Public Fox - For schools, libraries, kiosk systems, generally everywhere

For those of you who configured Internet Explorer to block certain settings/sites using Group Policy Editor/Windows SteadyState, Firefox can still access the Internet, overriding all you configured proxies if you have just blocked it in the browser.

Here is something that will change all of that! We all know that Firefox, Opera or other alternative browsers should be used instead of Internet Explorer. For security, speed, usability, and many more reasons. But people in large networks (e.g. school boards) are reluctant to installing Firefox because they are scared that kids can override the settings and disable the proxies and stuff. They are familiar with Group Policy Editor with Internet Explorer because apparently it is easier because it is a Microsoft technology.

Public Fox - time to show a more manageable Firefox to the world. Some of these certain options are disable-able:

Options panel
about:config panel
Downloads
Adding bookmarks
History
Add-ons

Also, it includes a feature for URL blocking, either a whitelist or a blacklist. For people wanting the browser to visit certain sites, whitelist it. For people wanting to block certain sites (most people), blacklist it. It's that easy!

A password is required to override block, so if people tried to access about:config, options, history, add a bookmark, download a file or access the extensions, a prompt appears and a password to override it is needed. Otherwise, the browser blocks access to that. Very easy, eh?

I have found this useful to introduce to the school and I hope they will get Firefox soon. So see if it is useful to any networks that you work in!

 

 

 

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That sounds good to me. I plan on buying another desktop computer, and setting up admin rights on this computer and giving it to my kids to use. And yes, I am a faithful Firefox follower. So I am sure I will set up both.

That is good news to hear and thank you for posting.

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Yeah sounds good, can also be done in opera with it's inbuilt mode simply by adding a switch to the end of the shortcut's path.

Has most of the features plus more listed above but it's pretty good for those users that prefer to use firefox, anything beats IE!

-HellFire

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Not a bad idea, it could be done years ago, because it isn't very hard to achieve and in my opinion, most of browsers can have this kind of option, even with somekind of blocking software to block porno, proxy, myspace and similar sites for which public bandwidth shouldn't be used! Moreover, ads could be blocked too, to not get income from public computers.

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