User Profiles (Use Cases)

[smichel17]

I keep sharing bits and pieces of how I use containers in different issues. These pieces clog up the issues, lack context of my whole workflow, and get lost. A dedicated thread (this) solves those problems.

In this issue, share your whole workflow, limiting yourself to one comment. Then, link/quote your comment in other issues. If your workflow changes, edit your comment (but try to preserve the original).

[smichel17]

I use containers in three ways. Right now I have very nearly a 3rd of each type:

1. Non-anonymous browsing, separated by context.
   • Stuff where anybody could easily associate it all. Ex: work, personal, snowdrift.coop, etc
   • I use these primarily for tab management (#336). For example, a "Dev" container that I use on github, duckduckgo searches pertaining to development, android.com, stackoverflow, etc.
2. Semi-anonymous* browsing, separated by persona. *I seldom assume full anonymity
   • Stuff where I know I'm identifiable if specifically targeted but (given tracking protection) shouldn't be identifiable via passive means. Ex: reddit, imgur, etc.
   • I use these primarily to keep different areas of my life separate, particularly those were I'm not being as careful about crafting a public image.
   • For example, there is one username, let's call it "V" that I use in a lot of places. That makes it easy to associate across sites. On any site where I use that name, I'll put it in the "V" container.
   • I have another username, "X", that I'll do the same thing with, and I'll frequently switch between X and V tabs to comment as one persona or another.
3. Privacy protection, with one container per account per site
   • Sites that are particularly bad about tracking and selling my data. Ex: Google, Amazon, Facebook
   • Sites with particularly sensitive data. Ex: bank, healthcare, financial aid...

[jonathanKingston]

I'll share mostly because I was supposed to be writing up a good usage of containers style article, I can start here hah.

Despite implementing assignment I only just enabled the experiment on my primary browser which is Nightly today.

I also would state that I don't have many profiles or anything online.

Default browsing

• My browser is configured to treat cookies as session cookies and delete all history
• I use Nightly so cookies are cleared daily
• I never log in to a website via a non container tab
• Search, browse MDN, use SearchFox, read web standards articles.

Private browsing

• As a habit from when I used to use history I still use private mode
• I use this for looking at anything:
  • I don't trust
  • I would never want people knowing that I search for...
  • When you hear something on twitter and you be like "err who is Kendal Jenner anyways?!" and know for a fact it's some pointless person.
  • When you hear a lyric in your head but are not sure if you should be ashamed of yourself

I wish these were first party isolated for all my use cases this would be ok.

Finance

• Payment providers
• Banking

Shopping

• Anything that sells things (food, beer, clothes, etc), never leave them open after buying etc

Work

• At work we use oauth for most services so having a work container makes 100% sense here
  • Mail, Calendar, Wiki pages, Other stuff that really shouldn't be private but would bore the public to death if it was public
  • Mostly work things all are clumped in here even if they are public (etherpad)
  • We use Google services at Mozilla (we are not secret about that) and well Google is baked into our oauth provider so 50/60% of my work websites can't be protected much from GA tracking besides maybe logging into via oauth multiple times etc
  • Since I have enabled assignment 40-50% of my tabs which are Bugzilla could be converted into being a container on it's own as that doesn't use oauth. This would allow me to hide Bugzilla sometimes.

Personal

• Mail
• Twitter

Pinned tabs (each with a unique container)

• Music (assigned tab)
• Password manager (assigned tab)
• Mail provider 2 (assigned tab)
• Messaging app (assigned tab)

For pinned tabs, these also could be first party isolated and not in my containers menu.

Local domains

• I have a container for my routers at work, home that I don't want public internet knowing about if I can help it.

GitHub

• As of today I created a GitHub account which was in personal as an assigned domain

[grahamperrin]

I'm here via https://twitter.com/KingstonTime/status/850261536828399616 thanks @jonathanKingston

The best introduction to my use cases might be:

• The window is the container – the user groups things within a container – those things are tabs (2017-05-06)

– with post 3 under Could PANORAMA feature be brought back to Firefox? as background, in particular:

… twelve desktops, …

tl;dr

Visually, from three different dates:

Postscript (2017-09-01 edition)

If you have any questions, please post under https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/-/15451 – I'll add some more screenshots there, with reference to this issue #428. That Tab Center topic is probably redundant, since the experiment ended. Instead: https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/-/14672/6?u=grahamperrin under Could PANORAMA feature be brought back to Firefox?/ Containers - Mozilla Discourse

Thanks

[grahamperrin]

A more recent use case:

– in a virtual desktop, with a profile that's separate from my main Firefox profile, one container for each of the five e-mail addresses that I'm required to use at work.

The five containers allow me to run five copies of Outlook Web App (one for each user account) in a single window.

Bottom right, the new window could not be contained (#770).

Behind that window (top left), the colour is wrong (#772).

