How to use SeaMonkey with other profile as protocol handler?

[barbaz]

SeaMonkey 2.29.1 on Mac OS X. Been using SeaMonkey as my web browser for some time, but just switched email client from Thunderbird 2 to SeaMonkey, and I need to use separate profiles for browser and email. So I start SeaMonkey mail profile from a shell script with "-no-remote -new-instance".
Part of keeping browser and email profiles separate is that links from emails will need to be opened in the browser profile, creating a new SeaMonkey instance if needed.
I got part way there by disabling mail phishing protection and setting SeaMonkey.app as the external handler for http(s) links, but that opens a stray browser window in the mail profile, and it only works correctly if the first started instance of SeaMonkey is the browser profile (which it won't always be).

So how to always open http(s) links in SeaMonkey with a different profile, no matter what instances are started when?

(see also InformAction topic: https://forums.informaction.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=20124)

[barbaz]

After looking into this further, I've concluded that the best approach here is likely going to be to write an extension that intercepts top-level loads in the browser and passes specified kinds of URLs to a specified external application instead of letting them load. However, I have no idea how to invoke SeaMonkey from the extension. If I try to run SeaMonkey (even with -remote "openURL(...)" ) from a terminal or shell script, and if there is already a SeaMonkey instance with the browser profile running, it just aborts with an alert box saying there's already a running SeaMonkey instance.

How can I invoke SeaMonkey from an extension to achieve what I want, if that's possible?

[Philip Chee]

Did you try -new-instance without the -no-remote ?

Phil

[barbaz]

Thanks for the response

No, I didn't try that, but trying it just now, it didn't make any difference.

I think at this point I'm going to ask on IRC, see if they have any ideas.

[barbaz]

Solved!

Install a second copy of SeaMonkey as /Applications/SeaMonkey2.app, then start Mail with the following shell script:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/ksh
/Applications/SeaMonkey2.app/Contents/MacOS/seamonkey -no-remote -new-instance -P mail

Now set /Applications/SeaMonkey.app as the external handler for http(s) links

That's it!

Thanks to mcsmurf and Mc for the suggestions.

[Philip Chee]

Code: Select all

#!/bin/ksh

Hmm. The last time I used ksh was on Solaris something.dot.something because I didn't like csh.

Phil