Opening links from thunderbird, with firefox

[bigjohn]

I'm getting an error when trying to open a link in emails in thunderbird.

 

It should be opening firefox, but it's telling me that it won't do that.

 

I've checked around and tried to add the couple of lines at the bottom of the prefs.js file so that it knows that I want to open firefox, but it doesn't seem to want to let me save the additional lines.

 

anyone got any idea why or how else I can set firefox as the default browser - either for thunderbird or system wide ???

 

Oh and thats with the current verion of both thunderbird and firefox (1.0 series). Under kde.

 

regards

 

John

[ianw1974]

Which version of Mandrake/Mandriva do you have? If you have LE2005 and higher, you can go into Configure Your Desktop. Find Component Chooser, and then you can set the Email Client as well as the Web Browser.

 

If you are using Mandrake 10.x then you need to run "gnome-default-application-properties" or it could be "gnome-default-applications-properties". You can then set the default web browser here, along with default email too.

 

Then, after you've done this you should be OK. Finish completely with a symlink in your home/user/.kde/Autostart folder typing this whilst in the directory:

 

ln -s /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon

[bigjohn]

Which version of Mandrake/Mandriva do you have?  If you have LE2005 and higher, you can go into Configure Your Desktop.  Find Component Chooser, and then you can set the Email Client as well as the Web Browser.

 

<snip>

 

Then, after you've done this you should be OK.  Finish completely with a symlink in your home/user/.kde/Autostart folder typing this whilst in the directory:

 

ln -s /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Now I am confused ianw1974. I've got to the "Component Chooser" part and told it that thunderbird and firefox are what I want. fine. But thunderbird still doesn't seem to know what app too start - as I mentioned I tried modding the prefs.js (as user). Which just didn't want too save, surely it should as it's a user preference in a user file ???

 

then I also don't follow what the "gnome-settings-daemon" has to do with this ??? i.e. why would there have to be a link to the gnome-settings-daemon in the ".kde/Autostart" ????

[daniewicz]

bigjohn:

 

You should be making changes to user.js, not prefs.js.

 

I stole this from somewhere on the web:

 

Mozilla writes prefs.js at shutdown, which means that prefs in user.js get written into prefs.js after your first invocation. Thus, if you change your pref in user.js, everythings cool and at the next invocation Mozilla will pick up the new value. BUT if you want to delete a pref then just deleting it from user.js won't work. You will have to delete it from prefs.js too!

[ianw1974]

then I also don't follow what the "gnome-settings-daemon" has to do with this ??? i.e. why would there have to be a link to the gnome-settings-daemon in the ".kde/Autostart" ????

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The reason for the link is because if you use KDE, the gnome settings won't get loaded, and therefore anything you configure in gnome-default-application-properties won't be loaded in KDE. That's why the symlink does it, by opening the gnome-settings-daemon in the background by putting the link in .kde/Autostart.

 

If you find it doesn't work, when your running gnome-default-application-properties make sure the shortcut to your Firefox browser ends with "%s" at the end to process the shortcut.

 

This is all I've ever had to do to get it to work and open links for me.

[bigjohn]

bigjohn:

 

You should be making changes to user.js, not prefs.js.

 

I stole this from somewhere on the web:

 

Mozilla writes prefs.js at shutdown, which means that prefs in user.js get written into prefs.js after your first invocation. Thus, if you change your pref in user.js, everythings cool and at the next invocation Mozilla will pick up the new value. BUT if you want to delete a pref then just deleting it from user.js won't work. You will have to delete it from prefs.js too!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Which, if I'm thinking "in the right direction" and not suffering from a "raging brainfart", go someway to explaining why, when I have a meddle with the prefs.js and add the lines to "apparently" tell it which browser to open, and then have a play with something else, when it reopens, it's dropped the lines that I've added.

 

So with that in mind, when I look, there seems to be no users.js file, do I just make one and then add the lines to tell thunderbird to use firefox or is there more too it (at the moment, it's even stopped giving me the error - it just does nothing at all)??

