Thanks, Ben, I'll take a look at these suggestions. Also, thanks to Kurt, I'll check out that Mozilla list.
> -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ben Scott > Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2014 8:04 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] Pushing proxy for Firefox > > On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 11:36 AM, Heaton, Joseph@Wildlife > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Our organization is moving towards using a proxy for internet browsing. > > Trouble is, we allow multiple browsers (IE, Chrome and Firefox). > > Chrome is easy since it uses the settings from IE, and IE has GPO settings I > can use. > > But Firefox doesn’t. > > There are a few ways you can tackle this. > > I believe Firefox's default on Windows is "Use system proxy settings", which > makes it sound like it should just follow whatever MSIE is set to. I've had > inconsistent results with it, but I haven't really looked into it, either. > (This > feature showed up long after I had implemented other solutions.) Maybe > this is the Right Way and one just needs to look. > > WPAD (Web Proxy Auto Discovery), as Kurt Buff mentions, works well if > your goal is to help those who want to be helped. It doesn't enforce > anything, though -- no mandatory proxy. It's also not the default, so it's > not a > complete solution. > > So a lot of admins arrive at the conclusion that one must force the setting > in > Firefox. There are, generally, two ways to do this. > > The official Mozilla way is to use a lockPref directive in a general config > file. > Firefox uses files for all its configuration. This is decidedly not GPO-ish, > but > on the other hand, it works the same way on all platforms. Mozilla targets > more than just MS Windows, so that's important to them. > > Setting it up is a little weird. You need to create a "local-settings.js" > file in > the "defaults/pref" directory of the installed Firefox. This file will > generally > have a single directive, telling Firefox where to look for another config > file. > That second file -- conventionally named "mozilla.cfg" -- is where you do all > your preference locking. > > More info here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Locking_preferences > > You can use Group Policy Preferences to distribute those files, or create a > custom installer, or use a startup script, or SCCM, or whatever you usually do > to push files out to clients. > > The other way to do this is with FrontMotion Firefox Community Edition > (FFCE). FFCE is Firefox modified to add GPO support. This makes Firefox > admin'able with Group Policy, just like countless other programs. It's still > free, > even. Drawbacks are, since it the program has been modified, FrontMotion > can't use the official Firefox trademarks (icon and logo). FrontMotion also > tends to lag a week or two behind the official releases. > > More info here: http://www.frontmotion.com/FMFirefoxCE/ > > -- Ben >
