Comment 67 for bug 308605

I consider this inability to open an URL in an already running profile as a work stoppage. There are many other software packages now, in their menu bar item Help, within the pulldown menu list there are items that actually invoke the default web browser in order to display their documentation, FAQ, user manual, and other web pages.

A possible fix to reduce this work stoppage to a work around available, is for the pop up error message to contain the URL that is being attempted to be opened. That way, users could copy and paste the URL into an new Firefox window or tab, and get the valuable information on that web page's URL for that version of the software.

Also, any other options would be nice to see displayed by the error message.

Truly, the wording of the pop up error message could be rewritten to be self explanatory. Hiding Firefox profiles is likely a motivation for not doing this. So, I suggest there be two errors, the original one, when there is no profile.ini entries (just one default profile), but for those who use profiles, change the error message, to include the name of running profile that was attempted. And provide a button to select an unrunning profile (unlocked) to satisfy the requested URL. Only those users currently using profiles would get the second wording, thus keeping the rest of the Firefox users in the dark. This button could merely start the Profile Manager, which would have to then pass on any options to the new instance, to honor the requested options. Thus, two keeping the number of code lines down, easing debugging.

I'm not sure if the rest of this comment is directly applicable, but here it is. /etc/alternatives does not have a way to specify command line options, so "-no-remote -P profilenamehere" is not available. Sure, this would be 'fix' to update-alternatives functionality. At issue is when the default web browser is firefox, firefox starts up the profile.ini default profile, and I really do not want to use the default.