Comments on: Administering Firefox: pushing browser preferences http://trevorturk.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/administering-firefox-pushing-browser-preferences/ A chess-playing machine of the late 18th century, promoted as an automaton but later proved a hoax. Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:13:43 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Timothy O'Conne http://trevorturk.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/administering-firefox-pushing-browser-preferences/#comment-854 Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:04:16 +0000 http://almosteffortless.com/?p=1290#comment-854 OK, I'm going to go ahead and answer my own question (with an excerpt from Mozilla's developer site):

A systems administrator can modify the default preferences in two ways:

The administrator may edit the all.js default pref file (install_directory/defaults/prefs/all.js). This has the advantage of changing the default value for both new and existing profiles. However, note preferences set in the profile will override the default settings. Also, note due to preferences file compression, some preferences are not saved if they match the default values, causing the profile to behave differently if used in a different installation.

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The administrator may alternatively put a user.js file in app_dir/defaults/profile/ ; this will put a copy of the user.js in all new profiles. This method has the advantage of resetting preferences back to administrator defaults at every start-up. Note that, because a user typically has access privilege to his or her profile directory, he or she can change the default values if he or she knows how. Another disadvantage is that existing profiles will not be affected.

…and there you have it.

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