Anyone deployed Firefox?

[eejit]

I'm just wondering if any schools on here have given the pupils access to Firefox yet?

I use it exclusively myself, but the fact that you can't control all the options through active directory means that I won't be giving it to the pupils yet. Is there some way to control the browser centrally?

[Geoff]

I use the Firefox MSI's from frontmotion

http://frontmotion.com/Firefox/

together with the firefox ADM scripts from Sourceforge.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/firefoxadm

[Dos_Box]

Geoff. Go to bed for the love of God!
I'm not really awake. I'm just a bot!

[mark]

I've tried eejit - and have had the same problem as you. There are a couple of guides I found [goes off to root them out again...]:

http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/trench/3626.html

http://firefox.dbltree.com/

just need to spend some time on it. Personally I find I can't live without adblock

[edit] ah cool Geoff! i'll go take a look at those

[Geoff]

Been playing the Battlefield 2 Demo. Besides, I can sleep at work tomorrow. Its only website editing in the morning.

[eejit]

Wow, thanks for the quick replies Geoff and Mark. I'll give those a go tomorrow, hopefully I'll be able to add some of the extensions to the basic installation but prevent kids from installing others. Some of the extensions are scary from a network admin point of view.

[mark]

Ignore mine eejit - Geoff's are the ones - superb stuff!

[Geoff]

If you wish to add extenstions or themes then you will have to reroll the MSI file yourself with the extra extensions. IIRC there's instructions on the frontmotion site about that.

Which extensions are 'scarey'?

[eejit]

Which extensions are 'scarey'?

There are a few. Try this one for starters:
https://addons.mozilla.org/extension...nfo.php?id=448
Quick Description

Browse any page with the Virtualbrowser, a free online proxy created to get past school blockers and internet filters.

[Geoff]

Your filter is broken if it allows traffic out to proxy servers you do not control. The only proxy your users should be allowed to use is your own. Filter tcp port 80 or employ transparent caching.

[eejit]

No, I haven't used the above extension, so I don't even know if it works. My point was that I wasn't going to deploy firefox until I could be sure that users could not install their own extensions. If you browse through the extensions you'll see that there are a lot of extensions that have nothing to do with web browsing.
The above example was a proxy by-passer, but next week there could be a password cracking or key stroke logger, who knows.

[Geoff]

Oops, double post.

[Geoff]

Downloaded extensions are stored in the user profile. Mandatory read only user profiles would be an obvious way to fix this.

[RobC]

Just taken a look at the FirefoxADM's and one of the group policy options is to disable the installation of XPI extentions & themes, which should be perfect for what eejit wants to do...

<continues his quest to get Firefox working properly with Symantec Web Security>

[eejit]

RobC and Geoff, both of your answers should work. I'll definitely give it a try.