Firefox Customization & Deployment Guide - 21/01/2006
Step 1
Download Firefox from the Mozilla site if you want to use a regional
build from. Mozilla
Firefox Builds
Download Mike Peterson's Firefox Kix Scripts from his wonderful site Mike
Peterson's Site
Step 2
Install firefox if using a regional build and just uncompress Mikes
Firefox_install.zip file.
Step 3 - Skip to Step 4 if inpatient
This step focusses on customizing and configuring Firefox with locked
down or default
settings; eg: proxy settings.
Create a file called mozilla.txt,
Populate the mozilla.txt file with
the settings you require to configure.
Use this
mozilla.txt
as a reference or use mine
if you prefer, mine includes the speedup
tweaks for broadband access, which most networks will benefit from.
As you can see, you must start the file off with
"//BEGIN CE prefs" without quotes on the first line.
You can use "lockPref" to prevent configuration changes, or use
defaultPref to put in a default value.
You
should be able to include most settings available under "about:config",
if you've never seen this before, load firefox and type "about:config"
without quotes in the address bar.
Add "pref("general.config.filename", "mozilla.cfg");" without quotes to
the bottom of mozilla firefox\greprefs\all.js
You need to convert the mozilla.txt to a mozilla.cfg file. You
can do this online here
Save the mozilla.cfg file to the same directory where the
firefox.exe is.
Load
Firefox and check to see if settings apply. Both mozilla.txt files
referenced above include a bit of code that should give you a bit more
information with misconfiguration.
If like me, you don't want people to use ebay as quick search tool.
remove ebay.gif and ebay.src it from the mozilla firefox\searchplugins
folder. Remove any others or add any you want from Mozilla Search
Engines Page
You can also change \defaults\profile\bookmarks.html to
include/remove site you want users to have by default. I recommend Nvu for this task.
Step 4
If using a localised build, remove the contents of the folder called
files in the uncompressed Firefox_install.zip folder and copy the
installed Mozilla Firefox folder
in its place.
Edit workstations.txt to include the stations you want to deploy, you
need the appropriate permissions to perform the KIX based deployment,
so make sure you have this.
Load a command prompt and go to the firefox deployment folder type
kix32.exe installfirefox.txt
Log on to a few workstations to test it loads successfully.
TODO
Add how to install extensions and themes per workstation
References - Without these, this page would be nothing
http://www.pcc-services.com/kixtart/scripts.html
http://www.alain.knaff.lu/howto/MozillaCustomization/locked.html
http://www.alain.knaff.lu/~aknaff/howto/MozillaCustomization/cgi/byteshf.cgi
http://www.alain.knaff.lu/howto/MozillaCustomization/mozilla.cfg.txt
http://ilias.ca/blog/2005/03/locking-mozilla-firefox-settings.html
https://addons.mozilla.org/search-engines.php?application=firefox
