How to set Firefox configuration settings that are not included in Desktop Authority (4271894)

How to set Firefox configuration settings that are not included in Desktop Authority

How to set Firefox configuration settings that are not included in Desktop Authority.

The Browser object in Desktop Authority contains many of the configuration settings that may be set for Firefox.  However, not all of the possible settings contained in the about:config list in Firefox are available to be set through the Desktop Authority script. 

Beginning in Desktop Authority version 9.1.1, a function named AddCustomFirefoxPref has been added to the main engine of the script.  The function can be invoked through a global or profile definitions file entry.  The function can be used to set any of the Firefox configuration settings not included in the Desktop Authority browser object for Firefox.  When the browser object validates and is processed by the main engine, the settings defined by the function in the definitions file are also processed.   

Syntax:  The syntax is displayed below and it differs for the four various value types involved.  The correct syntax must be strictly adhered to in order to prevent errors from appearing during the processing of the script.  The remainder of the syntax structure after the function name is the string that is going to be passed to the prefs.js file that is being processed by Firefox to set the preference settings.       

1.     Boolean value: (value can be true or false)

AddCustomFirefoxPref('pref("services.sync.prefs.sync.xpinstall.whitelist.required", false);') 

2.     String value: (add double quotes around value)

AddCustomFirefoxPref('pref("network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris", "http://www.mycompany.com");') 

3.     Integer value: (numeric characters)

AddCustomFirefoxPref('pref("network.http.connection-retry-timeout", 500);') 

4.     Locked integer value: (to prevent a setting from being changed by the user, replace pref with lockpref)

AddCustomFirefoxPref('lockPref("network.http.connection-retry-timeout", 500);') 

Troubleshooting:  In order for the AddCustomFirefoxPref function to be executed, a Firefox browser element must validate as true since the engine processes the function at the time that it processes the browser object.  When the function is processed by the main engine the trace file will contain entries showing that the function has been called and will display the settings as they appear in the definitions file.

In order to discover what preferences are available for Firefox, launch the Firefox browser and type about:config in the URL. When testing these settings, it is recommended to test in a profile based definitions file (with specific validation logic targeting the test machine or user) as opposed to a global definitions file. A further recommendation is to copy the syntax above into Notepad before pasting it into the definitions file to avoid errors. Any HTML formatting in a definitions file will cause the entire script to abort and will present numerous KiXtart error messages to the user.