In our ficticious scenario we are members of the Corporation's IT Team. A signifiant number of Windows95 workstations are involved. We want to assure that each workstation has Netscape installed and configured identically. We also need to take into account that there are some customizations specific to each user. We want to minumize the number of site visits our Team members might have to make, preferrably reducing this number to zero.

Our IT Team developed the following design goals the installation of Netscape must meet;

• the application will be installed on the local disk for performance reasons,
• although some workstations are used by many different users, only one Netscape profile should be used (eliminating the need for users to select a specific profile from a list),
• cache must be local disk,
• cache must be deleted upon program exit as security/privacy measure,
• eliminate the requirement for user to specify program configuration details (ie: username, email address, imap/smtp/news host, etc.),
• assure the ability to refresh complete application installation to known state,
• all user-specific configuration files and other user-specific information are to be located in user's home directory,
• user must be able to easily refresh user-specific configuration, yet maintain certain user customizations (ie: bookmarks, saved mail/news messages).

Last modified: Jun 25, 1999.