/brushes dust off account to bring you a TUTORIAL
Okay I pretty much never post here anymore because my life is never really interesting enough to warrant it, so instead this is just going to be more Internet Tutorials (mostly for people who role-play on Livejournal). Next time I'm going to try the megalith that is the Livejournal Addon, but today I'm going to introduce you to Cookie Swap.
This add-on, in its base design, is meant to allow multiple people to use the same computer without people having to constantly log one another in and out in order to access things like email or Amazon or what have you. For us, who are probably people who own our own computers and don't have to deal with concepts like sharing, this can also be a useful tool for any website where you might create multiple accounts -- livejournal, facebook, gmail, gaia, etc. The downside is the same as its main perk; the switch isn't localized to any one domain, so if you swap from "Profile 1" to "Profile 3," it changes all of your cookies simultaneously, which can be a little annoying if you, say, only have one email account and twenty profiles, and don't want to have to login anew every time you switch.
This is where I am coming in to help you!
You can pick it up here. Under the cut I'm going to show you the easy way to "clone" your initial file, so that when you go off to make your twenty profiles for your various RP journals, it won't log you out of gmail every goddamn time.
Once you have it installed, you will have a setup like this on your add-on bar, probably on the far right:
When you right-click on it, you will get a small menu, like such:
As you've probably guessed, the bullet point indicates your ACTIVE PROFILE. The two below it indicate your INACTIVE PROFILES. These will always be organized in alphabetical order. Now, sometimes Profile1 will contain all the log-in cookies you had prior to installation; in my case, since I did a transfer and wipe for the sake of this tutorial, mine are totally blank. Off-screen, I am taking a few moments to log into all my "stable" accounts -- ones that I do not want switching around. In my case, this includes GMail, Plurk, Pixiv, Amazon, a couple message forums, and so forth. For you, this arrangement might be different. In any case, you want to make sure you're logged into all the accounts you want to remain stable between swaps.
Once we have that done, I recommend renaming this profile to indicate it as your "home" account. For me, I generally treat this as my "ooc" identity -- so it'll be the profile where I'm logged into this journal, specifically, rather than my RP accounts. To rename, right-click on this field in your add-on bar as indicated above, hit Manage Profiles, bringing you to this menu:
Clicking on a given profile line will highlight it, allowing you to rename it, copy it, or delete it. Right now I am going to rename it "1 - olesia". (By using numbers instead of letters, I can better control the order in which they show up in my drop-down, and make it simpler for me to quickly switch between them.) Profile2 I'm going to rename to "0 - anonymous," for this is a profile I'll specifically browse with when I don't want to log in. (For example, browsing youtube and not wanting videos to turn up in my signed-in history, shopping sites that can't cater to my previous buying history, etc.)
I delete Profile3 because I don't need it, making my menu look like this:
At this point, I need to switch over to the secondary (0-anon) account. I do this by exiting out of this menu and returning to my add-on bar. I can either right-click here and select the option I want, right-click and type the first letter/number of the field I want, or by double left-clicking, I swap to the account directly below the one I'm on. Since I have only two accounts at this time, double-clicking moves me from one to the other.
Now I am going back to the advanced menu to copy my "home" account. What this does is duplicates all the login cookies from that account into subsequent profiles, thereby allowing you to switch from one profile to one of its clones without losing that login session.
As you can see here, I can't copy the active account; I can only copy the inactive account. Thus why I switched. Anyway. Once I select my main account and hit copy, I'm given the option to name my new profile. I'll be calling this one "2 - mod," for reasons you can probably guess. I continue on copying and naming files through my other accounts until I have all the profiles I want.
Mine looks like this; you can arrange yours however you like, and you can always rename them to suit your preferences.
Now, before we close out of here, we're going to hop over to the Options tab. That will bring up a menu like so:
These are my settings! For that left box, you can check or uncheck whichever ones you want, but I definitely recommend leaving the Manage profiles and Remove cookies options enabled. (These are simply the things that will show up when you right-click the menu in your add-on bar.) Remove cookies clears cookies from your active profile; remove all clears them from ALL your profiles, so don't click that one hastily.
On the right, the radio button indicates which pages, if any, will be refreshed when you switch profiles. I highly recommend you leave it set to "current page" only. Refreshing every page you have open might seem more convenient, but this can kill your browser if like me you have upwards of twenty or more tabs open at once. Changing profiles and not refreshing your page will inevitably lead to errors.
