I am using Linut Mint 17.3 Rosa Cinnamon, and Firefox 58.0.2, but I had the same problem with earlier versions of Firefox.

I have a folder of links to various news websites. They all work correctly, except for links to https://www.sciencedaily.com/ . I have tried several times.

I make the links (as all the add-ons I have tried - several of them, probably all of them - do not work in Linux) by dragging the (i) symbol at the left of the address slot onto the desktop. For every other link I use, this works as expected and opens the webpage in a Firefox tab.

But when I click on my ScienceDaily link, it just opens gedit. I have no idea why it opens gedit.

To see if I could get around this by using another method, I tried saving the ScienceDaily page as a bookmark, which I could then drag to the desktop and use as a link. This works with all other webpages I have tried. But with ScienceDaily I get the same problem as before - it opens gedit and not Firefox, even if I have Firefox already running. Although the actual bookmark to Science Daily does work as expected.

Why does ScienceDaily.com not work as a link?

Thanks.

(p.s As I have already tried every Firefox add-on that can make links, and none of them work in Linux - even the ones that say they will work in Linux - , then they are unlikely to be a solution).

Change open with preferences should do the ticket.

Just a example of mine using rox file manager. Since you did not mention what you are running and using < file manager > in your original post.

http://postmyimage.com/img2/609_screenshot.jpg


Edit. By the way. Clicking your link in my browser takes me to the site and bookmarking works also in firefox - esr I am running.

i got firefox and I went straight there off the link you posted. Can you open up the link as a text file and see how it is written to get out to the network? post if you can.

you can take a look what the bookmark actually contains by right-clicking => properties.
show us.

I can't replicate the issue either, but the link I dragged to the desktop (KDE on CentOS 7, FF 58.0.2) opens in Konqueror instead of Firefox, even tho FF is set as the default browser.
I'm also unable to see the link in the filesystem at all, which is curious(?)

"But when I click on my ScienceDaily link, it just opens gedit. I have no idea why it opens gedit. "

Could this link somehow be saved as a text document?

The file manager I use is Nemo 2.8.7, which is the default for Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon.

I have tried opening the shortcut which I dragged to the desktop as described above. I tried it with the Bless Hex editor as well as three or four text editors.

The hex editor gives an error message saying that the file does not exist. The text editors either open up blank or do not open at all.

I conclude that the file has zero content, even though it has a file name.

For comparison I did the same thing with a desktop shortcut https://www.aldaily.com/ The Bless Hex Editor also shows it as having zero content, but a text editor shows it to have lots of content. The content looks like the html etc. code for that webpage.

I don't have this problem. I get better support for Firefox from their fora.