while this isn't Linux specific I figured I'd put my notes here. There are a number of default settings I want my users to have for Firefox under both windows and Linux which I'll put here. If you don't have it get firefox 2.
debianadmin.com has a guide on installing firefox 2 under Ubuntu/Debian which made my life easy. Look at that link for information but I have copied all the commands into a download and install script. remember to:
chmod a+x firefoxinstallscript.sh
Once you have firefox 2 installed get a dictionary from the firefox dictionary page so that you can be sure to have fewer smelling pistakes in posts and web based emails.
Like many organizations I have an Intranet that I use to pass out information. I want Firefox to go to this as the homepage when student use it first time. I found my solution on the Debian administration site where someone else was asking a similar question about setting the default homepage in Firefox.
In short:
create the file:
/usr/lib/firefox/browserconfig.properties
or (under windows):
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\browserconfig.properties
and add the lines:
browser.startup.homepage=http://mysite.com/
browser.startup.homepage_reset=http://mysite.com/
This is a windows problem for me. When you load Firefox first time it runs the import wizard which is time consuming and annoying.
So far my solution is to put a default Firefox profile in the location:
C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Application Data
I would recommend doing this after the homepage. Load up Firefox without any changes to settings then close it down and take the raw settings (Mozilla directorie) from:
C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\
and paste it in:
C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Application Data\
change the name of the directorie in:
C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
to something like:
mycompany.default
and replace the corresponding line in the file:
C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\profiles.ini