What features would you add to Firefox to get it into the enterprise?
Solution 1:
If it came in MSI format for easy installation to Windows workstations, and could be managed by GPO and Apple Open Directory then it would be perfect. It would also need to work well with things like Sharepoint, but I suspect that's an issue for the people designing sites in Sharepoint rather than Mozilla.
I know there's currently a fork of firefox that is designed to work with GPOs, but I'm talking about having it work with the "standard" product out of the box, and being able to control and lock down and any all preferences.
As neobyte says, patch management is also an issue. Firefox's current method doesn't scale for business imho.
EDIT: Extension management - this needs to be controllable by the enterprise too, there needs to be a way to roll out and "lock" into place a standard set of extensions, regardless of whether or not you want users to be able to add their own, possibly to nominate a trusted location of your own where you publish "approved" extensions, that kind of thing.
NTLM auth - looks like there's a hack to add this to the browser anyway if you look around the web but this needs to be obviously better exposed.
Solution 2:
It's annoying that I'm registered by can't comment until I reach a reputation of 50. Why do i need that to comment?
Anyways, to p858snake: Firefox ADM is not real GPO management, it's cheating. It's cheating by:
- Inject some reg keys into registry
- Use a .vbs as logon script to read these registries, then modify prefs.js file accordingly
As a result,
You are adding one more logon script. Logon scripts are bad and need to be kept to minumum.
There is no enforcing effect on what the vbs does. User can change the settings manually by going to about:config.
About how to help Firefox make it into enterprise:
- GPO GPO GPO
- Centralized update infrastructure
That's it!
Solution 3:
They need to get a group of developers at Mozilla who care about anything other than folks at home.
Let's think about the deficiencies of Firefox:
- No good, documented way to mirror the Firefox update repository and have clients pull down updates locally when approved.
- No good, documented way to mirror the Firefox add-on update repository and have clients pull down updates locally when approved.
- No standard way of applying extensions.
- No standard way of installing the application via systems management tools on platforms other than Linux. (And with Linux you're limited to whatever your distro packages)
- A settings mechanism that's is about as manageable as Windows 95 was back in the bad old days.
- A downright hostile attitude towards people who want to do something about these issues.
You'll see good alternatives as Safari and Chrome mature. Forget about Firefox.