Portable Firefox Localization

This page explains how to get Portable Firefox localized to your language of choice. By default, Portable Firefox ships with English (US) as its language, as that is what I build it from. There are 2 methods to getting Portable Firefox to appear in your locale:

Method 1: The JAR Hack

One way to go about localizing Portable Firefox is to hack the JAR. Well, technically, we aren't really hacking it. We're just replacing it. And we're replacing it with the language pack from your locally installed Firefox. Here are the steps:

1. Install your localized version of Firefox on a local PC
2. Unzip Portable Firefox to your portable drive
3. Within PortableFirefox\Firefox\chrome\, rename en-US.jar to en-US.jar.old
4. Copy your local language pack from C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\Chrome\ (or wherever you installed Firefox) to PortableFirefox\Firefox\chrome\ and rename it to en-US.jar. Your local language pack is a 2 character language code, a dash and a 2 character region code.
5. Start Portable Firefox

Now, this method may, or may not work. It appears to in many cases, though. The advantage to this method is that you can still drop a local profile into Portable Firefox and have it just work without having to readjust it using the below method. The disadvantage is that it is a bit complicated and you can't easily switch between languages.

Method 2: Language Packs and Locale Switcher

The second method is less of a hack and provides a bit more flexibility. Here are the steps.

1. Unzip Portable Firefox to your portable drive
2. Start Portable Firefox
3. Download the Locale-Switcher extension and then install it by doing a FILE - OPEN within Portable Firefox.
4. Download the language pack you'd like to use and install it using the same method.
5. Close Portable Firefox, wait for it to stop writing to your drive, and then restart it to complete installation of the extensions.
6. Head to TOOLS and the LANGUAGES and select the language you which to switch to.
7. Restart Portable Firefox for the change to take effect (being sure it has fully closed before restarting).

Now, this method works pretty well and should work for just about everyone. The advantage is that this is a bit cleaner and you can easily switch between multiple languages. The disadvantage is that if your drop a local profile into Portable Firefox, you'll need to perform these steps again.

Language Packs

The following are links to language packs for Firefox 1.0.7. You should right-click (or control click) on the link and select to save it locally. If the link does not exist, then there may not be a language pack for your locale.