Mozilla To Launch "Build Your Own Browser" 171
angry tapir sends in a piece from Down Under which begins "Mozilla is readying a program that will allow companies to build their own customized browsers based on the next version of Firefox, which will be out in a few weeks. ... Through the Build Your Own Browser program, which will start sometime soon after Firefox 3.5 is released at the end of June, companies can use a Web application provided by Mozilla to specify certain customizations for the browser, such as bookmarks to certain sites or corporate intranets or portals. ... The bulk of enterprises still use Internet Explorer if they mandate a browser for company use, because Microsoft provides provisioning and installation software for IE that makes it easy for enterprises to control browser settings and install across all corporate desktops, said Forrester analyst Sheri McLeish. Mozilla has not historically done this, but something like the Build Your Own Browser program is a good start to encourage enterprises to use Firefox over IE."
Opera did this too (Score:5, Informative)
At least they used to. Starting with Opera 7 you could import a set of bookmarks, setup the home page, etc. and then distribute your own customized version of Opera. Good to see Firefox starting to consider this as well.
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Out of curiosity, when chronologically was this? I know I was building customized Internet Explorer 4 browsers using an NT 4 IEAK back in '98.
I'm sort of vaguely remembering a comparable feature involving Netscape about then, also?
By the way. I still think IE4 didn't suck in comparison to the competition when it came out. As a matter of fact, I would say that about Microsoft in general up until mid/late 2000. They got really squirrelly about then.
Evil and monopolistic, sure. but in a useful way.
Re:Opera did this too (Score:5, Informative)
Out of curiosity, when chronologically was this?
Actually, it was back in Opera 5 days. The URL http://composer.opera.com/ [opera.com] seems to date back to June 30, 2001:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://composer.opera.com [archive.org]
Checking the main Opera site as of that date shows Opera 5.12 was released for Windows.
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According to Opera's press releases, 27 June 2001 was the launch date for the service.
http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2001/06/27_3/ [opera.com]
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IE won over Netscape 4 because IE was the default option and Microsoft abused their desktop monopoly to bundle IE and Microsoft prevented OEMs from offering a different default browser.
Remember that there's a bit of hindsight affecting peoples take on it too... at the time was the battle of CSS versus Javascript Style Sheets [wikipedia.org] at the W3C and CSS won, so it's only natural that Netscape 4 looks worse upon hindsight. At the time Netscape 4 and IE we
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IE won over Netscape 4 because IE was the default option and Microsoft abused their desktop monopoly to bundle IE and Microsoft prevented OEMs from offering a different default browser.
IE's greatest marketshare explosion happened with IE4, before Windows 98 was released (and certainly before it had large market penetration).
At the time Netscape 4 and IE were about the same (read: full of bugs).
They were not. IE4 was (dramatically) faster and (less dramatically) more reliable. Navigator 4.x was a ste
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If Netscape was the better browser, then it wouldn't have been the manually installable version of IE4 that dethroned it.
If I am selling widgets for $40 and my competition is giving away feature comparable widgets for free who are customers going to go to for their widgets? [wikipedia.org] That is why Microsoft was convicted of abusing its monopoly [wikipedia.org] power.
Internet Explorer had the upper hand, as the amount of manpower and capital dedicated to it eventually surpassed the resources available in Netscape's entire business. By
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If I am selling widgets for $40 and my competition is giving away feature comparable widgets for free who are customers going to go to for their widgets?
Not you, obviously. Much like when I want a drink of water I grab it from the drinking fountain, not the guy hawking water bottles at a few bucks a pop.
That is why Microsoft was convicted of abusing its monopoly power.
Microsoft weren't the only company giving away widgets.
Netscape, by trying to charge for a web browser, were very much out of the ordi
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Microsoft weren't the only company giving away widgets.
They were the only ones with the power to forbid OEMs from installing third party software or risk losing OEM pricing for Windows.
