June 25, 2004

2:52 PM

I'm in love with the FireFox .9 browser, especially with the amazing web developer extensions and the sharp looking Noia theme. Is there a way to repackage it with some of those extensions already installed?
posted by TungstenChef to (5 comments total)

I find it to be a great help with my job in the support department of an awesome webhost. I think the other people in support would find it useful too, but I have to overcome the inertia of IE. I need to lower the barriers to entry as much as possible, so it would be ideal to have one executable with all of the best extras already installed. Is this doable without messing with the source code?
posted by TungstenChef at 2:53 PM on June 25, 2004

I think a USB keychain would be your best option.
Lots of IT staff swear by 'em.

The one nagging problem I'd see with your idea would be in getting the other support members to agree on which extensions are must-haves or not.
And that's not even getting into theme preferences! ;)
posted by Smart Dalek at 4:25 PM on June 25, 2004

Does Firefox on Windows use the registry? If you just copy your Firefox folder to another Windows PC does it run with your extensions installed? If so, why not just Winzip that directory and pass that around? That way people can just unzip it and go...
posted by Voivod at 4:44 PM on June 25, 2004

The default 0.9 theme is about as sharp as a rusty sledgehammer if you ask me. Qute, on the other hand... Never tried Noia.

OK, Mozilla Firefox can install extensions into two kinds of places. First, it can install into its own program directory, normally C:\Program Files\Mozilla\Firefox on Windows I believe. Second, since it's a multi-user application, it can install extensions for each user separately in their profile folder (where it also keeps your bookmarks, history, encrypted password history, preferences, themes, etc.) This is C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.***. Note "***" is a random string, and Application Data is a hidden directory.

If you want to back up and restore the entire application for yourself, you should zip both directories mentioned above, or install all extensions to your user profile and back up just that. Alternatively, use the Texturizer extension list.
posted by azazello at 9:15 AM on June 26, 2004

Get the extensions and make your own 'popular extension installer'

You can use something like NSIS to do this.
posted by skallas at 3:37 PM on June 26, 2004