Making Firefox my default Browser?

Bruce Hill · 10-19-2004, 06:41 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by jsmarshall85
nah, those instructions arent distro specific. all you need to do is edit the scripts so they point to where you installed thunderbird and firefox.

I say they're dsitro specific because Slackware doesn't install web browsers in /opt but I have changed those paths to the correct ones for Firefox and Thunderbird.

Quote:

Originally posted by jsmarshall85
i had that issue before too, where it shows the page as being opened from a temp local location and if you did something like hit the back button it wouldnt work. the scripts worked for me.

So how did you get "the scripts to work for you" and stop them from opening a tmp file?

And also, this line of the instructions

Code:

3- Create a file called user.js in your ~/.thunderbird/default/xxx/ containing :

isn't the same for my install of Thunderbird. Have a look at these directories

Code:

mingdao@james:~/.thunderbird$ ls -alc
total 16
drwxr-xr-x   3 mingdao users  168 2004-09-21 15:32 ./
drwx--x--x  63 mingdao users 3896 2004-10-19 21:58 ../
-rw-r--r--   1 mingdao users  335 2004-09-19 07:52 appreg
-rw-------   1 mingdao users  292 2004-09-21 15:32 pluginreg.dat
-rw-r--r--   1 mingdao users  104 2004-10-05 19:31 profiles.ini
drwx------   6 mingdao users  824 2004-10-20 07:26 u3rixsh5.default/
mingdao@james:~/.thunderbird$ ls -alc u3rixsh5.default/
total 4256
drwx------  6 mingdao users     824 2004-10-20 07:26 ./
drwxr-xr-x  3 mingdao users     168 2004-09-21 15:32 ../
-rw-------  1 mingdao users     298 2004-10-05 14:31 95551650.s
drwxr-xr-x  5 mingdao users     144 2004-10-04 20:32 Mail/
drwxr-xr-x  2 mingdao users     112 2004-09-19 07:52 US/
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users 3819146 2004-10-18 16:45 XUL.mfasl
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users   25965 2004-10-19 23:20 abook.mab
-rw-------  1 mingdao users   65536 2004-10-19 09:54 cert8.db
drwxr-xr-x  3 mingdao users     112 2004-09-27 17:54 chrome/
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users      65 2004-09-27 17:54 compatibility.ini
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users      92 2004-09-27 17:54 components.ini
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users  165585 2004-09-27 17:54 compreg.dat
-rw-------  1 mingdao users     300 2004-10-19 23:02 cookies.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users     102 2004-09-27 17:54 defaults.ini
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users    5777 2004-10-19 23:02 downloads.rdf
drwxr-xr-x  4 mingdao users     232 2004-09-27 17:54 extensions/
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users    1395 2004-09-21 15:40 history.mab
-rw-------  1 mingdao users   16384 2004-10-19 09:54 key3.db
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users   18270 2004-10-19 05:46 localstore.rdf
lrwxrwxrwx  1 mingdao users      17 2004-10-19 21:58 lock -> 192.168.1.31:2763
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users     477 2004-09-19 07:52 mailViews.dat
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users    1269 2004-10-16 07:55 mimeTypes.rdf
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users   53497 2004-10-20 07:38 panacea.dat
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users     367 2004-10-19 23:20 persdict.dat
-rwxr-xr-x  1 mingdao users   24786 2004-10-19 09:54 prefs.js*
-rw-------  1 mingdao users   16384 2004-09-19 07:59 secmod.db
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users    1166 2004-09-25 04:16 training.dat
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users   94479 2004-09-27 17:54 xpti.dat

With these directory names, where should that user.js file be placed?

jsmarshall85 · 10-19-2004, 07:01 PM

to be honest, i cant remember. all i know is that these scripts have always worked for me when edited and implemented correctly. the only reason you need to edit them with the proper paths is that you can install TB abd FF wherever you want. the guy that wrote them put them in /opt, i put mine in /home/username/Programs so i had to edit them to correct the paths

from looking at yours, i would say to put the users.js file here u3rixsh5.default, that is the folder that has all the profile stuff which is where this file needs to go. make sure you edit the lines in that file as well

Bruce Hill · 10-19-2004, 07:25 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by jsmarshall85
to be honest, i cant remember. all i know is that these scripts have always worked for me when edited and implemented correctly. the only reason you need to edit them with the proper paths is that you can install TB abd FF wherever you want. the guy that wrote them put them in /opt, i put mine in /home/username/Programs so i had to edit them to correct the paths

from looking at yours, i would say to put the users.js file here u3rixsh5.default, that is the folder that has all the profile stuff which is where this file needs to go. make sure you edit the lines in that file as well

Thanks for your patience. It still opens tmp files, and that's where I put it.
I have Thunderbird installed in ~/ - here's my scripts. Can you check them?

