This would be the first of Fire Eye’d Boy’s software picks for the power users. No better way to start than with my favourite killer duo: Portable Firefox with Google Browser Sync
The first piece of the puzzle is Portable Firefox; if you’ve been living under a rock, Firefox is the alternative to that blue “e” you’re so familiar with, only with a bajillion more ways to make it work the way you want it to. The “Portable” part of the name is just that – it’s a version that extracts (like a ZIP file), say, to a USB thumb drive, that you can run from there without having to install the vanilla version on every PC you use. In our little experiment, we’ll put it in a folder in the network, say, \\FileServer01\User\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable.
The other piece is a wonderful little Firefox add-on: Google Browser Sync. What it does is put all of your cookies and saved passwords, even bookmarks, browsing history and opened tabs and windows – up in the “cloud” (that’s tech-speak for a remote server, or servers) where you can access them from anywhere, given that this add-on sized at roughly the tenth of a megabyte (that’s 115 KB for those with OCD) is installed. Launch our FirefoxPortable.exe (why .exe, you say? Honestly now, how many all-Mac network environments are out there?) from the FirefoxPortable folder and browse to the download page. After restarting Firefox, signing in with a Google account is necessary (who doesn’t have one these days?)
How is it in real-life use? In our little experiment, Google Browser Sync complements Portable Firefox such that you can take your Firefox from anywhere in the network (which is already an excellent thing on its own). When I get home, I jump onto Firefox on the Mac (yes, the system is OS-independent) and it takes all the bookmarks and passwords I entered while I was in the office, all without having to recreate my Blogroll RSS lists and re-entering my passwords each time.
If this works for you, or if you know of any other Firefox add-ons that take portability even more notches higher, hit me up with a comment.