Setting default browser and e-mail

kenhall4 · 07-08-2005, 06:04 PM

I prefer to use Firefox for my web browser and Thunderbird for my e-mails, but when I click on an e-mail address on a web page, accessed through Firefox, Evolution pops up as the e-mail program. Similarly, when I click on a web link in an e-mail, accessed through Thunderbird, Epiphany pops up as the web browser. How can I get Thunderbird to start up Firefox and Firefox to start up Thunderbird?

I'm using KDE with Mandrake 10.1 and Fedora Core 3. (Note Thunderbird only starts up Epiphany with Mandrake, it starts up Firefox with FC3.)

Thanks,

Ken

Dave Lerner · 07-08-2005, 06:51 PM

How to integrate Firefox and Thunderbird:

Add to user.js in Firefox profile directory:

Code:

user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.mailto","/usr/bin/mozilla-thunderbird");

Add to user.js in Thunderbird profile directory:

Code:

user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.http", "/usr/bin/firefox");
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.https", "/usr/bin/firefox");
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.ftp", "/usr/bin/firefox");

Create the user.js files if they don't already exist.

The paths to thunderbird and firefox may be different on your system.

angel115 · 07-11-2005, 12:11 PM

Hey there

I have a problem a bit diffrent.
I allready have a default browser "Elinks" but it's a text browser, not a graphic one

and i would to change it to firefox insted. Because for the moment all links (when i'm not in firefox) opened in the "Elinks".

So does any one know where to change the default browser? and how to put firefox as default browser?

kenhall4 · 07-13-2005, 04:36 PM

Well, I've tried Dave's suggestions, but unfortunately they don't make any difference.

I needed to create user.js files. I assume that the user.js files should work OK with only Dave's text strings in them, i.e. there's nothing else which needs to be present in those files?

Ken

Dave Lerner · 07-13-2005, 04:48 PM

You don't need anything else in those files, unless there are other settings you want to customize.

If the files are in the right place, and the paths to thunderbird and firefox are correct, and you relaunched the applications after editing the files, I don't know why it would fail to work.

For firefox, you can verify or change the settings by browsing to about:config (no spaces). I don't know if there's an equivalent for thunderbird.

fouldsy · 07-13-2005, 04:56 PM

Cool. I've wondered about changing those settings for a while now to control handling everything within Firefox + Mozilla rather than manually copying + pasting links and whatot. One extension I haven't found yet when briefly looking for this previously, is to click a click within Thunderbird, say from an RSS feed linking to a news article, and have that open in Firefox (now I've changed it!) but do it in a new tab...

kenhall4 · 07-14-2005, 05:39 PM

Problem solved.

I looked at the output generated by about:config and found that there wasn't any entry for network.protocol-handler.app.mailto. I then did a bit of searching for where the other "network.protocol....." entries were coming from and discovered that they were in a file called prefs.js in my Firefox configuration directory ($HOME/.mozilla/firefox/default.ukf/prefs.js). I then added Dave's user_pref line to this file and that got Firefox to launch Thunderbird.

There was a similar prefs.js file in my Thunderbird configuration directory ($HOME/.thunderbird/w28g05dc.default/prefs.js). Adding the three appropriate user_pref lines to this file then resulted in Thunderbird launching Firefox.

Ken