How do I make Firebird and Thunderbird work together???
 

Hi. Linux newbie here running Mandrake 9.1 with a question about Firebird and Thunderbird.

I'm currently running Firebird 0.7 and Thunderbird 0.3 as my browser/email progs.
All I want them to do is work together--that's not too much to ask, is it?

Here's the problem. When someone sends me a link via email, I want Firebird to open the link when I click on it. Currently, when I hover over the link in Thunderbird, the address is displayed in the status bar. But when I click on it, however, I get nothing.
And here's the rest of the problem. When I am browsing some page in Firebird and see a link to email someone, I click it and get:
Alert! mailto is not a registered protocol

Anyone know the secrets to getting these two programs to work together?

Thanks for the help,
Kris

I'm not sure how to get a URL from one program to open in another, but I think I can answer your question about mailto:

Firebird is a fairly minimal browser. It does not include a self-contained e-mail program, and thus does not know what to do with "mailto" links. Unless you've set up another e-mail client like Evolution to handle those, they are useless.

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm not sure if I follow you here. You're saying if I was running Evolution for my email client, that Firebird's mailto protocol would work? Or would I also have to be running a different browser?

I think that this should be handled by the window manager... I know how this is done in KDE, you go to the control panel thing and mess about with the File Types bit. (You may realise that this is coming from memory ;) ) for firebird you would add an entry to *.html (and other relevent ones) and move it to the top of the list.

You will need to set certain options in there, like "firebird %s" or something similar. I use Kmail with firebird and found out the right switch from searching on google groups. I can tell you the setting for firebird after I've had a chance to check it, but you will have to find the right one for thunderbird anyway, so find firebird while your looking for that.

I imagine that this type of this is just as easy in Gnome on linux... here at work I use Gnome on solaris and there is a "File Types and Programs" app on the foot menu that does the same thing.

not sure if that works with thunderbird. i have konqueror associated with html files and it is the only one in the list, but when i click a url in an email nothing happnes, nothing opens.

there has to be something somewhere on how to get this to work. i'll search on the mozilla site for it.

I've been looking all over the mozilla site and I can't seem to find anything. I posted threads on both the Thunderbird and Firebird forums on mozillaZine, and it sounds like the current builds don't support these features. It does sound like the testing builds of both programs might allow for some interaction between the two. Check out the mozillaZine forums:

Firebird:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=37108

Thunderbird:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=37109

Again, thanks for the help,
Kris

Click here and scroll down a bit
[*]Linux: Integration with the operating system is not currently implemented. Clicking on HTTP URLs in mail messages fails to launch your default Linux browser. We hope to address this in the next release. We recognize how important this is for our Linux users and apologize in advance.

One simple answer:
http://mozex.mozdev.org/

and a short description:

Mozex is an extension which allows the user to use external programs for various actions.

Or you could just use *Mozilla*.

Mozilla is bloated

Add up the size and memory usage of firebird and thunderbird running at the same time - and go ahead and toss in an IRC client. I could say to throw in more, but most people are at least running these things all the time. Mozilla is not bloated - it's large and powerful. You can have a bloated xclock if it's poorly coded and uses disproportionate memory. And you can have a large app like mozilla that isn't bloated.

But hey, whatever anybody wants. Go ahead and have interaction problems and keep both apps configured separately and so on. If resource usage is really the issue, people should be using lynx and mutt.

Besides, firebird feels like IE. :(

Harsh words! ;)

When I want to mail I can mail without having to load a web browser. I like that. Same goes for IRC and anything else that you could bundle into an app "suite".

And you have to do the same amount of work configuring bowser/irc/mail etc even if they are jammed together in one mother of an app.

How does IE feel like FB? It's surely not the speed :D nor the tabs :D nor the mouse getures :D nor the concept of optional features. ;)

The nteraction problem is a bummer though, but I can live with it until it's fixed.

I use MozEX and it works pretty well although the developers themselves think it is an ugly hack. It will eventually be unneccessary as Firebird grows a bit to accomodate such functionality but until then it is pretty easy to get the mailto: links to work. I use Sylpheed and all links open a new compose window. All it took was a quick cut and paste of the arguments supplied from the MozEX website posted above.

Yeah, that's cool, my main beef though is with thunderbird screwing up firebird by not allowing multiple sessions, and http links in thunderbird not working.

try this


HTH