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Mozilla To Launch "Build Your Own Browser"
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."
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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BYOB = bring your own beer. Somehow the firefox party invites got out to the public...must be the new guy.
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.
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.
"Send an Instant Karma to me" - Yes
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.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
The problem isn't that companies can't deploy Firefox - it's that most vendors are IE-centric. It's easy to put together a default Firefox profile with the requisite bookmarks and customizations, but tougher to get the same "experience" when it comes to things like Sharepoint and SAP, among others. Once you can get some of those vendors (ok, maybe not MS) to play more nicely, the rest will take care of itself.
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.
Anyone can build their own browser based on Firefox, like I did with Torfox. It's basically a mashup of Tor and Firefox with changes in the Firefox socket code to force it to always use Tor for DNS lookups and connections plus changes to the startup and shutdown code so it starts and stops Tor on a non-default socks port. Though, compiling Firefox can take hours so I wouldn't suggest it if you have a weak stomach. I'm still trying to upload the code to the SVN but TortoiseSVN keeps choking.
At UW-Milwaukee's dorms, I used FFDeploy 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.
I mentioned this in a post above, but IE Tab is your friend.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
Firefox has earned a lot of goodwill among the general population, but it's probably nearing a plateau in terms of brand recognition and new users. MS is starting to close the gap in features and security perception, so now is the time for FF to make some inroads in the enterprise software market. Users migrated to FF because they were dissatisfied with IE. If Modzilla solves shortcomings in IE for businesses and organizations they'll make some traction. If everyone's generally happy with IE, I don't see any new features that will compel them to invest in the change.
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.
Good point - but then you're hitching the proverbial wagon to not just one vendor now, but two. While you could approach the problem this way, wouldn't it be a lot more efficient to just work with the web app vendor to build in compatibility?
Clearly it can be done - I'm betting that Hong Jen Yee would be up for a nice paycheck for this kind of work.
Didn't Netscape have this about 15 years ago? I guess the difference is it was commercial.
What would be more useful to enterprises who want to distribute Firefox is an MSI package and a group policy template - like the version distributed by FrontMotion (Firefox Community Edition).
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.
Depends on the vendor. If the business demands MS Exchange, then OWA in "Light Mode" is all you get in FF. It becomes very hard to justify a browser change if it's going to cost $$$ making a system supplied by $vendor that has a major business investment in it or even changing vendors when what comes with Windows "works" (term used very loosely there).
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 bad luck.
It will also make pathways towards using more cross platform software, anything that can break the dependencies is a "Good Thing".
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
Was just having a discussion with the boss, in that what ever we do, we need to start changing the applications people use to things more cross platform. When it becomes feasible to change the underlying OS, then the change won't come as much of a shock to the users.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
the first B stands for "Bring Your Own Compiler"...
Now this would have been super useful about 6 months ago for me, when we needed an embedded linux browser.
Ah, so that's the real reason they stopped Debian redistributing firefox as firefox -- they were readying for this.
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 in Exchange 2010, which opens up interesting possibilities.
Bookmarks? wheeeee...
What I really want is a way to distribute my organization's SSL CAs!
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
So now when I buy a new Dell I will have DellFox?
When I buy HP I will have HewletFox?
When I buy IBM I will have IBMFox installed?
Great, can't wait to see mayham when every vendor will be releasing theirs own ff.
The Firefox CCK (Client Customization Kit) wizard of course!
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2553
Also, Mozilla has offered the CCK for previous versions of Firefox.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/cck/firefox/
So this sounds like no more than new name and an update? I don't consider this to be big news.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I've yet to see a "burn install CD with current configuration" button, or similar.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
We've thought about this a lot, and the rules for customized versions of Firefox that are distributed publicly are quite different. We limit changes to those editions - especially anything that directly impacts the user experience - as the type of behaviours you describe are exactly what we want to stay away from. Changing the start page to a corporate site adds very little value, where adding a bookmark to a support or product page can, as it's there when the user wants it. Those are the types of changes we encourage, and we do our best to stay away from changes that don't add value to the user.
If you do come across distributions of Firefox that exhibit the type of behaviour you outline,we'd like to hear about it.
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant
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...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I write a web application for corporate environments and browser compatibility is sometimes a bitch. With over half the browsers in corporate networks still using IE6 I am forced to develop code that works on IE6, IE7 , IE8, FF, Safari. I have found that the other major browsers like opera, chrome and konqueror just plain work. IE6 (and to a lesser degree IE7) is holding back the internet and tieing developers hands with insane CSS or javascript hacks. I know everyone loves to slam IE but despite being slow IE8 has good enough standards support that it doesn't need hacks any more to work. The problem with the current browser wars is that their are so many combinations. If it takes QA an hour to test a change once - it will take them an entire day to test it on the top 8 browsers. If we could mandate the client platform FF would be a great choice but whoever these vendors that only support IE6 are need to get off their asses because its giving me a headache every day.
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!)
They all do that. Most call it by a euphamism like "dinner and a movie" and others are more honest about what they are doing. But just about all women want the money up-front, preferably in cash.
You got trolled, nothing more, nothing less. If you were gay and the troll knew it, he'd talk about faggots. If you were black and the troll knew it, he'd talk about niggers. If you were religious and the troll knew it, he'd bash your religion. You're a female and the troll knew it, so he talked what he talked about because IT WAS EFFECTIVE ON YOU. It worked. It got that knee-jerk emotional "I'm going to tell him off" reaction that the troll badly wanted. You played right into his hands. Good job. This is why women can't get their shit together online; they are their own worst enemies, just like they are offline. Offline they are their own worst enemies by dating "bad boy" types and then complaining when those badasses turn out to be abusive (who'd have thunk it? a biker with a long violent criminal record, abusive? what a shock!). Online, they are their own worst enemies by taking everything so goddamned personally, something no one who knows anything about online forums is going to do.
Thank you for showing that offline or online, women still haven't gotten over themselves. Trolls exist. Trolls are willing to troll anyone and everyone, you are not some exception or unheard-of case, though you might be a bigger target now that you have proven you will react and get all upset... now get over it and most of all get over yourself and that sense of entitlement that you have. You know, that sense of entitlement you get when you're at least a little attractive and everyone is extra-nice to you all of your life because of it? Yeah, that. It has no place here. You're better off without it anyway, it only stunts the character growth (which is why so many beautiful women are immature) and makes you think that the purpose of a relationship is to make you an object of worship. Women think that's so much better than being a sex object. An object of worship is still just an object, meaning you can never relate in a healthy way so long as you believe in it.
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.
Good post -- this is the exact cause of IE's domination in the browser market. Most third-party software has been developed far too long to work directly with IE components. When vendors begin to take the plunge and try to cater a bit more to Firefox, we're sure to see a major change in its usage (especially in the enterprise world).
Of course, the issue remains that many of these distributors work closely with Microsoft, or have been developing applications for IE for years. Convincing an entire company to switch a major component of their business is no simple task. This is especially true when they aren't used to something, even if the change is for the better.
-Kevin @ iGoMogul
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It says that it will be deployable, I can deploy any .EXE today. Is it going to ENFORCE company standards for those settings, or is this just a lame, change the defaults?
Will it support pushing minor patches? will it support major upgrades? or does that require a full re-install?
Will it support managing the settings of the application sort of like group policy can for IE? (even if it's not AD integrated)
-me
Those who can, do.
i can has Firefox that installs add-ons to the program itself so they'll be on ALL profiles?
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