I'm wondering if anyone else has this situation and if so, they know why it happens. My default browser is Mozilla Firebird. If I have firebird open and go to open firebird again it asks for a different profile to use.(I understand this) On the other hand, if I have Firebird running and go to run Mozilla(not firebird but Mozilla itself) it opens up FIREBIRD, does not ask for a different profile, and opens up with no page loaded. I am then able to browse and do whatever without running under a different profile.

Why is it that when firebird is open and I run mozilla it opens up another firebird client rather then mozilla?

i dont know if this has anything to do with it, but i installed netscape even though mozilla was already installed. and same thing with the profiles, if a netscape window was already opened running the program would ask for another profile (so just launch a new window instead). if i ran mozilla it wouldn't ask for another profile but it looked a lot like netscape only the buttons were messed up, basically because they use the same engine. that could be what's happeninng with you. no matter which browser you're using, they're both using the mozilla engine.

It could be but this does not happen with Galeon and it uses the gecko engine as well. Only Firebird and Mozilla do this. Strange huh?

Its not really a big deal I was just wondering why. Its actually a nice way to not have use multiple profiles for the same brower.

The "MozillaFirebird" script that comes with Firebird doesn't let you open several windows at the same time. the "mozilla" script that comes with Redhat 9 does, however. I looked through the "mozilla" script and I don't see how it's calling MozillaFirebird, yet when you run it it does.

Ok just found it in the RedHat script, it does this

# check to see if there's an already running instance or not
ALREADY_RUNNING=`check_running`

# If there is no command line argument at all then try to open a new
# window in an already running instance.
if [ "${ALREADY_RUNNING}" -eq "1" ] && [ -z "$1" ]; then
exec $MOZ_CLIENT_PROGRAM "xfeDoCommand(openBrowser)" 2>/dev/null >/dev/null
fi

So its doing the "xfeDoCommand(openBrowser)" to open a new window with the same profile