I don't like the clutter. I'd prefer my containers to be colourless (#391) and free from icons (#771).

[grahamperrin]

Another desktop Firefox use case:

Terse ratings at addons.mozilla.org (AMO)

Preparations

1. install Context Plus
2. install Switch Container
3. in a (default) non-contained tab
4. at any AMO page, log in
5. create a container, mobile addons.mozilla.org
6. open a tab in mobile addons.mozilla.org
7. again, at any AMO page, log in
8. click 'View Mobile Site'
9. use Context Plus to reopen the page in default.

Routine

1. visit the AMO page of the add-on that you'd like to rate
2. use Switch Container to reopen the page in mobile addons.mozilla.org
3. give your star rating
4. escape from the written review dialogue
5. use Context Plus to reopen the page in default.

Why use Switch Container?

Because a new container may be not immediately available to Context Plus.

Why use Context Plus?

Because Switch Container can not switch to default. … fixed.

[grahamperrin]

Also I often use:

• a single container across multiple windows

– and (Outlook Web App x5 above as an example) at least one window requires visibility of multiple containers, and non-contained pages, within that window.

[grahamperrin]

A use case that probably can't be handled (or worked around) by Mozilla's extension.

One of my five work-related Microsoft Exchange accounts frequently, naturally, receives e-mails that do not relate to my day job. Occasionally there's the wish to follow-up, and it's proper to do so without the day job context; proper to either:

1. use a different container; or simply
2. not contain the follow-up.

Logically:

Result:

Underlying that Bad Request result is Microsoft's handling of links in Outlook Web App. Technically it might be possible for service administrators to reconfigure such things (the handling does cause countless problems), but I should not expect any organisation to do so.

The example above is relatively lucky, in that the sender probably learnt (the hard way) to not linkify text when writing. So we have the visible longhand URL including its https:// prefix, and instead of the logic in the first screenshot I can:

1. manually copy the text
2. manually open a non-contained tab
3. manually paste to the location bar
4. go …

Countless other examples will be less lucky. Given the Microsoft norm, I don't imagine Multi-Account Containers handling this use case (without the manual multi-step workaround) … instead, I have half an eye on this Mozilla bug:

• 1323873 - Allow tabs to change user contexts when navigating

– although (thinking aloud) I'm probably stretching it. Where Microsoft obfuscates the URL it's impossible for the end user to pre-configure an assignment to a container, and so on.

---

Notes to self:

1. file under Microsoft Exchange #multiplepita
2. (postscript, 2017-10-17) occasional requirement to clear cookies when, for example, clicks on dialogues are not effective – I recall no such requirement before shifting to Firefox containers for uses of Outlook Web App – maybe something for Bugzilla@Mozilla in the future.

[grahamperrin]

From the day when I first noticed a thousand tabs in a session:

In the screen to the left: 288 tabs in my Mozilla window (the name is held in mind, not visible).

Above the list of grouped tabs, the visible name of the group:

• containers

(Coincidence: I hit the 1,000-tab mark when I opened a tab to a page about containers.)

Around an hour later I captured some of the session data to a PDF. A version that includes groups (intentionally omitting titles and URLs of open tabs) is at https://github.com/maheee/mHeaderControl/issues/1#issuecomment-337119354. Probably seventy-something groups.

To the left of the list of tabs: in a panel of KDE, my list of windows. Firefox had around fourteen. The visible mHeaderControl … is a page within what I think of as my extensions window. I expect this window to be my busiest, from a group numbers perspective, for the next year or so.

---

Now, sixty-something groups in that window, each group almost completely devoted to a single extension (the group near the centre is much looser, a mash):

– and this page is one of thirty tabs within my Multi-Account Containers group:

With this seventy-something-group profile, I use one container:

• to occasionally preview the new addons.mozilla.org.

[grahamperrin]

I can't understand why this seems to work, neither is it privacy-related, but this use of Firefox containers – as a workaround to a bug that can affect safe mode of Firefox without containers – is worth mentioning:

• Gitter-oriented post 2 under Aiming to work with no more than one container and avoid (default) non-contained work - … Containers - Mozilla Discourse

[practik]

I'm primarily interested in limiting Google's tracking of my searches. I block cookies from google.com, but to be able to use Google Books effectively I must allow cookies from books.google.com. Unfortunately, Books pages are somehow able to set google.com cookies on me even though such cookies are otherwise blocked.

I had hoped to solve this by doing my basic searches in a dedicated Container and automatically (with the help of a user script) opening Books links in a new tab and different Container. Unfortunately, at the moment those links open new tabs in the same Container. I'd very much like to see a pref added to control this as discussed at #434.

[jonathanKingston]

I'm going to close this off, I don't think we are doing anything with it and it hasn't moved on since November too. People can continue adding comments though; thanks for raising this.