fx-autoconfig VS policy-templates

I'm using your https://github.com/MrOtherGuy/fx-autoconfig

Basically what the title says. I have some JS code I'd like to automatically run in a specific moz-extension:// page. In particular, I'm interested in Sidebery's moz-extension://*/sidebar/index.html, but I suspect the answer would be the same for any page. I tried writing a userscript with MrOtherGuy's fx-autoconfig, but to no avail: I can successfully run userscripts in chrome://browser/content/browser.xhtml, but if I add

If not possible with CSS, will JS work making them draggable? I found several JS draggable buttons at https://github.com/MrOtherGuy/fx-autoconfig

copy config.js from https://github.com/MrOtherGuy/fx-autoconfig/tree/master/program > C:\Program Files\Mozilla\Firefox

UI customization is fortunately still alive in the wake of XUL extensions.

A /r/firefoxcss mod has a wonderful collection of code snippets that they maintain, which you can browse here: https://mrotherguy.github.io/firefox-csshacks/ and they created a userChrome.js loader here: https://github.com/MrOtherGuy/fx-autoconfig

My favorite customization repository is https://github.com/aminomancer/uc.css.js - which really tests the limits of what is and isn't possible with userChrome.css and .js. My favorite feature is the implementation vertical tabs, without the use of extensions.

Some legacy extensions are maintained and can be found here: https://github.com/xiaoxiaoflood/firefox-scripts/tree/master... (although you will need to use xiaoxiaoflood's userChrome.js loader AFAIK).

Honorable mention goes to the Firefox CSS Store, which can be found here: https://trickypr.github.io/FirefoxCSS-Store.github.io/

Moving to WebExtensions was the logical choice for Firefox, technical/security reasons aside, as they are not alienating extension developers that target Chromium-based browsers.

Yes, they alienated their own extension developers. Yes, they could've handled the transition better, and worked harder towards supporting some of the many APIs/functionalities that extension developers needed (or still need) for their extensions to work in the WebExtensions ecosystem. I myself was quite mad for a very long time at how they handled the switch, but I think overall it's been a success - my own personal feelings aside.

Run it as userChrome.js

I'm currently using a customized version of Aris-t2's CustomCSSforFx theme, along with /u/It_Was_The_Other_Guy's fx-autoconfig loader for JavaScript. My setup uses the option to put the application menu button in the title bar. In the versions that had this as standard, the menu button disappeared when the menu bar was shown. Is there a way to recreate this with either CSS or JavaScript?

Why Use CSS Alone Though

There is no such thing as a "known trusted extension" ever since they killed sideloading extensions and forced auto-updates. 10 years ago not force updating extensions was also a thing they moved behind a flag, and then just dropped.

Also - if you want to blacklist certain extensions from certain sites, you abso-freaking-lutely can already... see: https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/blob/master/READ...

you want the `restricted_domains` field.

It gets worse - Mozilla is the fucking worst at checking submitted extensions. They tried to the play into the whole "app store" thing that Google/Apple were doing, but those are justifiable cost centers at those two companies in a way that just doesn't work for a player like Mozilla.

Mozilla's store checks for extensions are fairly pathetic. You can submit a near empty shell with excessive permissions, get approved the first time, then auto-update to a new release (which will deploy to users immediately thanks to auto-updates). That new version has to pass a battery of useless automatic SAST checks, which will happily highlight all sorts of things it doesn't like (it flags words like "hello" because it contains a curse word) but which won't do shit to check if you're hoovering up credentials, browsing data, tracking users, etc.

If you're unlucky, at some point in the next 24 months you'll trigger a real review from Mozilla and get caught.

To be blunt - I have 15 years experience writing extensions. I don't like Google. If you think Mozilla is better you're wrong.

You can do that with policy templates. Use the Discussion tab at the top of the GitHub page if you need help setting them up.

Policy Templates for Firefox

They very well could do this for a a company that requires really strict privacy and security, but unfortunately in its current state Firefox doesn't have nearly the corporate sysadmin-friendly tooling that Chrome and especially Edge do.

When I was tasked with implementing CIS browser hardening policies at a previous job a few years ago, this was just a matter of enabling some Group Policy template settings for Chrome and Edge, but for Firefox this involved distributing a prefs.js file to all the workstations. In any corporate environment it's very likely going to be point and click Windows admins that are implementing browser standards, who tend to be allergic to anything resembling code and are already used to using GPOs for just about everything.

Yes, Firefox does have GPO templates but it's not nearly as rich as Chrome and Edge. Edge has even more GPO templates than does Chrome iirc, Chrome already had a lot to begin with and then Microsoft added even more of their own on top of that.

https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/blob/v4.11/READM...

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/configure-micro...

That alone already puts Firefox at a huge disadvantage for corporate deployment, the other thing that makes it even less attractive, even to companies where privacy/security is a huge requirement (like my previous job) is that Edge is already bundled with the OS, and is one less thing that needs to be manually patched. In high security corporate environments, just keeping things patched is always a huge task so it's very hard to convince someone that they need to put in more work to keep an extra piece of software patched (which is already very difficult considering how frequently browsers are updated). To make things even worse, just about all vendors will only support Chromium-based browsers for whatever SaaS they sell you, so Firefox is a nonstarter for getting support, even if it will work just fine 99.9% of the time.

For all these reasons, I lost the battle to keep Firefox around, which is a huge shame because of how much I love it and wanted to fight the Chromium monoculture. So I guess for a corporation to support Firefox despite how corporate-friendliness the alternatives are, they'd have to reaaaally want to.

You can see the relevant JSON code in the changelog. As I said, you can post a comment on this page to remind Mike to update the documentation for policy templates.

This GitHub repository has a Discussions tab where you can ask questions about deploying Firefox: Policy Templates for Firefox.

Check out the official documentation here: Policy Templates for Firefox. You can use the Discussions tab if you have any questions.