BrowserBookmarksApplet, and "firefox -chrome ..." can't use default profile

[Nigel Tao]

First, a shameless plug about the Gnome panel applet that I wrote to
access my bookmarks: http://browserbookapp.sourceforge.net/

It's still a work-in-progress, but it should read the right bookmarks
file if your preferred browser is firefox, mozilla, epiphany, galeon, or
konqueror.

I want to add a menu item that launches the bookmarks manager.  For
epiphany, it's a simple "epiphany -b".  For firefox (or mozilla), I need
some help.

As per http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?title=Chrome_URLs, I tried
"firefox -chrome
chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul" and it works
great... provided that I don't already have an instance of firefox up
and running.

If I already have a firefox window open, then it will ask me to pick a
profile, because "the default profile is already in use".  This does not
seem to happen on Windows.

If I remove the "-chrome" so that it's just "firefox
chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksManager.xul" then it doesn't
ask me to chose my profile (but the bookmarks manager UI is then
embedded inside the usual firefox window, which is unacceptable).

Does someone know a workaround for this?  Or an alternative way to open
the bookmarks manager?


thanks,
Nigel.