For about 2 years I have become an unusual Windows user – at least some may consider this, cause I was not using IE and Outlook anymore (damn, I must confess that from time to time I fire IE to visit Flash enabled pages and to print some pages – it still renders better). So, I was using Mozilla suite for a long time – yep everything from Mozilla worked oke with me (browser, mail client, etc). I have tried from time to time Firefox and also Thunderbird (I still think this last little brother doesn’t equal the Mozilla Mail features, but it will). Uptill version 1.0PR I have found big problems using Firefox, but the last preview release touched my heart, convincing me to give it an extensive chance. So here I am using Firefox as my default system browser and Mozilla Mail as my default mail client.
From time to time – as I always have liked to have things happening exactly as I expected on my computer – I had to go deeper in the confs of Mozilla and Firefox (I have posted here some other tricks). After moving to Firefox PR1.0 I have experienced some problems with the handling of mailto URIs. Even if Mozilla Mail is my system default mail client, Firefox kept fireing Outlook – and surely I don’t like this.
I have scanned the available infos and I have found that even if Mozilla registers correctly as the system mail client it doesn’t correctly register for handling mailto URIs. The suggested solution was to change the file type association of (none) URI mailto to Mozilla Mail client. Unfortunately this doesn’t work as the suggested:
mozilla -mail %1
which in fact is translated to
mozilla -mail mailto=mail_address,subject=mail_subject
doesn’t really trigger a new mail composer. Continuing to search through Mozilla documentation I have found out that the correct command line should look like:
mozilla -compose to=mail_address,subject=mail_subject
.
At this point it may seem that there is no solution as the URIs parameter is mailto (which in fact should be to).
But wait! I don’t give up so easy. Searching again I have found a Mozilla/Firefox mozex plugin which allows some external programs configuration. In the documentation page is said there is no need to configure mozex as long as you already did the previous trick. Unfortunately again, this didn’t work. Something else that haven’t work at this step was the mozex preference page in Firefox, and so I had to install it under Mozilla (where the preferences are in place) and go to the trick a like most about:config. From there I have extracted the mozex preference keys. Armed with these I go back to Firefox and using again about:config I have set
mozex.command.mailer mozilla -compose to=%a,subject=%s
and …. TA DAAAA: now it works. Even if this full configuration took me a while I think it’s worth it: I have my things doing back what I expect.
Mozilla/Firefox related posts
mindstorms 