Firefox customizations

Primordial

Content specific

I like space-related things, so I have created a "space" session.
When I start the session, the FF icon in the system taskbar is the favicon of the ESA (European Space Agency, https://www.esa.int) website which looks like:
I have space-related addons, bookmarks, open tabs and history. I always have an open tab streaming the ISS live cams. Whenever I hear sound from the ISS, I switch to the FF session easily with the esa icon in the taskbar.
I have the same thing for the mails and Faceb00k. It's reproducing the "AppMania" on mobile devices on a desktop browser, but for more prowerful usages.

• To start creating sessions, run the command "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe -p"
  Create the sessions as desired (one for space, one for email-ing and such, one for social, one for audio/video, one for dev/code, one for gaming, one which is always kept non-customized, ...).
  


• To create shortcuts that directly open a chosen profile, use the following command line:
  firefox.exe -p "session_name" -no-remote
  


• For your default profile, or if you –explicitely– want the session to capture the system weblink default application, use instead:
  firefox.exe -p "session_name"
  If you don't understand what that means, consider using this shortcut for the session that will always be open.
  When you click a link from an application (on your OS, not on the web), this is the session that will open the link.
  Try "About" menus from applications, there is often a link to the author/software website.
  

• Create and install guide
  


1. Download the zip file here, choosing "Save As", not open, and extract it somewhere. You need file creating rights in the folder.
2. Browse to the folder and execute build-xpi-customicon.bat, you can double-click it. Some people may need to right-click it and select "Run as administrator".
3. Follow the instructions or leave the defaults for a quick try with a provided icon. You can try giving "ff_aurora.ico" as an icon filename (it's a blue firefox icon used for the dev version of FF, named Aurora).
4. Read carefully the logfile, it's in verbose mode to spot any error (no real need if you used the defaults though).
5. If all went without errors and the XPI file is correctly built, it's time to install it on FF : open Tools / Add-ons, click the gear in the upper right and select "Install add-on from file". Browse to the file you just created and acknowledge all security warnings.
6. Restart FF, and if everything went fine FF should display the icon that you chose (or a scorpio if you tried with defaults).


• Uninstall and revert to FF default icons
  


Open Tools / Add-ons, in the left menu select Extensions, click "Remove" next to "zit FF addon" to uninstall. A restart is required.



• Update icons
  


To change the icons, rebuild the addon by repeating the procedure from [2] till the end but using custom configs. When re-installing the addon under FF, it should detect that it's another version and update it gracefully.
Otherwise remove then re-install it.

Extended information and more customization (Show/Hide):
The batch file is acting as an "add-on builder". By default, the icon path provided to the script applies it to all subsequent windows (options, bookmarks, history, ...) will share the same icon.
But if you edit the bat file or browse the "src" folder, you'll see that some other windows icons may be changed as well (not only the main-window, but also the devtools-toolbox-window, devtools-webconsole, JSConsoleWindow, places, and viewSource)
To make the changes via the script, edit build-xpi-customicon.bat, search for the section [WINDOWS CUSTOMIZATION]. Follow the instructions and examples inside the bat file.
Other method: open the XPI file with 7zip and manually update the ico files. Be but be careful with the filenames, they are important.