The delay option is explained in the image itself. This is all we need in the manage accounts area, so we can close out of there.
Now, the final step is probably the annoying one: this is where you switch between each of your profiles and actually log into the accounts associated there. In my case, it means logging into the LJRP accounts I've named each profile after (and setting the login to never expire!), but you may have other sites to worry about.
And that's it! You are now ready to conquer your accounts.
If you run into any trouble, or something doesn't make sense to you (I'm writing this at two in the morning, I have no idea how much sense I'm making), go ahead and drop a comment and I will do my best to help you out!
ETA: It's been brought to my attention that the "copy profile" button is only available in the version for Firefox 4.*+. There is, however, another way to go about copying in earlier versions, it's just kind of a hassle. (Which is why I wasn't doing a full-fledged tutorial that time, because my friends complained it was too complicated). But fear not! I will do my best to explain it here. If the above tutorial works for you, please ignore this section!
Okay, basically do everything I told you above up to the point where you've made your profiles and have switched to your secondary (not 'home') account. What you need to do here is find the installation folder for the plug-in itself. This can be tricky! For example, mine's under C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\lo8mb2ru.default\CookieSwap. AppData I am pretty sure is a hidden folder, so you'll have to enable viewing of those.
Once you find that folder and get into it, you'll find a couple of text files with names like cookies_THAT THING YOU NAMED IT.txt and cookies_That other thing you named it.tx1. The .tx1 file is your "active account," which should be your secondary/anon/dummy one for the sake of simplicity. The .txt one is your inactive profile, which you'll be copying. You will probably need to close out of the firefox program/application itself, and make sure its process isn't running anywhere on your computer. If necessary, copy this part into a text file or something.
What you do here is similar to above with the copy button, only you are going to be duplicating the .txt file. You can do this by just hitting ctrl+c on the file itself, and then pasting it into this same folder, getting a lot of cookies_name (2).txt - cookies_name (5).txt type files. (You can also just hold down the control button, click on the file, drag it, and release in the same folder.) Once you're done with that, rename each of the text files as how you want them to appear in your add-on/status bar -- but remember to leave cookies_ at the beginning and .txt at the end! Once you're finished, when you reopen firefox, everything should be in place.
And that's really it this time, I think.
Also today is my birthday :3 so if you'd like to show your appreciation you can flood my profile with spiders or something. You may also add whatever the fuck tags you would like to this entry.
This add-on, in its base design, is meant to allow multiple people to use the same computer without people having to constantly log one another in and out in order to access things like email or Amazon or what have you. For us, who are probably people who own our own computers and don't have to deal with concepts like sharing, this can also be a useful tool for any website where you might create multiple accounts -- livejournal, facebook, gmail, gaia, etc. The downside is the same as its main perk; the switch isn't localized to any one domain, so if you swap from "Profile 1" to "Profile 3," it changes all of your cookies simultaneously, which can be a little annoying if you, say, only have one email account and twenty profiles, and don't want to have to login anew every time you switch.
This is where I am coming in to help you!
You can pick it up here. Under the cut I'm going to show you the easy way to "clone" your initial file, so that when you go off to make your twenty profiles for your various RP journals, it won't log you out of gmail every goddamn time.
Once you have it installed, you will have a setup like this on your add-on bar, probably on the far right:
When you right-click on it, you will get a small menu, like such:
As you've probably guessed, the bullet point indicates your ACTIVE PROFILE. The two below it indicate your INACTIVE PROFILES. These will always be organized in alphabetical order. Now, sometimes Profile1 will contain all the log-in cookies you had prior to installation; in my case, since I did a transfer and wipe for the sake of this tutorial, mine are totally blank. Off-screen, I am taking a few moments to log into all my "stable" accounts -- ones that I do not want switching around. In my case, this includes GMail, Plurk, Pixiv, Amazon, a couple message forums, and so forth. For you, this arrangement might be different. In any case, you want to make sure you're logged into all the accounts you want to remain stable between swaps.
Once we have that done, I recommend renaming this profile to indicate it as your "home" account. For me, I generally treat this as my "ooc" identity -- so it'll be the profile where I'm logged into this journal, specifically, rather than my RP accounts. To rename, right-click on this field in your add-on bar as indicated above, hit Manage Profiles, bringing you to this menu:
Clicking on a given profile line will highlight it, allowing you to rename it, copy it, or delete it. Right now I am going to rename it "1 - olesia". (By using numbers instead of letters, I can better control the order in which they show up in my drop-down, and make it simpler for me to quickly switch between them.) Profile2 I'm going to rename to "0 - anonymous," for this is a profile I'll specifically browse with when I don't want to log in. (For example, browsing youtube and not wanting videos to turn up in my signed-in history, shopping sites that can't cater to my previous buying history, etc.)
