5. Configure the Source

Another problem with using Mozilla in a personal or production environment is that it contains code which will override any home page that you set on a timed basis, or whenever a new release of the product is distributed.

Since this information is stored in a configuration file, the easiest thing to do without breaking the browser is to change the configuration file to point default homepage settings to one that is more consistent with the environment that you are using.

Mozilla conveniently stores most of its compile-time configuration files with a .properties extension. You can use these files to specify text in message dialogues, fonts, and other options. In this case, assuming that your locale and language settings are en-US, the .property file that you will need is region.properties which is located in the xpfe/browser/resources/locale/en-US/ directory.

The changes that you need to make to this file are fairly straight forward. As a general rule, I replace the value portion of the name/value pair to one of my own choosing in every instance where the word "homepage" is mentioned in the configuration.


# navigator.properties
homePageDefault=http://yoururl.com
shopKeyword=keyword:shop [Product]
quoteKeyword=keyword:quote [Enter symbol here]
localKeyword=keyword:zip [Your zip code]
keywordList=http://home.netscape.com/escapes/keywords
webmailKeyword=http://webmail.netscape.com
careerKeyword=keyword:[Your city] careers
fallbackDefaultSearchURL=http://search.netscape.com/cgi-bin/search?charset=UTF-8&search=
otherSearchURL=http://home.netscape.com/bookmark/6_0/tsearch.html
#
# all.js
#
browser.startup.homepage=http://yoururl.com
browser.throbber.url=http://yoururl.com
browser.search.defaulturl=http://search.netscape.com/cgi-bin/search?search=

wallet.Server=http://www.mozilla.org/wallet/tables/
wallet.Samples=http://www.mozilla.org/wallet/samples/

#config.js
#
startup.homepage_override_url=http://yoururl.com