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Is there away to have Workgroup Manager hand out preferences for Firefox? We want to use Firefox as our default browser, but we also want to set the proxy server. Obviously firefox doesn't pull proxy info from workgroup manager by default. Firefox loads preferences for each new user that logs in. If there is away to do this please let me know.

Thanks

Hi Colesy

The only way to do this that i know of is with management software (Casper, Filewave, Radmind) or use ARD

All of firefox's info is held in it's own DB files in Application Suport.

I do this as part of the image process and push using ARD. Currently evaluating Casper 5 Suite to bridge the gap between WGM and ARD.

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Ok, I thought there was away of setting up your firefox prefences, then loading that preference file into workgroup manager and force all users to use those preferences.. I guess I must be thinking of something else.

I usualy manage firefox preferences by changing the application's defaults before the system imaging/distribution or the software deployment process. So every new user logging in for the first time pulls this settings by taking over my modified defaults.

You can do so by opening the firefox.app file and editing the files in:
firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/grepprefs/all.js

This is where most of the default settings of firefox are defined.

I used this method to change the default startpage and the search url as well as to change the settings to make firefox automaticaly discover the correct proxy settings.

To change the proxy settings to auto detect i changed the following line:
pref("network.proxy.type", 2);
to:
pref("network.proxy.type", 4);

Unfortunately this method deos not work for existing users which have allready started any version of firefox and therefore their userhome allready contains preference files for firefox.

Hi guys

I have been using this method about a year. global add in with my proxy.pac set in WGM no problem.

When system proxy first came out this was the developers blog which had loads of useful posts

http://blog.curthread.org/projects/systemproxy

Since then this has been handed to Mozilla and i managed to find a cached page and saved it quickly. Now it is not possible to get this useful information because Googles caches have cleared :(

For this reason i have decided to provide this useful information incase anyone is trying to find out how to do this and can't get anywhere "googling "

1. Get the following tools

latest Composer by jamf
http://www.jamfsoftware.com/products/composer.php

xcode tools 2.5
https://connect.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebOb ... NK5MxJ/0.0

latest Firefox
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html

latest system proxy xpi
http://systemproxy.mozdev.org/installation.html (right click save as instead of installing)

Brief Descriptions

Composer= takes snapshot of the system, install and tweak the software, take another snapshot of the system, verify contents remove unwanted items and make pkg to push out through ARD.
Xcode tools 2.5 = required for Composer on OS 10.4 and 10.5 to make the package files. Need to sign up to the apple Developer member site to get these tools.

Composer on Leopard will only work with Xcode tools2.5 and then throuh the terminal (think Xcode installs as this..going by memory) as root mv /Xcode\ tools2.5 /Developer

It will only work if it is renamed to /Developer

2. Take a snapshot of the system "new and modified files" using Composer

3. Install latest Firefox

4. With the System Proxy.xpi in a saved location (in my tests i saved it to /private/var/tmp because if there is a problem on a users machine i know where the saved xpi is) you need to make this a global add in by sending this unix command as root through Apple remote desktop to the machine

/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -install-global-extension /private/var/tmp/systemproxy-0.4.xpi

5.In Composer give the package a name, verify the contents, rip out stuff you don't need and build it as a .pkg file

6. Test pushing the pkg to a test machine.

any new account created will automatically add system proxy as a global add in :)

Please note if you are upgrading from say Firefox 2 or just setting this up you will need to export the users bookmark otherwise they may be angry with you.

It is possible to make other add ins global and another favourite is FireFtp which turn Firefox in to a FTP application :)

http://fireftp.mozdev.org/

Also i have managed to package Adobe CS3, Office 2008 etc with all updates and pushes out to machines ready to use in 2 minutes flat!

nice to ref to the system proxy for Firefox as I was involved in helping it evolve (not the author, but someone who contacted the author and got it updated)

About managing firefox - there is also usage of user.js. If you set the settings you want it generates prefs.js. Rename the file user.js and edit out anything you don't want to force and drop/leave in the profile and it will "force" those settings each time Firefox is launched (not even a log out/in required.) However for those that know of user.js I don't know a way to protect it from a user altering or at least deleting (you could set it with read only tucked into their profile but they must have r/w to the folder holding the profile so user.js can be deleted.)

Make sure the Managed Machine is properly attached to the OS X Server.
- Double check the ethernet address is correct
- Make sure the machine is in the appropriate group that has the setting.
- Log out of the machine and log back in (it may take two or three tries for it to sync up)
- Be sure to be using Safari, Firefox won’t listen to the settings.

Also, make sure you have the latest Server Admin Tools update – Apple will release updates for this around the same time they release the OS X Server updates.

If it still wont work, I’d check with Apple Support to see if there’s a known issue about thi
Thanks :
Regards:
William from a best web hosting company.