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Guide to Customizing and Distributing Mozilla 1.4.1
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Chapter 4   Preparing Platform and Installer Information

The second and third screens presented by the CCK tool allow you to choose a platform and specify other basic information about your installer.

This chapter describes the information you need to prepare for these initial screens. It contains these sections:

Deciding What Kinds of Installers to Create
Choosing a Company Identifier
Checklist for Platform and Installer Screens

Specifying a Platform

The CCK tool can generate an installer for use on Windows or Linux. It's also possible to create a Macintosh installer by replacing some of the standard Macintosh installation files with the equivalent installation files produced for a Windows installer.

Windows

No special preparation is required to create a Windows installer. You simply select Windows from the drop-down list on the second screen of the CCK tool, called Specify Platform Information, and proceed through the other screens.

The Windows installation files produced by the CCK tool will run on the following Windows platforms:

Linux

To prepare a Linux installer, you should first download a Mozilla 1.4.1 Linux tar file to some convenient location. The tar file you should download is named mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-sea.tar.gz.

After you choose Linux as the platform for the current configuration on the second screen of the CCK tool, called Specify Platform Information, you can specify that location in the field provided.

You need to specify the location of the Linux tar file only once. After you do so, the CCK tool creates a directory CCKTool\nscpxpiLinux\ and stores the decompressed standard Linux installation files there.

If you decide later that you want the CCK tool to start fresh with a Linux tar file, you must delete the directory CCKTool\nscpxpiLinux\ and its contents. The next time you run the CCK tool, you will again be able to specify the location of the Linux tar file.

In addition to downloading a Mozilla 1.4.1 Linux tar file, you must have GNU Tools for Microsoft Windows (the Cygnus toolkit) installed on the system before running the CCK tool. You can obtain the Cygnus toolkit from http://www.cygwin.com/. You must also make sure that the path to the binaries for the Cygwin Unix programs is included in the Windows environment variable called PATH. To check the PATH variable, open the System control panel and click the Environment tab.

After you click the Build Installer button on the last screen of the CCK tool, the tool provides the customized Linux build as a tar file in

CCKTool\Configs\my_config\Output

You can then transfer this tar file to a Linux system and then extract the contents for testing.

After you extract the contents of the tar file, you must also change the permission of the file mozilla-installer-bin to include executable permission. You can then run the install script by typing ./mozilla-installer.

Macintosh

To prepare Macintosh installers, you first use the CCK tool to create a Windows installer, then follow the instructions in Chapter 13 "Preparing Macintosh Installers and Program Files."

Deciding What Kinds of Installers to Create

The CCK tool lets you create two types of installers:

The advantages and disadvantages of each type of installer are described in the sections that follow.

Providing a CD-Based Installer

Distributing your Mozilla installer on a CD has these advantages:

The main disadvantage of distributing Mozilla on a CD is you may need to update and re-distribute the CD as newer versions become available.

User Experience of CD-Based Installation

If you've chosen to include the CD autorun screen with your CD-ready installer, it automatically launches when the user inserts the CD. The user can then follow the instructions on the CD autorun screen to install your customized version of Mozilla.

If you've customized the CD autorun screen, either by using the CCK tool or by making manual customizations (as described in Manually Customizing the CD Autorun Screen), users will see your customized CD autorun screen instead of the standard one.

If for some reason the CD autorun screen is included with the installer but doesn't automatically appear when the user inserts the CD, the user must double-click the setup.exe file (Windows) or Mozilla Installer file (Macintosh) located at the CD root to launch the CD autorun screen.

If you've chosen not to include the CD autorun screen, the user must double-click the setup.exe file (Windows) or the Mozilla Installer file (Mac OS 9) located at the CD root to launch the Mozilla installer.

For Mac OS X, the customized files do not require installation: the user simply copies them to a convenient location and double-clicks the Mozilla application icon to launch Mozilla.

To run the Linux installer, the user must run the install script by typing the command ./mozilla-installer.

Providing a Network-Downloadable Installer

If you distribute your Mozilla installer over a network, you don't have to pay for postage, packaging, and CD duplication. Also, as new versions of Mozilla become available, you can readily provide them on your web site.

Since users must already have Internet access, distributing Mozilla over a network is primarily useful for upgraders or users who want to switch to Mozilla from another web browser. Also, users must have a modem capable of transferring data at a rate of 56 Kbps or faster to keep the download time within acceptable limits.

Table 4-1 lists approximate download times for an installation that includes Navigator and Mail only (approximately 11 MB). Actual download times may vary.

Table 4-1   


Transfer speed (in Kbits/second)

Transfer rate

Download time (in minutes)

28.8 Kbps

4.86 minutes/MB

53.4 minutes

36.6 Kbps

3.82 minutes/MB

42.01 minutes

56 Kbps

2.47 minutes/MB

27.1 minutes

64 Kbps ISDN

2.2 minutes/MB

24.2 minutes

128 Kbps ISDN

1.09 minutes/MB

11.9 minutes

144 Kbps DSL/Cable modem

.97 minutes/MB

10.6 minutes

To distribute a network-downloadable installer, you'll need to set up an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site so users can download the Mozilla installer from your site. You'll also need to tell users where to find the installer and provide them with instructions for downloading it.

User Experience of Network-Downloadable Installer (Windows)

To install Mozilla on Windows, a user

  1. Launches another browser or FTP program and downloads a small (300 Kbytes) installer program (Setup.exe) from your FTP site to the user's hard disk.

  2. Double-clicks the Setup.exe program to begin the installation process. The Setup.exe program displays a series of screens that guide the user through the entire installation process.

  3. During the installation process, the installer downloads the necessary Mozilla component files from your FTP site and installs them on the user's machine. While downloading is in progress, the user can pause the download process and resume the download later.

  4. When the installation is complete, Mozilla launches.

User Experience of Network Downloadable Installer (Linux)

To install Mozilla on Linux, a user

  1. Launches another browser or FTP program and downloads a small (300 Kbytes) installer program (mozilla-installer-bin) from your FTP site to the user's hard disk.

  2. Runs the install script by typing the command ./mozilla-installer.

  3. During the installation process, the installer downloads the necessary Mozilla component files from your FTP site and installs them on the user's machine. While downloading is in progress, the user can pause the download process and resume the download later.

  4. When the installation is complete, Mozilla launches.

User Experience of Network Downloadable Installer (Macintosh)

To install Mozilla on Mac OS, a user

  1. Launches another browser or FTP program and downloads a single self-extracting archive that contains all the installation files.

  2. Double-clicks the downloaded file called Mozilla 1.4.1 Installer to begin the installation process. The installer program displays a series of screens that guides the user through the entire installation process.

  3. When installation is complete, users must double-click the Mozilla application icon (or its alias) to launch Mozilla.

Choosing a Company Identifier

The only required item on the Gathering Information screen is your company identifier for the user agent string. The user agent string helps identify the browser type whenever the browser accesses your web site or any other web site. Your identifier in the user agent string allows your company (or others) to track the number of times Internet web sites are accessed by web browsers that you've customized.

The identifier you supply can be up to 10 characters in length.

For example, if you enter MyISP in the Company Identifier field, the resulting user agent string would look like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:0.9.4) Gecko/20010913 (CK-MyISP)

If you are preparing several different customized versions of Mozilla, you may want to supply a different user agent string for each one.

Checklist for Platform and Installer Screens

The Specify Platform Information Screen specifies:

The Gathering Information screen specifies:

Make sure you have this information available when you run the CCK tool.



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Last Updated July 30, 2003