Simon Willison’s Weblog

How to install Mozilla on Bath University PCs

Since I’m using the University Library computers at the moment I’m having to reinstall Mozilla on a daily basis. Here’s how I do it:

1. Download Mozilla 1.2 Alpha for Windows (11 MB), taking advantage of IE’s “Run this program from its current location” option to minimise the time spent using that browser
2. In Edit->Preferences->Advanced->Proxies select Automatic proxy configuration URL, enter http://www.bath.ac.uk/proxy/netscape.config and hit the “reload” button (this gets Mozilla working with the Bath Uni proxy server)
3. Install the excellent Orbit 3m skin
4. Install the gesture recognition plugin from Optimoz
5. Select Orbit 3m from the View->Apply Theme menu
6. Restart Mozilla (to apply the skin change and enable gestures)
7. Edit->Preferences->Advanced->Mouse Gestures and set “Make mouse gesture with” to “Right mouse button” (that way gestures will not interfere with dragging over text to select it)
8. In Preferences->Navigator->Tabbed Browsing, check all of the options. This lets me load links in the background in a new tab just by middle-clicking on them.
9. Ctrl+B to bring up the bookmark manager, then File->New->Bookmark to add the only bookmark I ever need: http://www.google.com/search?q=%s. Once added, I right click the new bookmark, bring up the Properties dialog and set the Keyword to “gg”. I can then search for things on Google by typing “gg search terms” straight in to the Mozilla URL bar.
10. Finally, Preferences->Advanced->Scripts & Plugins and uncheck the “Open unrequested windows” option to kill popups

The above usually takes about 5 minutes but is well worth the time spent if I’m planning to use the library computers for more than half an hour. There’s probably a way of automating it all (I heard rumours that Hixie has a script to install the whole lot whenever he logs in) but I’m hoping to have a connection at home again within a couple of weeks.