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Rolling Out Mozilla in an Organization?

Posted by Cliff on from the bringing-in-the-400-lb-lizard dept.

jdclucidly asks: "I am a network administrator for a small non-profit (about 50 employees). I would like to roll Mozilla 1.2.1 out to all of our desktops. We don't have a single ghost image because the computers on site are too varied. Yes, I did my Googling. The source for the installer is just huge and mind boggling. Is there something like a Mozilla Administration Kit that will generate custom Mozilla installers? If not, would people on Slashdot be interested in starting a new project to make such a kit?" If you were going to deploy a "branded" version of Mozilla, company-wide, how would you do it, especially if you had to worry about a mixed OS environment?

"Here's what I want to do:

  • Install everything but Quality Feedback Agent
  • Set Mozilla as the default browser
  • Disable 'Open Unrequested Windows' (kill pop-ups)
  • Install Elveraldo's Crystal-Classic theme as default
  • Set Google as the default search engine
  • Set 'Georgia' as the default Serif font for Western and Unicode
  • Enable HTTP Pipelining
  • Enable FIPS internal cryptography
  • Set toolbar to 'Pictures only'
  • Set Home Page to my organization's intranet site
  • Set start page to 'Blank page'
  • Disable 'Hide the tab bar'
  • Enable Middle-click for new tab
  • Enable control+enter for new tab
  • Default downloads to 'open a progress dialog'
  • Disable Javascript and Plugins for Mail & News
  • Enable quicklaunch
  • Create an additional shortcut on the desktop and in quicklaunch that uses chrome/icons/mailnew.ico as it's source and points to 'mozilla.exe -mail'
As you can imagine, doing this on 50 computers (and making sure I got each of these) would be quite tedious. Are, there others out there that want to do the same thing. I checked the Mozilla newgroups. I checked the CCK Project page at Mozilla.org -- it appears to be pretty inactive. I checked out the Netscape 7 CCK, which is pretty robust but doesn't do everything I want and it's proprietary -- plus, I don't want all the NS7 proprietary crap on my network.

I installed Mozilla on my machine using the stub installer and had it save all of the .XPI components to a folder. I went in and extracted the .XPI's and examined them. It seems possible to do these things but not without learning XUL, JavaScript, XML and Mozilla.org's own stuffings -- not to mention setting up a Visual C++/Cygwin compiling farm for every next Mozilla release. Can I:
  • Directly modify the defaults/prefs/all.js file to incorporate my preference defaults above and then recompress the .XPI?
  • Add to the installer Crystal-Classic.jar somehow? Where are those changes made?
  • Make the installer NOT allow the user to change any of this?
  • Make the installer create the above mentioned shortcut?"

2 of 435 comments (clear)

  1. Tip of the Week by chicagothad · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    If you are running Windows as the standard within your company, don't do something dumb and introduce complexity by adding in another platform that you need to integrate and support. Go with IE. (Let the flames begin)

  2. Re:Question... by user+no.+590291 · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    Microsoft spent millions of dollars and countless man-hours on the multitude of color schemes you can pick from. Use one of those.

    Seig fucking Heil. It figures that the washed out wanna-bes that most "eye-tee professionals" are end up on power trips when given a little bit of administrative privilege.