Definitely possible! I recommend using a portable version of Firefox 29 to keep your settings and other personal information in Firefox 29 portable away from Firefox 28 as if you were to install Firefox 29 on top of Firefox 28, you would simply be upgrading. Here's the link to Firefox 29 portable, just install it as normal. If you like it, you can upgrade 28 by going to Help > About Firefox and Firefox will grab the update (it's at 29.0.1 at the moment)

• http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

I might consider something slightly different and a bit more complicated

1. Creating two new profiles. One for ESR portable One for Fx29.
2. Installing unofficial third party build Firefox Portable ESR (It is more secure that Fx28)
3. Installing Fx 29 as a custom install along side the existing Fx28 and new Portable ESR

WhatI notice being mentioned a lot is problems because changes with Fx28->fx29 were unexpected with no advance warning or time to prepare in advance.

Edit ESR portable does not need its own profile setup manually. It does that itself that is how/why it is portable

Hi John, _{Feel free to edit my reply as I'm writing this at 10:30am and I haven't slept. Damn insomnia}

I was reluctant to put the multiple profile method as users most likely don't need to access profiles except in cases of troubleshooting. I'll go ahead and edit some of your posts with some information regarding those options if you don't mind. include some links with that information in my reply.

1. Creating a separate profile away from your current. Doing this is great if you want to run 2 separate Firefox versions but it's also rather tricky. You can use the Run Multiple Firefox Profiles link in order to achieve this
   
2. Installing the ESR build of Firefox. Normally ESR is used by large organizations with their own IT department but as it's more updated with security fixes, we recommend ESR over 28. The portable ESR build is located here here _{(Fixed ESR link)}
   
3. Install Firefox 29 at a different location (custom install) rather than the default C:/Program Files/ location. It could be anywhere. Just select "Custom installation" when prompted if you want Full/regular or custom

 WhatI notice being mentioned a lot is problems because changes with Fx28->fx29 were unexpected with no advance warning or time to prepare in advance.

I agree. Mozilla should've had a warning or something that lets users know what's going to happen to the browser IN the browser itself. I think they should put the Release Notes into a new window before you update Firefox. Perhaps we can file a bug with a list of changes that occur during new updates to Firefox (e.g. 29.0.2 or 30.0.1 as I'm sure chemspill updates will be needed to fix bugs like devs did on Australis's launch week) I'll start a thread on the Contributors forum to see if this is possible.

I will pm

P.S. Potentially useful links

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Testing_pre-release_versions#Installing_multiple_versions (Applicable also to testing old unsupported versions)
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_multiple_profiles_-_Firefox
• One of my posts on multiple profile use /questions/990973#answer-548376 (Scroll there are two adjacent posts)
• http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox-portable-esr

My thanks to all!

I have followed some of your hyperlinks; it appears to me that working with profiles and ESRs are over my head. It sounded like the portable approach might be feasible for me, but when I followed that hyperlink I found that it involved an ESR. So I'm stuck.

Can anyone tell this non-geek how to best to proceed?

PS It seems that 30 is in the wings. Might it be worth waiting for 30 to see if it might be more amenable to customising back to 28?

Well, ESR can be downloaded via John's link above (http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox-portable-esr ). Once there, all you have to do is download it by clicking the huge Download button which will redirect you to Sourceforge. The file will begin downloading after 5 seconds.

Once youre running the ESR install, simply point it away from the Firefox folder; putting it somewhere like My Documents or your Desktop would suffice. Once it's done downloading, just run it. If you decide you want to upgrade to 29, simply go to Help > About Firefox in your Firefox 28 install to upgrade. If not, leave it.

Re Moses May 29, 3rd suggestion

I don't understand "at a different location", nor "custom install". I suspect this is something I could do, but I do not know enough to be able to act on this advice. Can you tell me what I need to know to try this?

Just use Firefox Portable to get used to the new UI, the simplest and least complicated way.

IMO, using ESR is only going to buy you some time with the older UI, not help you get used to the new UI. And clearly your computer skills aren't advanced enough to mess around with "Profiles" or "custom installations".

As far as Firefox 30 and beyond reverting to the older UI or having more customization options restored - wishful thinking at best, IMO. Mozilla spent ~ 3+ years building the new UI expressly for being able to have one set of code for both laptop / desktop PC's and for "mobile" devices (phones and tablets) - they're not going to backtrack until desktop users completely abandon Firefox to the tune of 100's of millions of users.

answer was off-topic - didn't directly address the Owners question - moderator

@cbrookej:

Hey, not sure if you got yourself sorted out, but I was in your exact same situation (still am really) and, as I remember it, I just uninstalled FF28 (but kept bookmarks, etc, so not uninstalled everything.... there is an option for that when you uninstall) and then found the FF ESR 24.x versions and installed that. Take a look at (my last post on this thread):

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/que.../999850?esab=a&s=&r=1&as=s]

The way firefox works, all your open tabs and all your bookmarks will be available in the new ESR version of firefox as long as you didn't uninstall *everything* when you removed FF 28.

Anyway, to get FF 24 ESR go to this link:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all/ 

This unfortunately will only buy you some time as FF 24 ESR will eventually be EOLed (end-of-lifed) and the new ESR most likely will have the new look (Australas). At that point I will likely switch to an alternative browser if the user created Add-ons don't fully convert the Australas UI back to the FF 24 ESR look (http://www.thewindowsclub.com/list-of-25-alternative-browsers-for-windows).

Btw, make sure you go to preferences->advanced->update and disable firefox from checking for updates automatically. That way you can control when you update to the new look.

Oh, and if you followed a different solution I/we'd like to hear about what you did.

All the best!