don't even care to do it.

Or both: Use 'I don't care about cookies' list in uBlock: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/abp/

> for not actually having to worry about the impact of those cookies

I'm using a plugin called Cookie Autodelete for this and like it

I also use containers.

Hide the popups with uBlock Origin. You pick the element with an inspector like tool and they are gone forever. Also use Cookie Autodelete to remove any information they attach to your browser.

If you really care about a site, make your choices in the cookie popup and grey/white list it in Cookie Autodelete.

Same! I have three (dev, stg, prd) aws accounts. Without containers, I'd need to log in and out to jump between s3/emr/etc buckets between environments. With firefox containers I can run all three concurrently.

One can do that with ff profile, right?

Is the only different between this containers vs profile the container is tab base vs profile will be different windows?

Functionality is similar, but containers are a lot easier to manage than profiles in FF for me. Everything is right in the container icon and you don't have to re-login like when setting up profiles. You can create new containers and remove unused ones in a couple of seconds vs profiles which are much slower to manage.

I don't bother with profiles any more, especially since there's a one click option to open all the container tabs in a new window as well.

The huge downside with them is they don't sync across devices. If/When this comes they will be perfect.

Containers share the same set of extensions and settings, profiles don't.

I've opted for profiles. With profiles, it's like getting a completely new browser. You start off with the default about:config, preferences and no extensions.

The way my main FF browser is set up, I have multiple privacy enhancing extensions (including uMatrix), highly modified config, tightening of privacy preferences, WebRTC off, service workers disabled, telemetry disabled, etc and etc... This can create some problems on sites that pour hundreds of millions into tracking, data-collection.

So I have additional profiles that are Amazon-specific, Google-specific. If I facebook'd, I'd have a profile for them too. Each of these domain-based profiles are far more liberal (minimal extensions and such; fewer config tweaks). I even have a profile that's 100% Private Mode (ie, history, cookies... deleted after shutdown) with it's own set of config tweaks and extensions.

I use my privacy-enhanced default FF for most sites w/o issues. I wanted Google and Amazon completely separate while providing them more access to my browser (so that I could enjoy the full web experience without worry that a browser issue would make it easy for them to steal my entire browser usage). So they're free to rummage around, read cookies, access APIs - but they're only getting their own stuff back.

I feel profiles provide a better defense (all settings, cookies, storage in their own subDirectory) and much more flexibility than containers.

Having every new tab open in a temporary container was a bit jarring for me (it closes the new tab right after opening it, then opens it again in a temporary container tab), but what works very well for me is the ability to open specific links in a temporary container using the Trash Panda extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/trash-bear/

Seconded. We have several levels of dev/test/production cloud services, including backends on cloud providers etc. It’s great to have one container for each group of services!

Agreed and seconded. I use them mainly for testing and for demo. If I need to switch personas but not have multiple private tabs open it is a game changer.

Thanks for this tip. It will come in super useful during web app penetration tests, being able to have sessions with multiple users open at the same time.

Wow, thanks for that tip! That's an awesome use case for this addon.

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