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Westminster College Proxy Changer

This is the update page for WC Proxy Changer, an extension for Mozilla Firefox and the Mozilla Suite (Seamonkey). Support for Mozilla Thunderbird will be in a future version (or you could help! see the note at the bottom).

Install WC Proxy Changer

Download current release: v

When clicking the link above to download, you might get a message beneath the Navigation bar that looks like this:

okay, so I edited the image a little O:-)

Click Edit Options... and a dialog will spawn. In that dialog, click Allow then click OK. Now click on the download link again. A dialog asking if you want to install it will spawn. Click Install Now after it counts down. The Extensions dialog will spawn and install the extension. Restart the application and it'll be installed.

If you are currently viewing this page in another browser, you'll need to save wcproxy.xpi to your computer (I'd suggest the Desktop) then open Firefox/Seamonkey, click File > Open File..., then open wcproxy.xpi from whereever you installed it.

Use WC Proxy Changer

After installing WC Proxy Changer, there will be a "WC" icon in the status bar. It will probably be on the right side of the status bar, depending on what other extensions you have installed.

WC on WC off
Proxy settings are on. Proxy settings are off.

That's all there is to it. There is an options menu if you right click on the logo, the same options menu available by clicking Options in the Extensions menu.

About WC Proxy Changer

Westminster College Proxy Changer (referred to as "WC Proxy Changer", "WCproxy", or "WCPC" interchangably) was originally a small Windows program I wrote in the summer of 2004 to make it easier for me to switch between on-campus and at-home Internet proxy settings. Windows, Internet Explorer, Java, and many other programs get their proxy settings from the Windows registry, so that program would just change the one or two registry keys that needed changed to make things work at home.

At the time, I was using an extension for Firefox called SwitchProxy to facilitate my need to switch between home and on-campus settings. At a point during the 2004 fall semester, the automatic update system in SwitchProxy died. I had to uninstall it because it would crash Firefox (bad). So, I began simply switching the proxy settings on and off by hand within Firefox. It wasn't that much of an annoyance because I rarely took my laptop home. Eventually, SwitchProxy was fixed and a new version released, but I didn't bother with it.

Right after the close of the spring 2005 semester, I bought another laptop. This laptop, a 12" 4.3 lb Averatec 3270, was much smaller and more mobile than my 15.4" 9.6 lb Sager 5680. I could take it to the college with me during the summer! I got tired of having to switch between home and on-campus settings manually, so I started working on an extension to simplify this. I figured I'd keep the same name.

The TitanNET operator caught wind of my efforts and asked if both the Windows version and the XUL version on the TitanNET CD. I obliged.

Don't know what a proxy is? Wikipedia has an entry on it.

Changelog

TODO

Contact

This thing works. The only way it wouldn't work is if the Mozilla developers change the preferences API. In that event, I'll release another version. I'll also release another version if the College changes their proxy settings. Don't worry, you should still get the update since you don't need to be behind the proxy to access this server.

If you have questions, though, email me at cdean (at) cs (dot) westminster (dot) edu.

If you want to try to get this thing to work on Thunderbird, please, by all means, download the package, unzip it, and have at it. I use Thunderbird, so I'll probably eventually get it to work. I'm in no rush at the moment. This extension is GPL'd, so go for it.