Default Browser (default INSTALLEVEL changed in 3.6.16)

[Twospace]

Hi there, I ran across a small problem on the weekend while deploying 3.6.16 and I wanted to share my findings and solution with everyone to hopefully save someone else some debugging time if they encounter a similar problem.

Yesterday I had reports that people were unable to click on links from Outlook as it would return an error. It turns out that somehow the default browser setting had been lost with 3.6.16. Setting Firefox back to the default browser in options>advanced fixed the problem but that's a labour intensive process to do on a lot of computers and I wanted to fix it at the source. I should note that I am using Firefox as the default browser.

I quickly checked this forum but there wasn't much about the error message I was seeing, however, there was quite a lot about not making Firefox the default browser during installation. This post: http://forums.frontmotion.com/viewtopic ... =120#p3609 from DraconPern states that Firefox is no longer set to be the default browser, and that clued me in. So I loaded up Orca with both 3.6.16 and an older version and looked for differences.

I turns out that the INSTALLLEVEL (in properties) has been changed from 5 (which is what is used to be) to 3. In the Features section, F_SetDefaultBrowser has an installlevel of 4, so that means that the installer is not going to set Firefox as the default browser anymore when Firefox is installed.

I changed the installlevel of F_SetDefaultBrowser to 3 in Orca and redeployed with a new transform and everything is good.

Just wanted to take a moment to thank DraconPern and everyone here for making my life as an admin easier. I was a little late to the game with GP app deployment but I am a convert now.

My apologizes if this has already been stated in a FAQ somewhere.

TS

[DraconPern]

Sticky'ed since I think it is good info.

[joestern]

Here's another thing to pay attention to:

I had been frustrated for months because every time I used Group Policy to deploy a new MSI for Adobe Flash Player, the ActiveX version would work but the Plugin would leave the old Flash Player still alive, even though I was uninstalling it with my GPO. I would verify that Firefox was still using the old plugin by going to Adobe's Flash test page. The only way I could get an old Flash plugin uninstalled was to run the Flash Player MSI with an administrative touch on each workstation, or to use a third party deployment tool like GFI LanGuard.

Just this past week it dawned on me that a Flash plugin is included in the default Frontmotion package. On any computer in my network, I was deploying the Flash plugin twice; once with Frontmotion Firefox, and once by itself. Whenever I upgraded my Flash deployment in response to security updates, I was only upgrading the standalone installation.

I went into my Frontmotion Firefox MSI with Orca and set the INSTALLLEVEL for Flash (under Features) to 0. Now Frontmotion Firefox deploys without Flash Player, but that's okay because I deploy that separately.

I won't really know for sure that this works until the next Flash Player vulnerability is patched, but history suggests I won't have long to wait.

- Joe
Philadelphia PA

[DragonHawk]

I went into my Frontmotion Firefox MSI with Orca and set the INSTALLLEVEL for Flash (under Features) to 0. Now Frontmotion Firefox deploys without Flash Player, but that's okay because I deploy that separately.

I won't really know for sure that this works until the next Flash Player vulnerability is patched, but history suggests I won't have long to wait.

That's what we've been doing for years, and it works fine.

More discussion here: http://forums.frontmotion.com/viewtopic ... dobe#p3254

[kcot]

Firefox 4.0 MSI

Hi:

My organization wants firefox to be the default browser. The F_SetDefaultBrowser attribute doesn't check the box to make sure that firefox is the default on startup. So does this attribute just set it in the operating system?

Thanks!

[jpa]

The F_SetDefaultBrowser Level is used to determine whether Firefox is the default during install and never again. See the first post for the semantics.

The Firefox 4 MSI has also been configured to disable the default browser check on Firefox launch. To enable the check you'll need to:

1. Do an Administrative install
2. Open the firefox.js file in "Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\defaults\pref" in a text editor
3. Find the following "pref("browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser", false);"
4. Change the false to true
5. Deploy Firefox from the Administrative installation point

This is assuming I've parsed your question correctly.

[vtk]

Hi all:

So per this post, I went ahead and using the new 3.6.20 FMCE pkg, created a new .mst file, verified that the PROPERTY-->INSTALLLEVEL was set to 3, and manually set Feature-->F_SetDefaultBrowser entry's "Level" to 3 and pushed the package as an upgrade to my system via GPO. I then set IE to default, rebooted my system, verified the new pkg got installed and opened up FF, the browser was still set to IE as default.

In my environment as I need to have FF as the default I tried various other suggestions:

*) created a new MST file, where I set the Component-->C_SetDefaultBrowser and Component-->C_SetDefaultBrowserXP entries' "Condition" to "SET_AS_DEFAULT_BROWSER=1" then added an entry in the Property table called SET_AS_DEFAULT_BROWSER and set it's value to 1. RESULT: Did not work

*) Set INSTALLLEVEL as 1000 (as was previously set). RESULT: Did not work

I really would appreciate some assistance on this guys... I have users who keep switching their default browser to IE, and although I'm not allowed to manage the choice via GPO, I am allowed to at install time enforce the choice, and I need to make sure that when the upgrade happens it forces FF to be default.

Help?

[naberios]

By default all current versions of Firefox FMCE do not set themselves as the default browser per community request. If you wish it to be set as the default you have to change the INSTALLLEVEL property to 4 or greater. As a general rule, any item in the Feature table with a LEVEL number equal to or lower than the INSTALLLEVEL value in the Property table will be installed. If this isn't working there may be an issue with the new package or your configuration. I can't make assumptions either way. Hope this helps.

[jpa]

Have you tried this without the GPO distribution to hide and confuse things?

Manually install older FF version and select Custom. You should see the Set Default Browser task set to unavailable if you haven't modified the MSI.
Set IE as default.
Set Feature-->F_SetDefaultBrowser entry's "Level" to 3 in your MSI editor.
Manually install modified latest FF version and select Custom. You should see the Set Default Browser task as enabled. Firefox should be the default browser.

If this works and the GPO doesn't then we need more investigation.