Disable new Firefox 8 addon controls

[HaST]

Hi,

Do you know if I can disable the new addon controls in Firefox 8? For example, when I've updated to Firefox 8 beta a window appeared asking for the addons I want to enable or disable. It's nice for home users, but in my company I don't want the users can change it for two reasons:

- For them that's confusing, they don't know about addons
- I don't want they can disable important company extensions

Thx

[bjherbison]

You should probably talk with (or join) the Mozilla Enterprise User Working Group. They are talking about corporate requirements.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise

But in the short term you need to focus on educating your users about the reasons you want them to run the important extensions.

[HaST]

In a clinical environment it's hard to educate professionals with technicals reasons. I'll try with Enterprise User group, thx.

[davidtse916]

I think I've found a workaround with Firefox 8 (Beta 6 at the time of this writing):

1) Install Firefox 8 (Beta 6) on a machine.
2) Run it and select the addons you want.
3) Make a copy of the extensions.sqlite file.
4) Deploy that file when you upgrade your user's Firefox.

I haven't fully tested the workaround, but it seems to be working at the moment!

[HaST]

I found another solution:

pref("extensions.shownSelectionUI", true);

Mixed with these configs I've solved the problem:

pref("extensions.checkCompatibility", false);
pref("extensions.checkCompatibility.8.0", false);
...

[davidtse916]

Re: HaST

Thanks for your reply. I've tested your solution in our public Firefox setup and for some reason, the solution didn't work for us. Probably because we are removing the Firefox Profile / Program Files folder every time someone starts up the Firefox application (so they have a new Firefox every time). This may work with our other Firefox setups, but I think I'll use the extensions.sqlite file solution for now.

[James]

I found another solution:

pref("extensions.shownSelectionUI", true);

Mixed with these configs I've solved the problem:

pref("extensions.checkCompatibility", false);
pref("extensions.checkCompatibility.8.0", false);
...

extensions.checkCompatibility itself is not used anymore since 3.6 when extensions.checkCompatibility.* was used.

[squall_leonhart]

For them that's confusing, they don't know about addons
- I don't want they can disable important company extensions

Thx

maybe you should hire people with brains?

[HaST]

For them that's confusing, they don't know about addons
- I don't want they can disable important company extensions

Thx

maybe you should hire people with brains?

maybe you'd have to leave us your brain, isn't it?

[gongalf]

I found the solution:

1. Set extensions.shownSelectionUI to true to disable the addon control wizard, that comes up once when you upgrade an existing profile to Firefox 8.0.

2. Set extensions.autoDisableScopes to 11 to automatically enable all addons in the installation directory of Firefox (ie "%PROGRAMFILES%\Mozilla Firefox\extensions" in Windows) when a user creates a new profile after Firefox 8 (or later versions) has been installed. You don't have to mess around with extensions.sqlite.
If you want to automatically enable addons in other directories (ie in the profile folder) you have to change the value as described in the Mozilla wiki under "Preventing automatic install from specific locations": https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Installing_extensions
The default value of "extensions.autoDisableScopes" is 15, that means disable automatic installs from all locations. By changing it to 11 (15-4), you disable automatic installs from all locations except the application directory.

Just for the record: Addons that are installed from within Firefox are always automatically enabled. "extensions.autoDisableScopes" just takes care of addons that were installed by third-party tools.

[HaST]

Thx gongalf, great explanation of autoDisableScopes!

[wolfbeast71]

Same problem here, bundled add-ons in a corporate environment are flagged by default as "third party" and not checked to keep. I don't want my users to be given the explicit choice to remove the internally added add-ons and even more so to have them disabled by default in the assistant.

Looks like exluding the scope is a good way to deal with it for now, but what I'd -really- like would be to have the option to determine that the add-ons added to the internal distribution don't show up, but any other third party ones (that might be a hazard) are listed (and deselected to keep by default). i.e.: list specific add-ons in a pref file or similar that should be considered whitelisted.

Thanks for the pointer gongalf - it's not really documented yet on MDN etc e.g. extensions.shownSelectionUI can't be found at all.

[KWierso]

There's talk of shipping new features in Firefox as default bundled extensions, so maybe your company could piggyback on that ability? You'd have to possibly modify the installer to include your extensions, but I don't think that'd be too hard.

[ffextensionguru]

I found the solution:
2. Set extensions.autoDisableScopes to 11 to automatically enable all addons in the installation directory of Firefox (ie "%PROGRAMFILES%\Mozilla Firefox\extensions" in Windows) when a user creates a new profile after Firefox 8 (or later versions) has been installed. You don't have to mess around with extensions.sqlite.
If you want to automatically enable addons in other directories (ie in the profile folder) you have to change the value as described in the Mozilla wiki under "Preventing automatic install from specific locations": https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Installing_extensions
The default value of "extensions.autoDisableScopes" is 15, that means disable automatic installs from all locations. By changing it to 11 (15-4), you disable automatic installs from all locations except the application directory.

I don't understand how you came up with 11. Yes I know you deducted 4 from the default 15, but the directions on the link given seem to differ from your method (or else I am not understanding the directions).

[HaST]

Same problem here, bundled add-ons in a corporate environment are flagged by default as "third party" and not checked to keep. I don't want my users to be given the explicit choice to remove the internally added add-ons and even more so to have them disabled by default in the assistant.

There are many ways for installing extensions, I think the distribution\bundles is for you:

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\extensions
This is the old method. Extensions can be xpi or unpacked (xpi or directory name needs to be the extension id). Extensions can be disabled in the Add-ons Manager. Extensions are not loaded in Safe Mode.

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\distribution\bundles
Extensions need to be unpacked (xpi does not work). The directory name does not need to be the extension id (but can be). The extensions do not show up in the Add-ons Manager, and are also loaded in Safe Mode. The addons here can't be disabled.

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\distribution\extensions
This seems to be a mechanism for staging extensions that need to be copied to the user profiles. The testpilot@labs.mozilla.com.xpi does this, but I could not get the mechanism to work with any other extension. I think this has to do with these preferences:
extensions.installCache
extensions.installedDistroAddon.testpil ... ozilla.com

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\12345678.default\extensions
This works as before. Extensions can be xpi or unpacked (xpi or directory name needs to be the extension id). Extensions can be disabled and removed in the Add-ons Manager. Extensions are not loaded in Safe Mode.

(This recopilation was made Richard van den Berg in Mozilla Enterprise Working Group )