Packaging Firefox

[jmitchell]

Hello,

I am fairly new to Composer and the Imaging suite. I have successfully packaged Office and a few other applications, but I have not had any luck packaging Firefox. Can someone point me to a how to, or at least give me an overview of where to begin? I attempted to take a snapshot of it, which did not work.

We'd like to turn the update service off and set a homepage. That's about it as far as preferences are concerned.

Thanks,
Jacob

[ctangora]

Hate to say it, as some may consider it an overkill, but to do it right you should really be looking at CCK Wizard. Make an extension and throw it in the application's distribution folder and you'll be all set.

[stevewood]

Take a look at Greg's post on Default Settings:

http://managingosx.wordpress.com/2008/08/18/firefox-default-settings/

I followed those directions for managing our config here.

[stevewood]

Forgot that you needed more than just how to do the preferences, but that you were looking for more specifics about Firefox packaging.

Follow Greg's article for locking down the updates and setting the default startup page on a test machine. Once you've verified that the settings are correct, you can package Firefox up by simply dragging the app into Composer. Then use Composer to create a PKG or DMG file.

[donmontalvo]

@ctangora recomended:

CCK Wizard

+1

[#6]

Don't forget that you can use ```
jamf setHomePage
``` to manage default homepages as well, although it will only take effect if the browser in question isn't running (and currently only supports FF and Safari. I grabbed a script from Comcast that will change the homepage for Chrome but haven't gotten it working with Casper yet..).

[RobertHammen]

CCK is the way I use. I think Charles Edge has the best how-to on his blog:

http://www.krypted.com/?p=7773

[jmitchell]

Thanks everyone. CCK is the route I took. It worked like a charm.

[zskidmor]

It looks like the CCK route requires you to include it into the Firefox Package itself. Is there a way to do this without having to create a seperate package for Firefox? I really don't want to have build a different package for each lab just because different homepages are requested. Any thoughts are appreciated. I have tried composer but because the extension installation is stored in the profile, using FUT and FEU just copies a partial profile that Firefox doesn't reference it just creates a new one

[Chris]

With CCK2 you can create Autoconfig files that you can package separately from the Firefox app itself.
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/cck2wizard/
Same should work with the old-style CCK by packaging the Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/distribution/bundles/ folder.
http://work.chrisdietrich.de/firefox-autoconfig-creation-deployment-with-cck2/
That way you only need your standard Firefox package and can install and uninstall CCKs as needed.

[zskidmor]

I don't get the Auto Config option at the end of creating an extension, it just creates an extension which you can't really package all that well (at least it seems because the extension is inside a specific firefox profile name). Where do you get the option to create auto config? the link in your email is for the old version of CCK that isn't compatible with current versions of firefox. Any help is appreciated

[Chris]

Hm, that link was for the German addon-repo.
Maybe https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cck2wizard/ works?
It should say

Version 1.0.3 January 6, 2014

in the sidebar

[zskidmor]

Right, II figured out there is a new version and am using that, The newer version doesn't have the auto config option at the end of the extension creation, or am I missing something?

[tomt]

I was just thinking that one way to avoid having to have multiple versions (so each lab could have it's own home page) would be to set a standard home page url and then edit the host files on the machines to redirect to the desired url.

[ImAMacGuy]

CCk2 seems to work pretty well, except I can't seem to get it to work for our VPN Certificate site. It has the correct CA loaded (via cck2), but whenever i put in my credentials to put in a cert it just sits there. Also FF no longer seems to close with a cmd q or Firefox --> Quit. I have to force quit.