Of all the browsers on windows at the time of the big three IE, Netscape, and Opera two of the three charged for their browser. Opera chose not to try and go toe to toe with IE and focused on non-US markets (sensible since they are located in Australia) and Netscape was simply arrogant and refused to team up with any partners
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They were the only ones with the power to forbid OEMs from installing third party software or risk losing OEM pricing for Windows.
Certainly true, but irrelevant to both my argument (that IE surpassed Navigator before Windows 98 was a factor) and your comment:
If I am selling widgets for $40 and my competition is giving away feature comparable widgets for free [...]
Where you are only comparing free vs non-free "widgets".
Of all the browsers on windows at the time of the big three IE, Netscape, and Opera two of the three charged for their browser.
And what of browsers on other platforms ?
Opera chose not to try
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And more appealing for other people. Corporate management can be weird.
Not for us (Score:4, Insightful)
I dunno, I work for a Fortune 100 company and we use IE because all the crappy "enterprise" software we run requires stupid ActiveX or JavaScript or whatever that only runs on IE6. Good luck to FireFox, but customizations ain't got nothing to do with it where I work.
Re:Not for us (Score:5, Interesting)
I dunno, I work for a Fortune 100 company and we use IE because all the crappy "enterprise" software we run requires stupid ActiveX or JavaScript or whatever that only runs on IE6. Good luck to FireFox, but customizations ain't got nothing to do with it where I work.
There's even more to it than that. The WebBrowser COM/.NET control is the IE control. Even if you manage to supplant IE as the browser of choice, all code which embeds the COM or .NET wrapped COM control depends on it. So for example, the Windows Shell and the help system, and Windows Update, Windows Media Player, third party apps integrating the system WebBrowser such as WinAmp, etc.
The Internet Explorer browser itself is really just a light weight set of UIs wrapped around the standard WebBrowser COM/ActiveX control. It's actually pretty fun to write .NET code that interacts with the WebBrowser. You can add some interesting features like web page scrapers, etc.
Re:Not for us (Score:4, Insightful)
You can add some interesting features like web page scrapers, etc.
... security holes, 90's UI paradigms, Active X controls, proprietary extensions, ...
Yeah, I can see the appeal ;-)
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Weirdly tho', I can get more money working on IE-only non-OO systems than I can get for working on any-browser OO software...
Re:Not for us (Score:5, Informative)
Blaming enterprise software for your inability to install FireFox is nothing but a cop-out. The solution to this problem is so simple, I can't believe people even see it as a problem anymore.
Install Firefox, then install ieTab. ieTab can be set to do nothing until you browse to a any of a list of domains. Once you enter a domain, ieTab takes over and runs that tab inside a native IE browser. IE is seamlessly embedded inside the tab, and the user won't even notice.
The best part is that once a lot of companies do this, the enterprise software companies can start developing their software to standards, since most companies will already be using FireFox. Using IE for every website, just because of one domain (usually local network) requiring IE is just stupid
This whole "We can't use FireFox because of enterprise app X" is bullshit. People need to learn how to properly manage corporate computer systems without coming up with these pathetic excuses for not doing their jobs properly.
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Re:Not for us (Score:5, Insightful)
ieTab doesn't work in Linux because there's no IE to load in the tab in Linux. That's all ieTab does...
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IMO, IEtab for Linux is actually a great idea. Currently people use IEs4linux or just plain WINE or a virtualisation environment - having an IEtab for linux that can seamlessly hook into a virtualised / WINE version of IE could be useful for those migrating from a Microsoft OS to a Linux distro or those doing testing with IE.
Bonus marks if it virtualises IE6/IE7/IE8 and allows compatibility modes too and only shows as a tab in FF none of the virtualisation env being revealed.
Currently I use dual-boot and vi
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I was simply responding to my parent post's comment that someone could earn money by supporting ieTab for RHEL. Since there is no IE in RHEL (barring something like Wine), that would be a lot more difficult than simply installing ieTab on RHEL machines.
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So you're saying you have ieTab installed in Firefox in Linux, and it loads IE through Wine?
