Nice piece of information, thanks, Ishe.
Rick Justice
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ishe Chinyoka" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2010 6:29 AM
Subject: Re: [Blind-Computing] Add-on taking over
In addition to what others may have advised you regarding this, I think
it has become some habit of many plugin developers of Mozilla Firefox to
arbitrarily change your homepage to place their own pages. I think this
has to be with your consent, otherwise this is in mild terms a sheer
attempt at hijacking somebody's browser for their own ends. One such
engine is ask.com...
Well, to help you fight off this, you have the option to permanently set
your hompage to an address of your choice. Even you as the owner won't be
able to change it since the option for typing your homepage would be not
available on your General options tab. To do that, do the following:
(Well, I am only giving an example here. The homepage of Mozilla Start
page is http://www.google.com/firefox/";. Here I am going to use our own
web page as an example. So if you just copy and paste, and do the
following steps, Blind Computing will be your homepage and you won't be
able to change it!)
1. Open your Notepad and start typing in a blank document the following
text (or copy and paste, but make sure to change the address to your own
preferred one in the process):
//
lockPref("browser.startup.homepage", "http://www.blind-computing.com/";);
2. Save this document as "mozilla.txt".
3. Download a program called byteshifter from
http://home.comcast.net/%7Edabbink/dabbink/Download/ByteShifter.zip
This program will help you encode any file by a specified offset. However,
without being too technical, just unzip this program and run it. It does
not need to be installed as it is a standalone program. In fact, you can
choose to delete it after encoding your file, though keeping it won't do
you any harm. Rather you may need to use it later to change some settings
in Firefox.
4. Next, run this program after unzipping it. You will see that the
program has got to
(A) ask you the name of the file you wish to encode: simply browse to the
file you just saved as Mozilla.txt in step 2 above.
(B) After you load your file, tab to the box where it asks you for the
output file name, here type mozilla.cfg
(C) Tab once more and you will come to a place where it asks you for the
offset number. By default, the number will be 0. Delete this number and
type in 13. Ignore the next field where it asks you through a checkbox
whether to wrap this or not.
(D) then tab to the "Go" button. A message will appear telling you that
your file is successfully encoded. Then exit the program. You are done
with it for now.
5. Copy or move the file called mozilla.cfg to the installation folder of
Mozilla Firefox. By default, it is "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox".
6. Then navigate to that folder C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox. Here
look for a folder called "greprefs".
7. Get into this folder and look for a file called all.js. It is a
JavaScript file so you will have to open it with Notepad. (To do that,
simply go to your File menu in Windows Explorer and choose "Open with"
submenu).
8. When the file loads, type in (or simply copy and paste the line below)
as the last line in that file:
pref("general.config.filename", "mozilla.cfg");
Save the file with this modification and close it.
9. That's it. From now on your homepage will not be arbitrarily be changed
even by yourself!
In the event that you wish to change it, just make sure to repeat the
steps 1 to 5 above, just changing the address of your homepage and then
encode your text file as a CFG file.
Please note: you need to encode a cfg file for this trick to work. If
anyone wishes this byteshifter file and they are not in the mood to
download it, just write to me off list and I will attach the file and send
it to you. However, if it is quite a number of people interested in this
trick, I think I will simply have to ask that David host it on the Blind
Computing servers for anyone to get it from there. But it is not an
interesting file for most people so I don't expect many people to be
interested in this procedure.
Anyway, also keep in mind that this trick does not only work with locking
your homepage: you can lock any preference which you think someone may
change. In fact, this is another way of locking your Firefox so that
nobody can take advantage of the powerful scripting functions of Firefox
to harass the rest of the world with their ads and flashy pages.
That's it. Sorry if this was lengthy, but I just thought someone out there
might get a little benefit out of it. Cheers,
Ishe
On 9/7/2010 7:24 AM, Ravi Paul wrote:
Hi there, you can set your homepage by going to tools>options>general
and tabbing until you get the option related to your homepage. As for
changing your search engine, go to the place where you find "search
using<the search engine name>",
On 9/6/10, Lenny McHugh<[email protected]> wrote:
That is a good reason to use SuperAntispyware it does not allow an
automatic
change to your home page, at lease with I.E. Even when I want to add a
page
I must confirm with SuperAntispyware. ---
Please visit my home page, it is motivational, educational,
inspirational
with a touch of humor. There is also a very extensive resource list for
the
blind.
http://www.LennyMcHugh.com
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Matt"<[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, September 06, 2010 10:13 AM
To:<[email protected]>
Subject: [Blind-Computing] Add-on taking over
Hey ya, I have mozilla and I went and plaied in add-ons, and it seems
to
have taken over my homepage.
I want mozilla's home page as my homepagefor now.
Isn't it alt f and general tab where you change that?
What's the address for mozilla's homepage?
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