This may save someone some time/frustration one day?
I am a complete n00b to ThinApp, So, this may be a no brainer to some. I have been digging around in it lately while evaluating it, and I was having an issue running multiple versions of JRE plugins at the same time in Firefox 3. This applies to the Northstar betas, and the GA 4.0 code.
Basically, I would capture a Firefox install on a clean machine, and package it in WriteCopy mode. I built the Firefox exe with OptionalAppLinks configured for a plugins folder. I then start a new capture, install a version of JRE, and then package the plugin in WriteCopy mode. When I added the java packaged to the plugins folder and launched Firefox, everything worked as expected. The java plugin was available to Firefox! We will call this “App1”.
Now, I repeated the same steps and captured another Firefox, making sure that I configured a unique Sandboxname this time though. I performed the same steps as was done previously, and captured a different version of java. As before, everything worked as expected. We will call this “App2”.
The issue came when I launched App1, and then launched App2 while App1 was still open. App2 was now using all of the settings as App1, i.e. same Java version, same session history, same firefox settings, same bookmarks etc. I deleted the sandboxes, and tried various ways of capturing and launching the packaged apps. Each version would work as expected when a clean sandbox was used, and another packaged instance of Firefox was not running. Basically, even though a unique sandbox was being created for each app, the second app would use the first apps virtual filesystem, the only items that would show up in the sandbox of App2 were the three “registry files”.
By the way, I had the same results when I packaged java with Firefox, together.
Long story short—it ended up being a Firefox configuration that allowed me to run multiple instances of Firefox at the same time, “thinstalled” using multiple JREs with the Application Linking feature. It all boils down to Firefox profiles.
Here is what I did:
• Take a snaphot of your clean machine
• Install Firefox, and configure it the way you want
• Now launch firefox.exe with the “--Profilemanager” switch
Using these steps, I was able to launch multiple instances of Firefox at the same time, each using a unique JRE that was linked to the Firefox virtual application. All with no shared history/bookmarks/settings/plugins, etc. I tested on XP and Vista. Hope this helps...
Brad