Please, share with us how you set that up.
(I am, of course, not talking about using IE through Wine. Having to use Firefox through Wine just to use ieTab sort of defeats the purpose of running Linux, doesn't it? The whole idea here is to make people use Firefox all the time and just hide from them the fact that some sites are rendered with IE. If they have to do something *different* for some sites - run Firefox i
Re:Not for us (Score:5, Informative)
Er, IE tab doesn't always work seamlessly esp. if said stupid enterprise software relies on a lot of popups, it starts behaving funny. Have you tested it against all the crappy .net custom apps out there?
Heck at work the all bling new BMC Remedy system they brought in, the web facing frontend doesn't work properly in firefox. Thats a serious $$$ app. IEtab? I refer you to my popup issues.
Also IETab is not a fully supported product, if something doesn't work well with it, tough.
"This whole "We can't use FireFox because of enterprise app X" is bullshit. People need to learn how to properly manage corporate computer systems without coming up with these pathetic excuses for not doing their jobs properly."
With that kind of attitude, I take it you don't run large enterprise environments (no, medium business with some branches or shops and one or two big sites doesn't count, where you get to be the grand wizard techie who overrules all).
Technical arguments aside there are plenty of practical reasons. Just resistance to change, lack of tangible benefits, lack of support (you already pay MS for support so thats 'free'), user inertia / retraining (yes every call to the helpdesk where they explain clicking on the orange icon not the blue E icon costs $$$). We're techies and we like our own browsers and love sh1tting on MS but that's not how management looks at it. What is the bottom line gain YOU CAN DEMONSTRATE to the company? zero, and don't start talking about security, the you can demonstrate bit is the most important bit.
You can demonstrate that. (Score:3, Insightful)
What is the bottom line gain YOU CAN DEMONSTRATE to the company? zero, and don't start talking about security, the you can demonstrate bit is the most important bit.
You may be able to demonstrate a security flaw, depending on what it is and your skill level...if push comes to shove, round up some virus samples and put together a "crash dummy" PC/VM for demonstration purposes...
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lack of support (you already pay MS for support so thats 'free'),
You make some valid points on resistance to change, etc., but really when was the last time MS fixed an IE rendering bug for you?
IEtab I imagine just wraps the MSIE DLL into firefox. I bet it's open source too.
Why are you paying "serious $$$" for an app that requires a specific browser to run? Why not include in the NSR that the web front-end must validate against the testing requirements on (say) any 2 of the top 5 browser programs.
Do you also insist that your electrical chords are all moulded proprietary
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Three letters: OWA. Now would you like to engage in a 'how smb4 + openldap + kerebos' stack can replace an AD stack and whether or not its very feasible to do?
So many products out there that take IE as granted and you don't always get to pick what you want, its often saddled upon you by either legacy or decisions made by some non tech idiot who has no business managing in tech as he can't manage and doesn't know tech either.... ask the entire SOuth Korean banking industry about online banking browser requir
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If it was a while ago, try it again... there were some stability issues at one point, but it's been better in the later versions.
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In fact, this can actually be worse considering that IT departments will have to test Firefox working with their images and everything else...
The real solution is to make intranet applications cross-browser compatible, which is much easier said than done.
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Once IE Tab fires up, you're correct, there's no difference. The benefit is, everything else the employees do on the web will be in Firefox.
Plus, it's a gateway to actually building cross-browser compatible intranet applications...
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What the hell? Firefox updates itself...
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Can you guarantee that Firefox is patched?
Turn on the automatic updates, set it to download and install them automatically, and then install this addon [mozilla.org] and lock down the options panel. There might even be a better extension to accomplish it... it took all of about five minutes to find that on Google.
I mean... seriously, in a browser that's so customizable, do you really think your particular problem hasn't been encountered and attacked numerous times already?
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ActiveX (Score:4, Insightful)
Enterprises support IE because it runs ActiveX controls. Until FF does this, it will not appear in desktop builds for the majority of Corporate America.