I delete Profile3 because I don't need it, making my menu look like this:
At this point, I need to switch over to the secondary (0-anon) account. I do this by exiting out of this menu and returning to my add-on bar. I can either right-click here and select the option I want, right-click and type the first letter/number of the field I want, or by double left-clicking, I swap to the account directly below the one I'm on. Since I have only two accounts at this time, double-clicking moves me from one to the other.
Now I am going back to the advanced menu to copy my "home" account. What this does is duplicates all the login cookies from that account into subsequent profiles, thereby allowing you to switch from one profile to one of its clones without losing that login session.
As you can see here, I can't copy the active account; I can only copy the inactive account. Thus why I switched. Anyway. Once I select my main account and hit copy, I'm given the option to name my new profile. I'll be calling this one "2 - mod," for reasons you can probably guess. I continue on copying and naming files through my other accounts until I have all the profiles I want.
Mine looks like this; you can arrange yours however you like, and you can always rename them to suit your preferences.
Now, before we close out of here, we're going to hop over to the Options tab. That will bring up a menu like so:
These are my settings! For that left box, you can check or uncheck whichever ones you want, but I definitely recommend leaving the Manage profiles and Remove cookies options enabled. (These are simply the things that will show up when you right-click the menu in your add-on bar.) Remove cookies clears cookies from your active profile; remove all clears them from ALL your profiles, so don't click that one hastily.
On the right, the radio button indicates which pages, if any, will be refreshed when you switch profiles. I highly recommend you leave it set to "current page" only. Refreshing every page you have open might seem more convenient, but this can kill your browser if like me you have upwards of twenty or more tabs open at once. Changing profiles and not refreshing your page will inevitably lead to errors.
The delay option is explained in the image itself. This is all we need in the manage accounts area, so we can close out of there.
Now, the final step is probably the annoying one: this is where you switch between each of your profiles and actually log into the accounts associated there. In my case, it means logging into the LJRP accounts I've named each profile after (and setting the login to never expire!), but you may have other sites to worry about.
And that's it! You are now ready to conquer your accounts.
If you run into any trouble, or something doesn't make sense to you (I'm writing this at two in the morning, I have no idea how much sense I'm making), go ahead and drop a comment and I will do my best to help you out!
ETA: It's been brought to my attention that the "copy profile" button is only available in the version for Firefox 4.*+. There is, however, another way to go about copying in earlier versions, it's just kind of a hassle. (Which is why I wasn't doing a full-fledged tutorial that time, because my friends complained it was too complicated). But fear not! I will do my best to explain it here. If the above tutorial works for you, please ignore this section!
Okay, basically do everything I told you above up to the point where you've made your profiles and have switched to your secondary (not 'home') account. What you need to do here is find the installation folder for the plug-in itself. This can be tricky! For example, mine's under C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\lo8mb2ru.default\CookieSwap. AppData I am pretty sure is a hidden folder, so you'll have to enable viewing of those.
Once you find that folder and get into it, you'll find a couple of text files with names like cookies_THAT THING YOU NAMED IT.txt and cookies_That other thing you named it.tx1. The .tx1 file is your "active account," which should be your secondary/anon/dummy one for the sake of simplicity. The .txt one is your inactive profile, which you'll be copying. You will probably need to close out of the firefox program/application itself, and make sure its process isn't running anywhere on your computer. If necessary, copy this part into a text file or something.
What you do here is similar to above with the copy button, only you are going to be duplicating the .txt file. You can do this by just hitting ctrl+c on the file itself, and then pasting it into this same folder, getting a lot of cookies_name (2).txt - cookies_name (5).txt type files. (You can also just hold down the control button, click on the file, drag it, and release in the same folder.) Once you're done with that, rename each of the text files as how you want them to appear in your add-on/status bar -- but remember to leave cookies_ at the beginning and .txt at the end! Once you're finished, when you reopen firefox, everything should be in place.
And that's really it this time, I think.
Also today is my birthday :3 so if you'd like to show your appreciation you can flood my profile with spiders or something. You may also add whatever the fuck tags you would like to this entry.