« Prune old transcripts with tkpruner | Main | Use Radmind to Manage Shared Dynamic Libraries »
July 29, 2008
Customize Firefox’s Default Profile Without Creating One
We recently ran into problems with our default Firefox profile after upgrading to Firefox 3. Before, we’d defined a default profile in the default user’s ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles folder, set it up to have the settings and homepage we desired, and let that copy into a new user’s profile on login. After having some problems with some of the settings that restricted extension installation, we discovered a way to define defaults for Firefox without having to pre-create a user’s profile. There are a few files to change in the application bundle that cause it to work as we’d like:
- /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/application.ini: Change “EnableProfileMigrator=1” to “EnableProfileMigrator=0” to disable the prompt on startup to import Safari preferences.
- /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/browserconfig.properties: This file contains the default homepage for the browser. Change it as you like and all newly-created profiles will lead the user to the page you specify.
- /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/defaults/profile/bookmarks.html: Change this file to alter the default set of bookmarks your users receive on new profile creation.
- /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/defaults/profile/prefs.js: This file has no settings defined by default, but you can add your own if you like. We added the following settings:
- user_pref("browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone", "ignore"); disables a user receiving notification of a new version of Firefox when they're updated.
- user_pref("browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser", false); causes Firefox to skip the prompt on startup to make it the default browser.
Your needs may vary, and you can do a lot more inside the application bundle, such as putting extensions in the /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/extensions folder. Putting default settings here has two main advantages over putting it in the default user profile:
- Firefox profiles are only created as needed. Not copying over a default profile reduces login time, and users who use Safari will never need a Firefox profile.
- Using a default profile, all profiles have the same name (e.g. ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/m6oj7kr0.default/). The method I’ve outlined in this post results in differently-named Firefox profiles. I have no idea if this is an advantage, but Firefox’s developers randomize the profile folder name for a reason, and this method preserves their methodology.
Update 8/5/08: Added application.ini info.
Posted by slauncha at July 29, 2008 03:03 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/mt-bin/mt-tb.cgi/1429
Comments
I have not been able to get Firefox 3.0.2 to honor any changes I make (per this article) to prefs.js.
HOWEVER, with some hacking around I have come up with an alternative that I hope helps other users:
Instead of editing prefs.js, try editing firefox.js. This resides not in ...defaults/profile but ...defaults/pref. Add your settings there in the format pref("xxx") in lieu of user_pref.
Now all our newly formed user profiles have the proxy, startup homepage, and other defaults that want/need them to have. Happy hacking!
Posted by: kurt.tappe@chase.com at November 6, 2008 09:06 PM
Login to leave a comment. Create a new account.