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Enterprises support IE because it runs ActiveX controls. Until FF does this, it will not appear in desktop builds for the majority of Corporate America.
Then they need to find: IE TAB [mozilla.org]
Get the best of both worlds, pretty trivial to add sites to the list of IE sites and it all happens automatically. Been building a plan to migrate to FF completely in my spare time. Build your own browser will make a huge difference as currently I'm relying on some custom scripts to make the app deployable and maintainable. It works, but I hate to admit that it just aint as easy as using the registry or belting links into the favourites folder. Unfortunately all the native te
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Have you looked into FEBE? (Firefox environment backup extension)
http://customsoftwareconsult.com/extensions/febe/febe.html [customsoft...onsult.com]
A "custom" Firefox distro could be accomplished by providing the Firefox install, the FEBE xpi, and a backup file that you'd have to restore after installing Firefox and adding FEBE.
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Actually, what SHOULD happen is that companies need to stop using those old ActiveX controls. Otherwise eventually companies are going to find themselves in a situation where they run one browser and the rest of the world runs something else!
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Actually, what SHOULD happen is that companies need to stop using those old ActiveX controls.
Within the context of internal applications that run with a Web interface on a company Intra net, there is nothing in particular wrong with ActiveX.
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Ya kidding right? The intranet/internet distinction is DEAD. Malware runs on the client, the client is on the intranet, end of story.
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Re:ActiveX (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, [computerworld.com] of [zdnet.com] course [scmagazineus.com] established [pcworld.com] companies [securecomputing.net.au] never [computerworld.com.au] release [techtarget.com] flawed [securityreason.com] software [computerworld.com], right? Their ActiveX control does not have to be malicious in itself, it is sufficient if it tears holes into your defense for others to abuse. ActiveX needs to die a very quick death already. And can we please club that idea that a browser, JavaScript and a bit of fairy-dust can fully replace any local application regardless of specific implications out of people's heads?
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...can we please club that idea that a browser, JavaScript and a bit of fairy-dust can fully replace any local application...
That argument is just a straw man propped up by security consultants and other vendors to propagate sales of thin clients, virtualization, and "cloud based infrastructure". Must address the greed and PHB plays golf with vendor factors before we can kill the browser as a universal platform misnomer.
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And can we please club that idea that a browser, JavaScript and a bit of fairy-dust can fully replace any local application regardless of specific implications out of people's heads?
I'd be interested in your counter-examples. Since Adobe made their online version of Photoshop, Google (et al.) made online office apps (that appear to work better than the off-line analogues), etc., I'm of the opinion that pretty much anything in userspace _can_ be converted to a browser based app.
Now the wisdom of such a move is a different question. But you were just talking about possibility. So?
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Try re-reading GP's post.
Unless your intranet has no internet access, any security hole open to your ("trusted") intranet is ALSO open to the internet. (Unless you set up a firewall to specifically prevent this. But wouldn't it make more sense to just get rid of the security hole in the first place?)
Re:ActiveX (Score:4, Insightful)
Other than the fact that relying on ActiveX ties to you to Internet Explorer. In many cases it even ties you to an obsolete and insecure version of Internet Explorer. Microsoft has essentially pulled the plug on ActiveX. It wants you to move to new technologies (and when you do migrate it will pull the plug on those technologies and force you to migrate again).
I would be that, in most enterprises, if you added up the costs of continuing to support IE6 it would become clear that relying on ActiveX was a very poor bargain. The advantages of using ActiveX over other competing technologies was relatively small, and the cost of choosing ActiveX has been quite high.
Re:ActiveX (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft will stop releasing security patches for Windows XP in five years. If your business relies on something that only works in IE6, you have until 2014 to figure out a new solution, or continue running an unsupported operating system with no security updates available.
However, you may have difficulty before then, if new PCs start shipping with hardware that isn't supported by WinXP. Of course this assumes you have an existing site license that covers the use of WinXP on new PCs; Microsoft has stopped selling WinXP, so when OEMs and retailers run out of copies, you won't be able to buy it - and the option to downgrade from Vista to XP will end in less than two months.
