Dec 01
FrontMotion have a community edition of Firefox that enables network admins to control Firefox settings via Group Policy. (FMFirefoxCE)
- Download the latest release of FrontMotion Firefox Community Edition MSI (Download).
- Download either the firefox.adm or the mozilla.adm templates (Download).
- firefox.adm is used to control settings at a user level.
- mozilla.adm is used to control settings at a computer level and is also more advanced.
Configuring Group Policy:
- Copy the downloaded adm template/s into the %SystemRoot%\windows\inf of your Active Directory server (this is where Windows stores its adm templates).
- Open Active Directory, right-click on the OU that you want to set the Firefox policy for and select Properties.
- Select the Group Policy tab and either create a New policy or Edit an existing policy.
- Here you have two options;
- Computer Configuration, which will set the policies at a computer level. Both firefox.adm and mozilla.adm templates can be used at this level.
- User Configuration, which will set the policies at a user level. Only firefox.adm can be used at this level.
I would recommend using Computer Configuration as the level of configuration is far more granular. - Right-click the Administrative Templates folder under the desired levels tree and select Add/Remove Templates…
- Select the Add… button from the window that pops up and select either the firefox.adm or the mozilla.adm template.
- A new folder containing the settings for the ADM template will be displayed under the Administrative Templates tree. Firefox if the firefox.adm template was used or Mozilla Advanced Options if the mozilla.adm template was used (I have added both for the example).
- You now need to configure the desired settings:
- firefox.adm, only has a total of 7 configurable settings.
- mozilla.adm, (see about:config for listing of settings) can be configured to use either Locked or Default settings. Locked Settings mean that the user cannot change any of the configured settings whereas Default Settings are set initially for the user but the user will have the ability to change these settings if they wish.
Note: mozilla.adm settings will override firefox.adm settings.
Deploying FrontMotion Firefox Community Edition via Group Policy:
If you have a small number of workstations then you can install manually the latest FrontMotion Firefox Community Edition on each of them and the settings that you set above will be configured. For larger organisations this is not an option, so software deployment is neccessary:
- Software deployment can once again be done at a computer or user level.
- Computer level installations will install the package on the computer in the selected OU.
- User level installations will install the package on each computer that the users in the selected OU log on to. - Copy the downloaded FrontMotion Firefox Community Edition MSI pack to a shared directory on your file server. Depending on the level of installation you have chosen to use, you need to give either Domanin Computers or Domain Users read access to the folder that the MSI is stored in.
- Open Active Directory, right-click the OU containing either the users or the computers that you want to deploy the package to and select Properties.
- Select the Group Policy tab and either create a New policy or Edit an existing policy.
- Expand the Software Settings folder under the desired levels tree, right-click Software installation, select New, select Package…
- Select the FrontMotion Firefox Community Editions MSI file and click the Open button.
- Select Advanced from the window that pops up as we want to set some options.
- I generally leave most of the options as default, but occasionally change the name as this is what will be displayed for the user when the software is being installed. - Select the Security tab, give Domain Computers or Domain Users read access depending on the level of installation that you chose and click the OK button.
- You should now see the newly created package in the Software installation list.
- The software shoud now be installed after a restart of the workstation or next time the users logs on depending on the level of installation that you chose.