I use different Firefox profiles for different things. (This is Firefox 16.0.2) I have one general-purpose profile that I use for normal web browsing, plus some others for other things (e.g., javascript hacking). What I want to have is two shortcuts: one that opens the general-purpose profile and one that opens the profile manager so I can choose among the other profiles. However, I want the general-purpose profile set as the default, so that if some other program tries to open a link and I don't have any Firefox windows open, it always opens the general profile.
I can't figure out how to do this. It seems that if you open the profile manager, you cannot avoid changing the current setting of what is the "default profile".
For instance, suppose I have two profiles, "general" and "other". Looking in profiles.ini I see that "general" is set as the default profile. All is well and good. I use my profile-manager shortcut and open the profile manager. I want to select the "other" profile. But there is that checkbox for "Don't ask at startup", and it cramps my style. If I check it, it opens "other" and sets that as the default profile. If I don't check it, it removes the default setting on the "general" profile and leaves me with no default, so if a program tries to open a link, it will take me to the profile manager. Neither of these is what I want. What I want is to open the "other" profile while leaving "general" as the default.
Basically, the "don't ask at startup" checkbox seems to force between two choices: open a profile and set it as default, or open a profile and make it so there is no default profile. But I want a third option: open a profile while leaving the default profile set to whatever it's already set to. Is there any way to accomplish this?
Edit: Based on some answers, I want to clarify that I do not want one shortcut per profile. No matter how many profiles I have, I want exactly two shortcuts: one that always opens the default profile, and one that allows me to interactively choose from all profiles, but does not change what profile is marked as default.