Code:

mingdao@james:~/.thunderbird/u3rixsh5.default$ pico user.js

// Use firefox for http, https & ftp links
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.http", "/home/mingdao/thunderbird/openlink.sh");
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.https", "/home/mingdao/thunderbird/openlink.sh");
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.ftp", "/home/mingdao/thunderbird/openlink.sh");

Code:

mingdao@james:~/thunderbird$ pico openlink.sh

#!/bin/sh

export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME="/home/mingdao/firefox/"

url="$1"
if [ "x$url" = "x" ]; then
url="about:blank"
fi

if $MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME/mozilla-xremote-client openURL\("$url, new-tab"\); then
exit 0
fi
exec $MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME/firefox "$url"

Since I don't know much about scripting, perhaps there's something amiss?
I also copied mozilla-xremote-client from ~/thunderbird to ~/firefox

jsmarshall85 · 10-19-2004, 09:58 PM

well i just reinstalled FF 1.0PR and TB .8 and got the links to open firefox from emails in thunderbird, but cant get mailto links on webpages in firefox to open a mail message in thunderbird. actually that did work if tb isnt running but if it is i get prompted for a profile.

for the issue at hand i was able to get url links to open firefox from email messages. dont know what to tell yo other than to be careful in editing and placing the files and changing permissions on them and all that. maybe go back to the mozillazine.org article and try again from scratch

the other issue (opening mailto links from firefox to thunderbird) the mozex extension isnt compatible with firefox 1.0, did a search on google and found this
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?.../10/12/1644203
it is pretty informative, but could not get around the issue where if thunderbird is open and i click a mailto link, it asks for a profile to use. if thunderbird is not running, it works fine.

oh well, back to the mozilla suite

Bruce Hill · 10-19-2004, 10:04 PM

Jerry,

Thanks. I have rm'ed the files and gone back and done it from scratch
perhaps 4 times. I am copying and pasting, not just inputting, and changing
what applies to the installation paths in my system. You can see the scripts
that I've made from his instructions. Clearly there are differences in his
layout, such as this instruction I previously posted

Code:

3- Create a file called user.js in your ~/.thunderbird/default/xxx/ containing :

which is clearly not in the path of the current Thunderbird-0.8 installation.

If you can email or post your exact paths, then I've something to go by with
a similar system. Otherwise, I'll just continue to right-click. Perhaps even some
of the instructions from Andrew's posts that I followed earlier may have made
a conflict with the new instructions. God only knows, certainly there are many
things within computers which no one ever seems to figure out...

Edit: One other think I thought of...when I first opened the link in Thunderbird, I
got that message with a pop-up about what program to open it with, and I
chose Firefox and made it permanent. If I could change that behavior, perhaps
it would make a difference. But I have no idea where or how to do that...

jsmarshall85 · 10-19-2004, 10:19 PM

understood

my path was ~/.thunderbird/xxx.default where xxx is a random profile number like 0xd3dk4s.default, that is where user.js goes, which is what you had posted earlier

your scripts look correct. i havent seen anything wrong with them. perhaps there is something missing on your slackware installation that debian has, not sure. cant remember but i think the guy i got the scripts from was running gentoo but said it should work on mandrake. never said anything about slack or debian

not sure what more to tell you. i know i have been very frustrated over this for a long time. it never made sense how the mozilla suite worked right but you could never get firefox and thunderbird to play together and now they are headed to a 1.0 release and it still does not work correclty on linux. on windows, this is a non-issue, just set firefox as default browser and thunderbird as default email and everything is hunky dory. like i said i went back to the mozilla suite for now, i also like opera but it has its quirks too.....will the world ever have a perfect browser and email client???

Bruce Hill · 10-19-2004, 10:31 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by jsmarshall85
not sure what more to tell you. i know i have been very frustrated over this for a long time. it never made sense how the mozilla suite worked right but you could never get firefox and thunderbird to play together and now they are headed to a 1.0 release and it still does not work correclty on linux. on windows, this is a non-issue, just set firefox as default browser and thunderbird as default email and everything is hunky dory. like i said i went back to the mozilla suite for now, i also like opera but it has its quirks too.....will the world ever have a perfect browser and email client???

I really appreciate your response. How refreshing! While most of our more learned *nix brothers get highly irritated if we even mention something like you just posted, it is a FACT that most open source applications are BETA and will probably always be so. That doesn't mean they're not good, or in most cases, much better than their proprietary counterparts. But it does mean that bugs (or as some call them FEATURES) will continue to crop up.

It's my hope that I can get this to work, just because I know it's supposed to work.

I've experienced the same as you running Thunderbird and Firefox in Windoze. "It just works." However, I only boot into the darkside to use Adobe PageMaker for a good DTP, and printing from Photoshop (since GIMP only prints with it's gimp-print plugin at 600 dpi for my printer). It's not necessary, nor am I in the habit of running a mail client or web browser in Windoze. But I tried yesterday, thinking I might could learn something from this working there that might apply here. Close source code - no such help.

Perhaps when my work load lessens I'll try to walk back through what I've done, and then just uninstall all of Thunderbird and Firefox and try it again. Thanks for updating and confiming it works. This is a main reason I install those, and similar apps, under ~/ - since they are in flux, and it's sometimes beneficial to just rip them out and give it another go.

NB: I don't know how to recitfy it, but I have a suspicion (though no facts) that when that pop-up first appeared in Thunderbird, asking me what program to open the link with, and I chose Firefox - that this action is what's causing it to open a tmp file. However, I don't have a clue how to stop that, or change it. Do you?

Bruce Hill · 10-20-2004, 06:22 AM

Today I had to reboot, and now it's working!

Thanks, Jerry!

Bruce

jsmarshall85 · 10-20-2004, 08:22 PM

awesome! glad it worked out!

hyllplan · 05-10-2005, 10:02 AM

Thanks!.. gnome-default-applications-properties did it for me.
So simple and so hard to find on the web..
Why do we spend hours on these small problems? (answer: cause we are linux freaks)

What does %s in the end mean? String? I have also seen %u..?