Public Fox: Firefox Add-On of the Day

by Ryan Sullivan Feb 1st 2007

A new feature here at Download Squad, I will be highlighting Firefox add-ons on a somewhat daily basis. Add-ons, of course, can be any extension, theme or plugin available on any of the Mozilla products. I will be starting this daily excursion off with one of my favorite Firefox (FF) extensions, Public Fox.

Public Fox is a great FF extension that allows you to take control over you entire FF environment when it is in use by others. Public Fox allows you to lock downloads, so no one can download anything while you are away, lock add-ons, so that no one can tamper with your extensions (mainly this one that is preventing them from doing anything fun), lock the FF options, the "about:config" page and the addition/removal/options of bookmarks, to prevent completely messing up your browser. There is also a filter for the file extensions that you do not want downloaded (.exe, .avi ...). In order for you to use any of the locked features, all you have to do is enter the password that you set in the Public Fox options. The only thing that you can really do with this extension activated is to remove all of the search engines that reside in the search bar in the top right-hand corner.

There is a bit of a bug, however. If you try to install a new extension while FF is locked down, it seems that it is not installed if you do not know the password. But, after a restart of FF, you will see that it is, in fact, installed. You just cannot configure the extension outside of its default settings. But this extension is still a great one for anyone from an average FF user to even public libraries or schools. I highly recommend this extension for anyone.

On a side note, I welcome your reviews of this add-on as well as any suggestions for other add-ons that deserve a mention here at Download Squad. Please leave such things in the comments below and you might just see your suggestion on the main page of Download Squad!

Tags: add on, AddOn, public fox, PublicFox

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Ron said 10:25PM on 2-01-2007

I think Public Fox is going to be a great addition to my Firefox Add Ons.

Another one of many that should be brought forward is the ScrapBook Extension.
http://amb.vis.ne.jp/mozilla/scrapbook/

This is a remarkable extension.

Ryan Sullivan said 10:14PM on 2-02-2007

I have come across the ScrapBook extension's site as well as caught the HowTo video on LifeHacker's coverage of the extension. I personally do not use this extension and feel that if I were to cover it, it would be a pretty extensive post. I feel that Google's Notebook add-on is a bit more user friendly and a lot quicker to pick up as apposed to reading a 50 page pdf or watching the video to get a better feel for all of the features of the add-on. But I would love to test it out and give it a go and report back on it! And thank you very much for the suggestion! Keep 'em coming!

. said 9:26PM on 3-19-2007

I forgot my Public Fox password. How do I find it or remove add-on.

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