Firefox Default Preferences
We want to customize the Firefox web browser to change some of the default behavior. This doesn't prevent a user from overriding these settings, it just sets them to reasonable defaults.
Goals
Disable Smooth Scrolling
The animated nature of the Smooth scrolling feature of Firefox causes the NComputing Video optimization to kick in, distorting the user experience. Also this implementation of smooth scrolling is very resource intensive.
Disable All automatic update Attempts
Since there is no Internet connection, it is just a waste of time attempting to connect to service to check for updates
Set the Homepage
The default Firefox homepage is usually a Google search box. This is obviously not useful, so lets set the home page to something else
Simplify new user workflow
By Default Firefox will ask you to import bookmarks from Internet Explorer. This will not be needed,
Procedures
Create the preferences file
- Open a text editor and enter only this text exactly:
pref("general.smoothScroll", false);
pref("app.update.enabled", false);
pref("app.update.service.enabled", false);
pref("app.update.auto", false);
pref("browser.search.update", false);
pref("extensions.update.autoUpdateDefault", false);
pref("extensions.update.notifyUser", false);
pref("browser.startup.homepage", "about:blank");
pref("startup.homepage_welcome_url", "http://ejp-server:8008" );
- Save this file someplace as ejp_firefox_preferences.js
- We'll move it to the Firefox directory in the next step
Copy the new preference file to the Application directory
- Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\defaults\preferences
- If this directory doesn't exist, you should create it
- copy the ejp_firefox_preferences.js file into this directory
Create override.ini
[XRE] EnableProfileMigrator=false
Copy override.ini to Firefox application directory
- Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\
- copy the override.ini file into this directory
Verify the settings are effective =
- Open Firefox as a user
- Enter the following in the address bar about:config
- For each line of the preferences file, type the name of the preference, to filter the list
- Verify that the value displayed is what you expected.
Create bookmarks file
- place in C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\defaults\profile\bookmarks.html
- verify with firefox -CreateProfile