Tips and Resources

Firefox MSI deployment via Group Policy (GPO)

Installing Mozilla Firefox on all the computers in your network

Prepare Firefox Files

Download Frontmotion Firefox  ( at time of writting the latest version file is Firefox-4.0-en-US.msi ) from:

http://www.frontmotion.com/Firefox/download_firefox.htm

Customise Firefox

Open a command window, cd to the folder that you downloaded Firefox-4.0-en-US.msi and run "msiexe /a Firefox-4.0-en-US.msi"

When prompted, choose a folder on your machine to create the admin install eg. c:\firefox

Once the installation is finished, open C:\Firefox\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox in windows explorer and create a new text file:


[Install]
EnableProfileMigrator=false
QuickLaunchShortcut=false
DesktopShortcut=true

Save the text file as install.ini


Open browserconfig.properties with a text editor (like notepad) and edit the default home page.


Open \defaults\pref\firefox.js and check that default browser check line reads: pref("browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser", false)

 

Note: If you have a network with a microsoft proxy that you have to authenticate against (That you would normally use buitl-in NTLM) add the line: pref("network.negotiate-auth.allow-proxies", false);


To Prevent Firefox from becoming the default browser:

Browse to C:\Firefox\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\defaults\pref
and edit firefox.js with a text editor - like notepad.

Change pref("browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser", true); to pref("browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser", false);
Save and close the file.

Open the MSI file with Orca.

Change the INSTALLLEVEL to 3 (in table "Property").

Drop all the rows from the "Registry" table that have "C_SetDefaultBrowser" or "C_SetDefaultBrowserXP" as value in the "Component" column.

Drop the following rows from the "Component" table:
C_SetDefaultBrowser
C_SetDefaultBrowserXP

Drop the RestoreIExplore row from the "CustomAction" table

Save the MSI.

Deploy Firefox

Copy the C:\Firefox  folder and your customised .mst (if you saved a mst instead of editing the original .msi to your msi deployment share, and add the msi  to the software deployment GPO.