Q4OS Forum

JimW

Member

Registered: 2015-12-08

Posts: 400

Firefox/Thunderbird fight!!

Ok, maybe not a fight, just a disagreement over the exact same thing as far as I can see!

I have a shortcut on my desktop for FireFox-esr which opens /usr/bin/firefox-esr

I have set Thundrbird to use /usr/bin/firefox-esr for opening web links

However, when I click a link in Thunderbird, it opens FireFox-esr and pops up the box that FireFox is not my default browser and asks if I want to set it as default. If I answer yes it continues. Checking the about shows it is FireFox ESR 52.1.0 - ok, great, what I wanted!

Later, if I click my shortcut on the desktop I get a repeat of the popup asking if I want to set FireFox as my default browser! Again I answer Yes. And again checking the About shows it as FireFox-ESR-52.1.0

???Same thing! But Thunderbird does not recognize that it was set by the shortcut and the shortcut does not recognize that it was set by Thunderbird!

This repeats again if I go back to Thunderbird and click a link.

Doesn't hurt anything, that I can see. Just a minor irritation that I have to click either yes or no between the two situations.

Oh - if I click NO it opens okay and does not disturb the other, but I have to do it each time for that situation (in Thunderbird or from desktop).

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,992

Re: Firefox/Thunderbird fight!!

I have had a similar issue (kinda) that user set preference were not observed and I think it stems from having so many different ways to set the default browser, if two programs use different methods for checking the default then there is going to be a problem somewhere...
I would start by looking at Settings -> Control Centre -> TDE Components -> Default Applications -> Web Browser and ensure in the following browser is checked and set to firefox-esr.
Second thing I would check is that

sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser

is set to firefox-esr.

If either of those are set for something else that could be the problem.

HTH

Last edited by Dai_trying (2017-05-03 09:14)

JimW

Member

Registered: 2015-12-08

Posts: 400

Re: Firefox/Thunderbird fight!!

Would this be a problem?

There are 5 choices for the alternative x-www-browser (providing /usr/bin/x-www-browser).

  Selection    Path                           Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
*0            /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable   200       auto mode
  1            /opt/trinity/bin/konqueror      100       manual mode
  2            /usr/bin/firefox                70        manual mode
  3            /usr/bin/firefox-esr            70        manual mode
  4            /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable   200       manual mode
  5            /usr/bin/iceweasel              70        manual mode

Press enter to keep the current choice "["*"]", or type selection number:

since the current choice is 0 I will try changing it to 3 and see if that helps.

Thanks Dai!

JimW

Member

Registered: 2015-12-08

Posts: 400

Re: Firefox/Thunderbird fight!!

Ok, that didn't help.
However, if I have FireFox open and then open Thunderbird and click on a link in it, then it will use the open FireFox. I'll just use that method, since I usually go to both email and web during the same period and having both open is no problem.

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,992

Re: Firefox/Thunderbird fight!!

Strange that... I'm having issues trying to use a gmail account, I was trying to set it up to test what browser it tries to use, I'll sort it out and post back if I find anything.

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,992

Re: Firefox/Thunderbird fight!!

Ok this is more than a little strange, I couldnot get thunderbird (Debian v45.8) to verify my gmail account so posted a question on mozilla site. The answer I got was to upgrade to a newer version as this problem was fixed in 52.1, I decided to download the latest version from mozilla (52.1) and unpacked the tar.bz2 file to my home directory and created a link on my desktop to the thunderbird file, runs without issue. I decided to do the same with firefox (Debian v45.9 : Mozilla v53.0) and followed the same procedure.
Just to note I did uninstall the firefox and thunderbird packages before doing this. I now cannot access thunderbird or firefox by directly calling them from the command line which is no surprise as they are no longer in my $PATH. But when I click a link in thunderbird it opens firefox to the page in the link!!! How does this happen? The only thing I can think of is that thunderbird must search for firefox in my home directory...

The bottom line is thunderbird is using firefox even though it is not in any $PATH variable. Like I said I am using the latest versions from the mozilla site and did not have to install anything else, simply unpacked to home folder and run the firefox/thunderbird command (from their own folders) and without any installation they are working as they should (so far anyway).

I don't know if this information will be of any use to helping you but thought I'd let you know anyway.

JimW

Member

Registered: 2015-12-08

Posts: 400

Re: Firefox/Thunderbird fight!!

Most software when they go to making changes that may mess with the users minds let the user know in advance! Guess the rules are changing!
Thanks Dia

Last edited by JimW (2017-05-04 02:20)