Mike's Musings

Author: mkaply

  • An Enterprising Future

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    mkaply
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    Firefox 60 was released today with support for enterprise policies, including Windows Group Policy. If you’ve followed me or my blog for any length of time, you know that advocating for Firefox in the enterprise has been something that I’ve been doing a very long time. My first post about Firefox in the enterprise was…

  • Enterprise Policy Support in Firefox

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    mkaply
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    Last year, Mozilla ran a survey to find out top enterprise requirements for Firefox. Policy management (especially Windows Group Policy) was at the top of that list. For the past few months we’ve been working to build that support into Firefox in the form of a policy engine. The policy engine adds desktop configuration and…

  • Debugging Firefox AutoConfig Problems

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    mkaply
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    I get a lot of questions about debugging AutoConfig issues, so I thought I would document what I do to try to track them down. If Firefox starts, go to about:config and search for general.config. Make sure there are values for general.config.filename and general.config.obscure_value. If they are not there, your defaults/prefs/autoconfig.js file is not being…

  • Time For a (Job) Change

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    mkaply
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    I’ve always been passionate about Firefox in the enterprise. When I started Kaply Consulting eight years ago, I had always hoped that my primary work would be around enterprise Firefox. Unfortunately, that never really happened; enterprise work is less than 5% of what I do. So I do a lot of other work to support…

  • Disabling Buttons In Preferences

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    mkaply
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    I get asked a lot how to disable certain buttons in preferences like Make Firefox the default browser or the various buttons in the Startup groupbox. Firefox does have a way to disable these buttons, but it’s not very obvious. This post will attempt to remedy that. These buttons are controlled through preferences that have…

  • Don’t Unpack and Repack omni.ja[r]

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    mkaply
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    If any step in your process to customize and deploy Firefox involves unpacking and repacking omni.ja[r], you’re probably doing it wrong. Any modifications you need to make to Firefox, whether it be changing the default profiles, changing the default preferences or even overriding specific files can be done WITHOUT repackaging omni.ja[r]. If you really think…

  • 15 Years of Mozilla – My #webstory

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    mkaply
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    It’s hard to believe it’s been 15 years. It seems like only yesterday that I was working with the Netscape for OS/2 team to make sure that all the back-end OS/2 changes made it into the source code release. Being a contributor to Mozilla has allowed me to have some amazing experiences. Working with some…

  • Customizing Firefox – Advanced Autoconfig Files

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    mkaply
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    We’re almost done with autoconfig files. My previous posts covered what an autoconfig file is and how to create one. Now we’re going to discover how truly powerful the autoconfig feature is.

  • What Is Your Message?

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    mkaply
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    A few months ago, I had lunch with Thom Singer*. Thom’s an author and speaker and a really great guy. I met with him because I really enjoy public speaking and I wanted to talk to him about what it takes to be a professional speaker. We had a great lunch and a great conversation.…

  • Personas Interactive

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    mkaply
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    Brand Thunder released a new theme for the Goblins web comic today. While it’s a great theme and I’m excited to have it out there, I’m more excited about how we’re delivering it. Goblins is the first theme we are delivering on our new Personas Interactive platform. Personas Interactive is a new add-on that allows…