Computer users who read carefully the onscreen text during installations won’t accidentally allow the installer to make changes to their home page and default search provider. Users who click next next next in installations will.

Having a program change the browser home page and search provider is not a big deal usually, as it is possible to change the settings back to their original values in the web browser. Still, some users may prefer an option to block those changes from happening in the first place, and Browser Protect for Firefox is exactly the program for that.

How does it work? Browser Protect uses a whitelist approach. It contains a list of allowed home pages and search providers. Any attempt to change their values to something different will be blocked by the Firefox add-on. A notification is displayed to the user in this case, with an option to make the change or keep the default setting.

The add-on will protect the browser from changes from any source. It will block new search providers for instance if they are not in the whitelist. It is however still possible to make the change in this case by accepting the change in the notification popup.

New home pages and search providers can be added to the whitelist in case that is needed. This is for instance the case if a Firefox add-on creates a custom homepage (e.g. speeddial). Browser Protect offers a solid protection against unwanted home page and search provider changes. Not every Firefox user may want to install it though, considering that it is superfluous if a user always pays attention to installation dialogs.

Far more interesting than this well known feature is another option that is quite hidden in the same menu. Let me first explain how you open it. The Firefox options open in a new window and are located in the Tools > Options menu. The Main tab of those options define the Startup options which includes setting the homepage.

It is furthermore possible to configure Firefox to open the tabs and windows from the last Firefox session.

As you can see that option can be configured in the same menu. It does come in handy if you regularly continue your work from the last session and do not want to open the websites over and over again. I think that’s a pretty interesting option that gets overlooked quite often.