Firefox – Set Default Home Page for All Users

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firefox-8

The traditional method of using ‘firefox.js’ to set the profile defaults (see www.itsupportguides.com/configmgr-sccm/install-and-configure-firefox-3-silently ) no longer works with Firefox 4 and above.

To set default settings from an application level for all new and existing users you will need to use a general config file. The unfortunate consequence is that once the setting is configured it can not be changed by the user, whether or not you use ‘pref’ or ‘lockPref’.

For a full installation and configuration process (for example, to be used with SCCM/ConfigMgr) see www.itsupportguides.com/configmgr-sccm/install-and-configure-firefox-silently

The following steps detail how to customise an existing installation:

  1. Create a temporary working folder (for example, create C:\TEMP\Firefox)
  2. Create a new text file called ‘override.ini’ and copy in the following information:
  3. [XRE]
     EnableProfileMigrator=false
  4. Create a new text file called ‘local-settings.js’ and copy in the folling information:
  5. pref("general.config.obscure_value", 0);
     pref("general.config.filename", "mozilla.cfg");
  6. Create a new text file called ‘mozilla.cfg’ and copy in the following information:
  7. //Firefox Default Settings
     pref("browser.startup.homepage", "http://www.google.com.au");
  8. Copy ‘override.ini’ and ‘mozilla.cfg’ to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
  9. Copy ‘local-settings.js’ to C:\Program Files\Mozilla\Firefox\defaults\pref
  10. Start up Firefox and confirm the settings specified in ‘mozilla.cfg’ are working.

 For more information on what can be configured in the mozilla.cfg enter “about:config” into your Firefox address bar. It will list many of the accepted configuration options which you can modify using this file.