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Mozilla says “Build Your Own Browser"

Mozilla will be launching its new “Build your own browser” tool to coincide with the official release of Firefox 3.5 later this month. But will improved functionality lead to greater market share?

Aimed specifically at businesses, ‘Build Your Own Browser’ will enable network administrators to customise and standardise browser settings throughout their entire organisation.

The new programme should make life easier for users as it allows sites of company-wide interest to be automatically bookmarked and access to the corporate intranet to be pre-configured. The browser can also be branded by overlaying a skin that incorporates the business logo.

In fact, Mozilla has made customisation tools available in the past although these were previously aimed at experts and not specifically adapted for corporate use. Now the organisation hopes that the new programme will help win further market share from its main rival, Internet Explorer.

Mike Beltzner, Director of Firefox at Mozilla Corp commented: “The ‘Build Your Own Browser’ program is a good fit for enterprises that want to create a customised browser that can be easily installed across multiple corporate desktops. Once the custom browser is developed, the application will send it to the company and give it an installation program that makes it possible to install the browser across all desktops in the company.”

Sheri McLeish, Forrester analyst, said: “The bulk of enterprises still use Internet Explorer if they mandate a browser for company use, because Microsoft provides provisioning and installation software for IE that makes it easy for enterprises to control browser settings and install across all corporate desktops.”

She added: "If Mozilla can enable some customization to developers and IT professionals to not only brand but give greater control to manage and administer the Firefox browser, that will certainly have companies take another look at it to make it the default browser of choice."