Mozilla team recently announced that version 3.5 of Firefox browser will come with a bunch of features that will provide companies and individuals to build their own versions of Firefox.
According to PCWORLD, Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox at Mozilla Corp. said:
The Build Your Own Browser program is a good fit for enterprises that want to create a customized browser that can be easily installed across multiple corporate desktops
I couldn’t find exact details what’s going to be available for customizers, but different sources say that it’s a Personas project combined with CCK. So you can setup your company logo, bookmarks, home page, search engines and do other cosmetic changes to the browser. It’s obvious that Mozilla wants to gain some market share in corporations where IE is 100%. But if “Build Your Own Browser” campaignhas CCK as a core, than it’s just a usual marketing hype and nothing else. It can't even be compared to IEAK
There’re a few reasons, Mike, why IE is so wide-spread in corporations. First reason is that it supports proper customisation through IEAK, second - if IEAK is not enough, IE can be fully configured through Group Policy, third – it supports ActiveX which is a must-have for building real intranet applications. Passport scanners, barcode readers, label printers, CCTV – all this hardware automation is done through ActiveX.
So until Firefox becomes a real platform for building intranet web-applications and gains a proper customisation and integration with AD, it’s not going to be on the corporate market.
For reference, read this blog post.