[Bug 331251] [NEW] Enable and document support for AutoConfig/MCD

[Daniel Richard G.]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

Mozilla Firefox provides a mechanism allowing centralized auto-
configuration known as AutoConfig, or "Mission Control Desktop." Some
references:

    https://developer.mozilla.org/en/MCD,_Mission_Control_Desktop_AKA_AutoConfig
    http://mit.edu/~firefox/www/maintainers/config.html

This is a useful feature to have in large installations of Ubuntu. It
has at least two advantages over modifying
/etc/firefox-3.0/prefs/firefox.js:

1. Configuration code can be fetched from a remote server when the
browser is started;

2. The Javascript code can do a bit more than what is allowed in a prefs
file, e.g. access environment variables with getenv() and use them in
pref values.

The Ubuntu (Intrepid) firefox-3.0 package, however, does not appear
amenable to the use of this mechanism. There is a firefox.cfg file in
/usr/share/doc/firefox-3.0/, but nothing in this file indicates how it
should be used. There is no .../greprefs/all.js file in the package, and
as that is where the Mozilla and MIT docs indicate that one should add
the "general.config.filename" pref, it's not clear where that should go.
It's not even clear that the browser was built with the "pref" compile-
time extension enabled in the first place.

I would like to see some sort of explicit AutoConfig support in
firefox-3.0, ideally a situation where a typical institution need only
modify files under /etc/firefox-3.0/ to get that up and running.

** Affects: firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

-- 
Enable and document support for AutoConfig/MCD
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/331251
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