Silent Firefox deployment with status banner

[cancerface]

Hello everybody,

Since I have been feasting on the vast amount of knowledge floating around in this forum for almost a year now without contributing anything, I present an alternative method to deploy Firefox (or pretty much any application you want) using NSIS. In this method an install-package generates a small banner on the target PC showing information about the actual steps taken during the installation of an application.

Although I like command scripts and my unattended CDs/DVDs are based on them, I started a while ago moving everything to a GUI driven method. It looks sleeker, it is certainly faster than a cmd script plus it gives the option of having feedback during the process. If you take into account the extended documentation as well as the nice forums which provide a solid background, this is an interesting platform to use

Intro

This guide is based on this thread by SiMoNsAyS. It will help you create a package that contains a custom version of Firefox with extra extensions, themes and plugins. This package will auto-expand and install all the above without asking any questions and it will display a small banner with feedback for the steps of the process. Something like this.

What you need

Carefully read the original Guide: Mozilla Firefox Unattended in order to understand the process and customize it according to your liking. Download the main EXE from one of the provided mirrors in that thread (version 1.0.1 of the main Firefox installer is included) (required)

Download the latest Firefox version (required)

Download the silent NSIS script (attached here: FxNSI_Script.zip)(required)

Download NSIS in order to compile the installer (required)

Download Venis IX in order to author the NSIS script (optional)

NSIS wordlist for UltraEdit (optional)

Extra Plugins (such as DjVu Browser) (optional)

More Firefox Extensions (optional)

More Firefox Themes (optional)

Procedure

(1) Create your work folder (mine is ‘My Documents\Firefox’) which will hold the NSIS script (check image-1)

(2) Create a subfolder (mine is ‘My Documents\Firefox\Firefox_Silent’) and expand the EXE from SiMoNsAyS’s thread. The links provided in his guide contain the 1.0.1 version. Remove all files from this folder (but leave intact the Setup subfolder) and expand the latest Firefox distribution here (check image-2)

(3) Place the extra Extensions inside the XPI folder (mine is ‘My Documents\Firefox\Firefox_Silent\Setup\XPI’), extra Themes inside the JAR folder (mine is ‘My Documents\Firefox\Firefox_Silent\Setup\JAR’) etc. (check image-3)

(4) Create a folder called Xtras within the Firefox_Silent folder of step (2) and expand extra plug-in distributions inside (check image-4)

Here is what it should look like at the end:

(5) Install NSIS (current version is 2.0.7). It should associate the .nsi files with its compiler.

(5a) [Optional] Install Venis IX in order to edit the .nsi files.

(5b) [Optional] Include the NSIS wordlist for UltraEdit to your existing wordlist (how-to)

(6) Edit the NSI script (FirefoxSilent.nsi) according to your needs (check image 1)

You may want to add more plugins in the Plugins section (include the distribution for every new plugin in a separate folder within the Xtras folder and then create an appropriate section in the FirefoxSilent.nsi script)

(7) Compile the script, either by using the right click shell extension from NSIS or by directly opening the file within the NSIS compiler. You should get the file ‘FirefoxSilent.exe’ which contains the entire distribution of firefox.

Upon executing this file, it will expand all the subfolders from steps 2-4 inside your %TEMP% folder, it will invoke the firefox setup (setup.exe –ms), delete the icons created by this setup, create new icons with prefetch enabled, create file associations, install extra plugins, register extensions and themes and clean up all the temporary files.

Notes

If you don’t want the installer to be silent by default remove the following line from the above script:

Function .onInit
  SetSilent silent
  …
FunctionEnd

You can still get a silent installation with a banner if you start the installer with the /S switch (FirefoxSilent.exe /S)

Kudos go to SiMoNsAyS and all the people who contributed to his guide.

Edited July 1, 2005 by cancerface

[Gouki]

Nice guide man! Congrats!

[SiMoNsAyS]

yep! cool guide!

[blinkdt]

WOW! I've bookmarked this thread and will be coming back here often. Hands down the best guide I've ever seen at MSFN, kudos to you!

[bigman1]

worked great once I edited the script a bit Thank you.

Wayne