 

The reason for the link is because if you use KDE, the gnome settings won't get loaded, and therefore anything you configure in gnome-default-application-properties won't be loaded in KDE. That's why the symlink does it, by opening the gnome-settings-daemon in the background by putting the link in .kde/Autostart.

 

If you find it doesn't work, when your running gnome-default-application-properties make sure the shortcut to your Firefox browser ends with "%s" at the end to process the shortcut.

 

This is all I've ever had to do to get it to work and open links for me.

Oh dear. Thats confusing me even more. I don't run gnome at all (it's installed, but I never touch it - I find it thoroughly unusable i.e. it just "doesn't make sense too me").

 

Hence I'm stumped as to why I'd want gnome settings loaded/running in the first place - background or otherwise?

[daniewicz]

there seems to be no users.js file, do I just make one and then add the lines to tell thunderbird to use firefox

 

Yes

[ianw1974]

This is because some of the apps are GTK based, and are pulling settings from Gnome, even though your not using it. It is strange I know, I don't use gnome either, but for some reason, I sometimes get Epiphany loading. This was until I did this to stop it :P

[bigjohn]

Damn damn damn!

 

Well I now have a link to the gnome-settings-daemon in my /.kde/Autostart - the component chooser says that the email client is set to /usr/bin/mozilla-thunderbird, but nada!

 

Additionally, I've also now got a user.js file in the thunderbird directory that says

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");

which, as far as I can tell, is correct.

 

It is also now appearing in the prefs.js file like this

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

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

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

 

but having closed the apps and even closed the session and restarted both, it (thunderbird) still doesn't want to open a link in firefox.

 

Maybe theres something else I should be doing as well ???

 

regards

 

John

 

p.s. I know it shouldn't make the blindest bit of difference, but I'll try the "windows cure" and reboot as well - It can't hurt can it ??

[bigjohn]

<snip>

p.s. I know it shouldn't make the blindest bit of difference, but I'll try the "windows cure" and reboot as well - It can't hurt can it ??

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ha! the reboot didn't "hurt", but it didn't make any difference either.

 

Scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas, but maybe the entry(ies) in the user.js and prefs.js should be pointing at /usr/bin/mozilla-firefox ??? because theres no executable showing there, only a shell script that seems to be called mozilla-firefox.

 

Or is that another stupid question ???

 

regards

 

John

[bigjohn]

Ha! the reboot didn't "hurt", but it didn't make any difference either.

 

Scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas, but maybe the entry(ies) in the user.js and prefs.js should be pointing at /usr/bin/mozilla-firefox ??? because theres no executable showing there, only a shell script that seems to be called mozilla-firefox.

 

Or is that another stupid question ???

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ok, so as it turns out, it wasn't a stupid question.

 

It's partially sorted - but now bloody firefox is opening with a different profile. If I look in the /mozilla/firefox directory, theres about 4 profile directories.

 

I don't give a hoot about most of them, but I want to use the one that has all my bookmarks etc (currently posting this from opera).

 

So is it safe to dump the additional profiles except the one that I want to use with the bookmarks ???

 

regards

 

John

Edited December 13, 2005 by bigjohn

[bigjohn]

Well, once again I "bit the bullet".

 

Firefox was a complete PITA!

 

In the end, it kept telling me that the profile I wanted to use was in use - even when I'd dumped all the others.

 

I had to mess around with renaming, changing the default number etc etc etc.

 

In the end, all I could do, was to open the two profiles I had left one was the one that I wanted to use and the other one seemed to be some sort of default - I just opened both in different konqueror windows and then deleted the bookmarks and the bookmarks.bak file(s) from the "default" one, and copied the "good" bookmarks and bookmarks.bak files across.

 

I'll have to get the extensions that I want again, as well as the themes. More of a PITA but it's the best that I'm gonna get for now so it'll have to do.

 

Thankyou to all who have assisted in sorting this problem. I can't say for certain which of the suggestions has actually worked. I'm just relieved that I can now open links from emails.

 

regards

 

John