[WEB4LIB] Re: Netscape profiles vs. logon ID

[James Klock]

Allow me to paraphrase what I think you're suggesting:
Background: Netscape 4.x for Windows32 insists on having at least one User
Profile, details of which are stored in the Windows registry (In the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Netscape\Netscape Navigator\Users key).  If
only one user profile exists, it will be chosen automatically.  If more
than one profile exists, the user will be prompted at runtime for which
profile to choose, UNLESS the command line (ie the shortcut) includes a
-P"profilename" parameter.

If there is only one user profile on the machine, Netscape will
automatically use that profile, which includes processing the PREFS.JS file
found in the directory specified in the DirRoot string within the Windows
registry.  

It should therefore be possible to create several PREFS.JS files, to
reflect the desired preferrences for different users.  These PREFS.JS files
can be kept on the Primary Domain Controller, and the user or group login
script can include a call to copy the PREFS.JS file desired for the current
user to the DirRoot folder.

I haven't played a lot with Windows NT login scripts, but I expect that
they should be able to copy files from the server to the local machine,
which is all that would be required of this technique.

To use this workaround, each user must have write access to the PREFS.JS
file.  This could allow a user to make unauthorized changes to that file
(although they would disappear when the next user logged on, as the changed
PREFS.JS file would then get overwritten).

While this is an intriguing notion, I have already successfully implemented
a workaround using the -P"profilename" command line switch, which is worked
into distinct shortcuts for each user.  This worked well enough for me,
because users do not generally have access to the Explorer, or to shortcuts
that are not in the Start Menu of their own NT Profile.  It was thus a
simple matter to modify the shortcuts available to each user to specify the
desired Netscape User Profile for the NT account that has access to that
shortcut.


At 02:20 PM 1/11/99 -0800, you wrote:
>Assuming that you're using Netscape 4.x, those settings are found in the
>JavaScript file prefs.js. You can increase your security by writing these
>preferences to the workstation each time a user logs as part of a login
>script.  Settings could be matched to NT groups. The settings in a
particular >prefs.js would reflect the group a user belongs to. I'm
assuming that NT >allows this user-level control. I'd be surprised if it
did not. This approach >would also allow you to centrally handle this at
any desktop on the network.