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As I understand it, Internet Explorer 6 can't be installed on Vista or later, except inside an emulator that's running XP (and operating systems running under emulation still need security patches).
Am I wrong?
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"if new PCs start shipping with hardware that isn't supported by WinXP" then we'll just have to run WinXP in virtual machines under Linux.
It's not any less prone to viruses and security exploits if the hardware is emulated.
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One of the original driving ideas behind making applications "web based" was to make the application independent of the specific operating system. ActiveX does the exact opposite. Now, many intra nets are probably already tied to Microsoft Windows in a large number of other ways so they don't see anything wrong with that - but changing the OS to a true commod
Re:ActiveX (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, in every web based application I've developed, the driving reason was so to avoid the installation problems and support. It's easy to tell users to go to this or that URL to use a new application, a heck of a lot easier than rolling out apps everywhere. Independance from a specific operating system or browser has NEVER EVER come up.
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Independance [sic] from a specific operating system or browser has NEVER EVER come up.
Then maybe you should have raised it?
Something like: "You do realise that you're entirely beholden to Microsoft in order to run this MSIE(*) based application? If you keep up to date with security releases then the application I've made for you could be completely broken as it relies on MSIE version X.XXXXX. If you don't keep up to date with security releases for MSIE then you will almost certainly be hacked. No MS don't support 2 MS browser versions to be installed concurrently, yes - that would largely fi
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Now, many intra nets are probably already tied to Microsoft Windows in a large number of other ways so they don't see anything wrong with that - but changing the OS to a true commodity is something that people should be keeping an eye towards, even if it doesn't happen immediately.
The OS is not a "commodity" in any non-trivial environment. Once you have established knowledge, tools and processes for dealing with one OS, changing to another is a massive undertaking, regardless of whether it's Red Hat Lin
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Actually, what SHOULD happen is that companies need to stop using those old ActiveX controls. Otherwise eventually companies are going to find themselves in a situation where they run one browser and the rest of the world runs something else!
I don't think they'd care. For most companies, the browser is just a UI into various enterprise apps. E.g., instead of having to install a Peoplesoft Win32 executable client, Peoplesoft has a built-in web server and users access PeopleSoft through the intranet. This is extremely common - in fact, it may be the most common way for users to interact with enterprise apps these days. For most desktops, what the rest of the world runs is immaterial - it's whether the browser talks to application X, Y, and Z
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Yeah, that'd be nice. Unfortunately for my employer, that would mean retraining about 80% of our employees after spending several man-years and 7 figures upgrading or replacing some of our critical software, while the same people doing the upgrade/replacement are trying to support the old version. Except the "upgrade" option hasn't been released yet by the vendor, so we're kind of stuck there on timing anyway.
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http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1261543&cid=28261931 [slashdot.org]
I think you should start thinking about it. You're going to have to move at some stage unless you fancy scavenging old hardware to patch up your systems.
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We're going to have to upgrade that system, it's just a question of when. And since the vendor's next release which could potentially free us from IE altogether is still at least 6 months from release, we're not moving to an "intermediate" release which will put us on the same treadmill.
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People make this argument -- "enterprises" won't use Firefox until it has feature X, or Y, or Z -- a lot, and it's just wrong.
"Enterprises" are lagging indicators because their IT staff are generally guided primarily by risk aversion. Even if Firefox was 100% bug-compatible with IE, they wouldn't switch, because IE runs their crappy, poorly written "enterpri
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With this in mind, IT departments or their overseers will probably lack the need to switch.
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offtopic: you can, it just won't show in the preview.
And in the Linux world ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if this will spawn a trend where every single distro ships with thier own branded firefox version. Meaning that in distro reviews, we'll have the mandatory screenshot of the login screen art, the defualt desktop background, and the firefox branding. Great.
I would welcome this for Arch, though, we have to rebuild firefox from source or we're stuck with the ugly "built from source code" icons.
