Release 0.5.9.1

This has now been added to Sourceforge.  These are released under a different package, firefoxadm_dev.  I must reiterate that this is an early development version.  Do NOT use in a live environment.

The version numbering is slightly changed.  There was a FirefoxADM 0.5, but this was modifications I made for the University of Edinburgh environment.  The next target for release is 0.6 (or FirefoxADM Release 6, as I shall be calling it).  All dev build up to that will be 0.5.9.*.  Any post 0.6 fixes will obviously be 0.6.0.*.

This release is a Proof of Concept for the items I talked about in the previous post.  It also includes a few fixes.  Full changelog:

CHANGES IN 0.5.9.1 – The Road to FirefoxADM Release 6

-  Fixed:  Weakness in way FirefoxADM overrides preferences meant similar named preferences would be removed (if setting homepage, browser.startup.homepage, would remove first-run pref, browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone)
-  Fixed:  Logout script was not handling removal of homepage from prefs.js properly
-  Added:  Ability to determine what type of page you get at startup (homepage, about:blank or from previous session)
-  Added:  Ability to control whether Firefox is allowed to automatically update its Search Engines
-  Added:  Ability to set Java to locked or default value
-  Added:  Ability to set JavaScript to locked or default value
-  Added:  Ability to set Default Browser to locked or default value
-  Added:  Ability to set XPI Installation allowed/disallowed as locked or default value
-  Added:  Shutdown tidyup of "extensions.update.autoUpdateEnabled" value

 

First fix is to a problem I’ve seen before but never put my finger on what was causing it.  It took a comment on this blog for me to recognise the problem.  Thanks, user “realtime”.

Probably the most useful of the default prefs done in this version is the ability to set a default homepage.  Just a warning for this.  I will need to implement an extra set of processes to restore settings to original values, so if you set a default homepage and then take the machine out of the group policy, it will continue to have a homepage set to whatever you set it to.  This is the same with all the default prefs.

Anyway, go to the project page on Sourceforge and give it a try and let me have some feedback, either as a comment here or drop an email to mark dot sammons(at)ed dot ac dot uk