Using Firefox in Windows Domain Environment

active-directoryfirefox

Is anyone successfully using Firefox 3 in a Windows domain? By "successfully" I mean deploying via AD, configuring via GPO (especially setting network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris), default plugins, and somehow managing updates.

I'm aware of FrontMotion and Firefox ADM. It looks like the FrontMotion MSI installer and administration templates would solve most of the problem. I'm not sure how updates would work, however… without me having to update the MSI manually.

I'm also a little bit leery of using a 3rd party package for this. I'm not terribly worried that FrontMotion is packaging up anything naughty in their distribution, but I don't like having to rely on them for being timely with critical updates and such.

Have any of you successfully replaced IE with Firefox in your organization? Is the way your managing it on par with managing IE on your desktops?

Best Answer

We currently deploy the vast majority of the software in our university user labs via AD group policy. Firefox is included. The caveat is that we also repackage most of the vendors' installers using tools like InstallShield AdminStudio. Regarding Firefox specifically, we don't technically enforce any settings. But we do pre-configure a default profile with university specific stuff that gets added to user local profiles when they login for the first time. We manage the updates by simply repackaging the new version and replacing what is deployed.

The main benefit to the FrontMotion version (at least the last time I tried it) was that they've modified the source so that some of the settings are enforceable via normal GP admin templates. We briefly used their version, but ultimately decided the settings enforcement wasn't necessary for our situation.

I honestly don't think you're ever going to be able to completely replace IE in a Windows environment. But it's not that hard to make alternatives easy to access.

Related Solutions

How to set Firefox as default browser using a script

You might want to look at achieving this via two separate methods, i.e. one to set FF as default, the other to launch it at login.

That said, in case you want to know, default browser setting is stored in the registry under

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\http\shell\open\command

Use your preferred method for setting registry entries (with your server and client systems you can do this directly in group policy without scripting, or you can use a batch script to import the registry key, or you can use Powershell to edit the registry directly. Take your pick). For editing the user portion of the registry (HKCU rather than HKLM) elevated permissions are not required.

There is a system default stored in the same place under HKLM, but the user preference takes priority.

Publish Bookmarks in FireFox with Active Directory (AD)

The simple way to do this is to create a batch script that copies the bookmarks from a network share to the user's profile. The assign the script to run at login time using GPO.

EDIT: Sorry for the previous answer. Apparently Firefox bookmarks have been in a sqlite database since v3.

You have work to do. According to this page you can use sqlite to query the places.sqlite database and retrieve records. The Mozilla developer page is here. The sqlite executables are available for download here:

And you can use the SQLite manager Add-on for firefox to learn the database layout so you can script the adds.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

How to set Firefox as default browser using a script

Publish Bookmarks in FireFox with Active Directory (AD)

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