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No. Debian still has the original Iceweasel. GNU Icecat nee GNU Iceweasel is a fork of the Debian fork.
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Technically they are forks of course, but that doesn't really describe the situation: The 'forks' are slight deviations from the 'master' and are kept fairly well up to date with the master... We really should come up with a word that describes this situation (if there isn't one already), this seems to be a common phenomenon: Firefox->Iceweasel, Debian->Ubuntu, OO.org->GoOO, etc.
Nice idea... but I already know how this will end (Score:4, Interesting)
Even more than before, ISPs will push "their" own flavor of a browser that comes bundled with those godforsaken coasters that unsuspecting victims dump into their machines, only to end up with an IE (or FF from now on, too) that blatantly advertises the ISP, rehijacks the "favorite browser" position every time you rip it from him and stuff all kind of browser addons into it that you strangely cannot get rid of anymore due to miraculously missing deinstall routines.
I like the idea. No really, I do. But this is what it will be (ab)used for.
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If the "branding" or customizing of the browser can easily be reverted, no problem on my side. My main beef with those "customized" Internet Explorers is that you need a fair lot of detail system knowledge to get rid of them.
Or, to coin a catchy slogan, I don't mind features, as long as I can turn them off.
Spinning an outstanding deficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
So instead of offering one browser that can be configured by Group Policy in an Enterprise IT deployment they offer a web service to generate hard-coded branded browser installers? Sounds like a lot of work to avoid implementing what IT managers really want.
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Yeah. It's not like the IT department is actually concerned with that "group policy" and "fine-grained control of all instances of the browser on the network" crap.
They're worried if they're able to slap their company's LOGO onto the browser! Way to set your priorities straight, Mozilla.
Re:Spinning an outstanding deficiency (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Spinning an outstanding deficiency (Score:4, Insightful)
Great, but that's not an official package from Mozilla, and hence it can't be trusted by us more paranoid types.
Can someone at Mozilla tell us why you haven't started distributing your own MSI and ADM files yet?
Re:Spinning an outstanding deficiency (Score:4, Informative)
There's FirefoxADM: http://ick2.wordpress.com/ [wordpress.com]
This stuff really needs to be in the core of Firefox for it to gain corporate users.
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What's the purpose of not using the registry?
Surely you could build a "configuration" layer that would use the registry on OSes with it, and some kind of XML format on OSes without it, right? I mean, thousands of cross-platform programs do this now.
Or is it some kind of misguided knee-jerk "we hate the registry!" emotional thing? Double ironic, considering they're trying to re-implement a feature the registry adds practically for free.
This *is* a hell of a lot of effort to avoid using the OS features (inclu
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> What's the purpose of not using the registry?
The two main ones that come to mind are:
1) Allows easy side-by-side install of multiple Firefox versions (including multiple
nightly builds).
2) Allows easy uninstall by deleting the install directory without having to rely on
resetting registry values correctly on uninstall.
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Your first purpose could be just as easily done with the registry. Separate installs, separate keys...
The second is definitely an advantage of not using the registry.
Personally, I'd like to see the ability to have more than one installation of Firefox actually running simultaneously. You get the message saying Firefox is already running, blah blah blah.
When I try to fire up my copy of Firefox Portable I don't want to see the message telling me that Firefox is already running (there was supposed to be a sett
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> Your first purpose could be just as easily done with the registry.
> Separate installs, separate keys...
That would mean having to change keys every day, to make it work with nightly builds.
> Personally, I'd like to see the ability to have more than one installation of Firefox
> actually running simultaneously.
You already can, by having them use different profiles (and should, since moving from newer to older versions in the same profile might not necessarily work so great).
I can't speak to Firef
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That would mean having to change keys every day, to make it work with nightly builds.
Just use the build number in the registry key name. You'd still run into the problem of having to clean the registry when you uninstall, rather than just delete the program folder (or overwriting the version with the newer one)... but keeping them separate wouldn't be the issue anymore.
