HDD or Portable app browser

What ho one and all,

I generally use Firefox on my W7 computer but recently had a problem with one web site not allowing me to edit a photo calendar and i was recommended to install another browser.

Don't really want to , so figured i would try wither Chrome of Opera portable app.

Correct me is I'm mistaken, but once either is installed, it does not really write lots of stuff to the HDD? Or may be, what it does write, it immediately deletes when closed?

If this is the case, why does Firefox running from C:/Program Files, need to write and keep so much 'c**p' in the various profile folders.

As FF was running slow, I have run a couple of 'cleaning' programs and they found over 1.5gb of temporary files in the FF folders.

So i guess my question is, what is the benefit of a full FF install over running from a portable app?

Thanks and toodle pip

Portable browsers don't write to the drive permanently. Anything you do with them is deleted after the session unless you specifically choose to keep things like bookmarks, addons, downloaded files, etc. If you want to be super sanitary you can run the browser from a thumb or external USB drive although it would be noticeably slower to do that than from a folder on the hard drive.

Having said all that since modern hard drives can be very large fully installing a browser really takes relatively negligible space. 2-300 megs is a pittance on a 500G plus drive.

I have 5 different browsers installed on my HD with no issues at all. I use each one for it's advantages when called on. I only use a portable browser to test a new one out before I install it or for experimental purposes.

You can also install a browser directly to the hard drive but run it in private window mode so nothing is saved to the drive when you close it except, again, anything you want to save.

Food for thought.... Win 7 already has MS Edge and IE installed... Have you tried those on the pesky sites?

What version of Firefox are you running? If it's an old version, that may be the problem.

The point of temp files is to speed up browsing so that it doesn't have the redownload the same stuff each time you visit a site. You can limit the amount of temp Firefox is able to use.