The File menu is probably the most frequently used menu in the browser. In Firebird, the menu includes entries like "Save Page As" and "Open File" that could allow user mischief in the underlying file system. Also, to keep our interfaces consistent, we'll want to remove entries for "New Tab". In the previous version of the tutorial, we had disabled "Print Preview" because it behaved erractically in Firebird. Now this functionality has stabilized, I have re-enabled access to it. Finally, it's important to distinguish between "Close" and "Exit". The "Close" option is intended to close only the current window (or the browser when only one window is open). "Exit", when selected, closes all browser windows. We'll leave both items enabled.
In the past, the Edit menu would have been a focus for security fixes because the Preferences menu in almost all Mozilla-based and Netscape browsers is located under Edit. However, in Firebird, the developers have renamed Preferences to Options and moved it under Tools. In this case, it simplifies our work as it leaves only text editing options under the Edit menu. All of these options are acceptable for our kiosk setup so we'll leave the entire menu enabled.
The View menu is loaded with options that we'll want to secure. First and foremost is removing the ability to add and remove toolbars and the sidebars. Although we've already disabled the sidebar functionality, the menu items are just an attractive nuisance. You'll need to decide if you want to leave users the option to turn off the status bar. I want it to always be enabled so that we can see links and activity so I'll remove access to the option to turn it off. Disabling the ability to toggle the toolbars also removes the Customize option.
The next section includes navigational options which we'll leave enabled for consistency. It also includes options for increasing and decreasing text size. We'll leave these enabled for those users who need larger text to see the pages properly. The entry for Character Coding allows the user to change the character coding used to display the web page. Typically, this benefits users trying to view a page that is coded in a language other than your default language. We don't need it in our setup so we'll disable it. If you do decide to leave it enabled, look carefully through the submenus to disable any entries that might allow users to tamper with the browser settings. The submenus are quite complex so save and test frequently your changes. Finally, we've already disabled the View Source and Full Screen functionality so we should also disable the menu entries.
The Go menu provides basic navigational options. If you are so inclined, you could even move the entries for "Stop" and "Reload" from the View menu to the Go menu. In our case, we'll leave things as they are and just disable the entry for the History sidebar.
Our users don't have any need to access the Bookmarks, Tools or Help menus. By removing these elements, we clean up the interface and provide users one less place to get lost. We'll simply comment out the entire menus. Take note that before you comment out the Tools menu that in doing so, you'll be removing access to the Options menu item. Hopefully, by this point, you'll have set all of your preferences through Options. If you later need to access them, you can simply uncomment the menu or edit the preferences directly through the prefs.js file. Also note that there is an extra menu associated with the Bookmarks. We'll comment this out for good measure. Make sure to close out your comments before the closing </menubar>, </toolbaritem> and </toolbar> tags.
Last updated: December 31, 2003
Created: December 1, 2002
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