You already can, by having them use different profiles (and should, since moving from newer to older versions in the same profile might not necessarily work so great).
Simultaneously? I've never been able to. If you try to run it when there's another copy running, it pops up some message about Firefox already running and not responding. Maybe that's just a quirk of the portable version, tho
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> Just use the build number in the registry key name.
Build numbers are not globally unique.
It sounds like you're running the app by double-clicking the shortcut and the shortcut just points to the executable. If you change the shortcut to pass in a profile name, or run the executable with the appropriate arguments from the command line, and use different profiles for different installs, it all works.
You might not be focusing on the right target... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying it's all Mozilla's fault - in fact most of it isn't. But some corporate evangelism would go a long way towards getting traction within the enterprise.
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Clearly it can be done - I'm betting that Hong Jen Yee would be up for a nice paycheck for this kind of work.
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I prefer the "Best of Both Worlds" approach. Free to deploy our browser of choice and no fighting with vendors that will state that IEx is a requirement so b
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If the business demands MS Exchange, then OWA in "Light Mode" is all you get in FF.
It's true currently, but it looks like it's going to change [infoworld.com] in Exchange 2010, which opens up interesting possibilities.
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One of the great things about Firefox is that it is cross platform. Unfortunately Microsoft's Internet Explorer is for Microsoft Windows only. As such IE tab is, unfortunately, no friend to those using Mac, Linux, or any other platform. For Windows users it is a crutch, that should be used only as a temporary measure until whatever IE-only site is brought in to this century.
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I do this already (Score:4, Interesting)
At UW-Milwaukee [uwm.edu]'s dorms, I used FFDeploy [dbltree.com] to do just this: create a silent Firefox installer for student and faculty machines with some built-in bookmark buttons for our student service websites, e-mail system and so on.
Doing this saves time and installs FF with a nice student-friendly UI right off the bat -- very useful in converting otherwise IE-centric students who don't care what browser they're using to Firefox.
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It is indeed out of date, but I was able to get it working with FF 3 without too much issue... I can't remember exactly what it took, but it works well to this date (and the original "image" doesn't need to be updated when FF releases minor revisions, since I install FF over the top of the FFDeployed installation to finalize all the Windows shortcuts and things like that.)
Striking while the iron is hot (Score:5, Insightful)
I do see a lot of companies using login scripts to control IE settings, and Active Directory's group policies tend to be an all-or-none (no plug-ins or all plug-ins, can't change homepage or can change it to anything, etc.) so there may be a few things Mozilla can improve on.
Fine, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Set Top Box Browser (Score:2)
Now this would have been super useful about 6 months ago for me, when we needed an embedded linux browser.
SSL CA certs! (Score:2)
Bookmarks? wheeeee...
What I really want is a way to distribute my organization's SSL CAs!
Re:SSL CA certs! (Score:4, Informative)
The latest version of FirefoxADM [sourceforge.net]release notes [wordpress.com] specifically list the feature Added: Ability to replace certificates for all user profiles.
Re: (Score:2)
Well that's new.. I remember looking at FirefoxADM a year or so ago and I discounted it because it didn't do certs.
Now, what about Mac and Linux clients? :-P
Why don't Distros do this? (Score:3)
Maybe I'm missing something, but I've yet to see a "burn install CD with current configuration" button, or similar.
FEBE (Score:2)
Ok, it's a bit more work than a customized install, but you can already accomplish this pretty easily. Just distribute the FEBE .xpi and a .fbu backup of the profile as you want it. Fire up the fresh Firefox install, install the FEBE extension, and restore the profile from the .fbu backup.
A feature i want (Score:2)
i can has Firefox that installs add-ons to the program itself so they'll be on ALL profiles?
Re:Flash (Score:4, Funny)
Thank you very much for proving us women absolutely correct when we complain about the abusive, sexist hostility we receive on male-dominated sites like this.
Oh please. Everyone gets abused here.
If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
(Oh, the irony!)