[sclug] Mailto in Firefox not working - what to do?

[Damion Yates]

On Fri, 16 Sep 2005, Will Dickson wrote:

> Neil Haughton wrote:

> > Are there any Firefox/html gurus out there? I find that mailto
> > doesn't work in Firefox on my machine (I'm using Thunderbird as my
> > MUA, but I have kmail installed as well). I can't find any Firefox
> > settings that pertain to mailing from a web page, in the
> > Preferences or in the about:config page, and it's annoying me.
>
> Much as I like Firefox, there are some really rough bits round the
> edges, and this is one of 'em.
>
> Go to about:config, right-click for new string.
>
> Name: network.protocol-handler.app.mailto Value: path to your
> thunderbird; eg. /opt/thunderbird/thunderbird
>
> Restart firefox just to make sure. After that, the following simpler
> example ought to work (page reproduced complete):

[..]

There are normally extentions people write to provide gui configs for
the complex stuff like this.

I like the fact that mailto: didn't do anything as I'd rarely be using
a gui email client and all it would mean was that I had to wait for
the bloated client to finish loading so I could xkill it or click
close.

As I normally use a cmdline client I'd just figured mailto: doing
nothing was fine, but you've made me think of something now.

> href="mailto:somebody at nowhere.example.com?Subject=You%20have%20spam."

I should be able to make mailto: run a shell script that creates a tmp
file (I've used 'a' here, my desktop box is called desk05).

desk05:~$ wxcopy --clear-selection --no-limit --cutbuffer 0 a

desk05:~$ od -c a
0000000 001  0  c  n  d  a  m  i  o  n  @  b  b  c  .  c
0000020   o  .  u  k 033  O  B \n
0000030

Now I can Ctrl-Insert (paste) in my screen xterm and it'll jump to my
0'th window and start to compose an email with the details provided,
it relies on screen0 being email (it always is with me) and the
existance of postponed emails (again, always true for me).

On Fri, 16 Sep 2005 John Stumbles <john at stumbles.org.uk> wrote:
[snipped]
> At the moment when I right-click on a link in
> thunderbird  I just get the options:
>         Select All / Copy Link Location / Save Link Target As ...
> and have to copy'n'paste it into a broser window manually.

This p*sses me off loads about the mozilla suite, they have made right click
very context sensitive and it often lacks useful options completely, or
has them in the wrong place.  In the past I could know right click and
down a pixel or two would be "Back" in Netscape Communicator 4.*.  I
_STILL_ miss this years later, if I had the time/money/skill I'd make
a NS4 style browser with a modern rendering engine.

They also do stupid things like make Ctrl-U not clear line, but view
src, I can't get over how many steps back in the Unix desktop world
I'm still having to go through some 12years after 1st starting to use
X as my main system.

At least to solve your problem you can highlight the URL or select
"Copy Link Location" and then just middle click the browser window
(which they added in at about mozilla 0.9 after amazingly not
bothering to implement something the netscape browsers had had for
donkeys years).

Thanks,

Damion

-- 
Damion Yates - email: Damion.Yates at bbc.co.uk - phone: +44 (0) 1628 407759
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