1415227 - Firefox looses the ability to be configured by GPO on Windows

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1433136

(Core :: Preferences: Backend, defect)

Description

[Nick Heim]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
Build ID: 20171024165158

Steps to reproduce:

there have been several attempts in the past to push the Firefox-Developers to create a possibility, to configure Firefox on Windows through Group Policy Objects (GPO).
So far, there where a few extensions, which did the job with some restrictions.
We actual use a enhanced version of https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/gpo-for-firefox/
Several thousand machines receive FF with a tailored configuration here @ Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ).



Actual results:

With FF57 and the abandoning of the possibility to set preferences by Java Scripts, those extension will not work anymore.
This will leave FF as the only major browser on the windows platform, which is not configurable by GPO.



Expected results:

We administrators in the large organizations need a new possibility to use GPO to configure Firefox (and TB).
With the restrictions, that FF57 introduces, the developers will have to implement the GPO access by themselves.

Comment 1

[Nick Heim]

Hi devs,
i think the implementation would easiest be done in the autoconfig section of the code.
Most of the things needed, should already be coded, like setting prefs and reading the registry.
After all, policies on Windows are noting more than reading registry keys.

I can provide policy templates in ADMX format. They are not up to date, but actualizing them, should not take to long.

But there are maybe other people with more up to date versions of templates.

Thanks, Nick

Comment 2

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

We are actually building GPO support for Firefox. We are targeting it for Firefox 60 ESR

Comment 3

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Marking as duplicate. Please don't use AutoConfig.

Note that we will not be supporting setting every single preference via GPO as other implementations have.

If you have specific needs, please open bugs and make them dependent on bug 1433173. Please explain why you would need to change that preference.