Setting firebird as default browser.

Discussion of general topics about Mozilla Firefox
hussam
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Setting firebird as default browser.

Post by hussam »

I just set firebird as my default browser. For the first time since 1996, I set another browser than IE as my default browser. Feel free to congratulate me on this big step :D .

Anyway, my question is:
when I pressed "set default browser", I got no message to confirm any changes.
I opened the "start menu" on my windowsXP and clicked on "Run". I typed www.hotmail.com and it opened in firebird, so I know firebird was correctly set as my default browser.
At the current state of development of firebird, is it reliable enough in terms of functionality to be set as a default browser?
Also, shouldn't html files recieve a seperate icon like in IE6?
sboulema
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Post by sboulema »

i have set my firebird as default for some time now and never had any problems with it. for me its stable enough be a default browser. html icons is bug#99380
hussam
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Post by hussam »

Thank you very much, I just voted for bug 99380.

Umm, target milstone is 1.2alpha, shouldn't that be updated?
sboulema
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Post by sboulema »

yep should be ;)
David H
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Post by David H »

Stability is a relative thing. FB is stable enough for me to use generally, but it is still in development, so things do go wrong with it from time to time. In the end it all depends on whether you can accept the level of stability/instability that it has.

BTW, I never found IE to be all that stable myself.
mikes
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Joined: December 14th, 2003, 8:09 pm

Post by mikes »

- Where can I find bug #99380? It doesn't seem to be in the bugzilla list.

- I went through the same routine as ht990332, so I guess Firebird is my default browser. However, when I click on a URL in an email in Netscape Messenger, it still opens up Netscape Communicator. Any way to fix this?
hussam
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Post by hussam »

mikes
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Post by mikes »

This stuff about the icons is a mess. Suppose I don't want Firebird as my default browser, or decide to uninstall it? How do I get all those .html. .jpg, .gif, etc. files back the way they were before?

Or suppose I want to use the image readers that come with Windows to read .jpg and .gif files, the way they did before? How do I re-associate them?

I was told by people at the Mozilla.org site that I could try out Firebird without fear because, if I didn't like it, I could just uninstall it. But if I do that it will leave all these files changed, won't it?

I consider it a very serious breach of etiquette, not to mention good faith, not to have warned people on the Firebird download sites that installing the program was going to change the attributes of all these files types throughout the computer, causing serious problems for people.

How about a reply on this from the moderator?
sboulema
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Post by sboulema »

firebird doesnt change anything only when you say it to do so. you can change all associations/icons in windows using Tools->Folder Options->File Types

bug# about this situation: 216501
hussam
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Post by hussam »

Mikes, for the html files, if you set IE as default browser again, it will take html association but I don't know about jpeg files.
anyway you can change anything from Tools->Folder Options->File Types

anyway if you want to backup file association, backup this registry key
Hkey_local_machine\software\classes
mikes
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Joined: December 14th, 2003, 8:09 pm

Post by mikes »

In reply to sboulema, what you say is not true. I didn't ask Firebird to change all my image file associations nor their icons. And I can't use Folder Options->File Types (in Windows Explorer, I assume you mean), to put them back the way they were because I don't know what the paths are to the previous applications, nor do I know where the previous icons are located (they seem to be hidden; searching for *.ico doesn't find them).

Looking at bug report #216501 doesn't do me a bit of good, as it only talks about how to fix Firebird, not how I can put my computer back the way it as before. I'm a user; I'm not immediately concerned with fixing Firebird, but in getting my computer to work the way I need. I'm sure lots of other users have found themselves in this same pickle. Surely someone at Mozillazine knows how to deal with this.

In reply to ht990332, I was using Ntecsape 4.78, and I want to keep using it as my default browser. Netscape 4.78 has no way that I know of to set it as the default browser, and even if it did it wouldn't change the image files back.

What I need is someone who really knows how to do deal with this to tell me how to get those file associations and icons back.

Help!
parsec
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Location: USA alas

Post by parsec »

Reload a registry from before you set FB as default.
sboulema
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Post by sboulema »

if you want i can give you a reg file/x-setup lpugin which will set back the file associations and icons. but this only works when using xp... and you didnt said your OS
mikes
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Joined: December 14th, 2003, 8:09 pm

Post by mikes »

Parsec wrote:

> Reload a registry from before you set FB as default.

I've no idea how to do this. I've never messed with the registry. Too afraid of doing harm.

Sboulema wrote:

> if you want i can give you a reg file/x-setup lpugin which will set
> back the file associations and icons. but this only works when
> using xp... and you didnt said your OS

This is an old laptop. It has Pentium MMX 133 Mhz processor, and was upgraded to Windows98SE, 128 Mb RAM. The XP plugin won't work, probably. (I installed Firebird because I can't run the Netscape update on my slow CPU.)

Can you tell me how to reset the associations and icons using Windows Explorer's Folder Options->File Types dialog box? I'll need the paths to the previous applications, I believe, as well as the icons (which are apparently stored in a system dll that I have no idea how to access).
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DallasBill
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Post by DallasBill »

For jpg, gif, etc. regardless of doing the Folder options thing, the re-association will not change the default. The default program will still be FB and you can see this simply by doing a re-associate and then doing the 'default' button again... it will go back to FB.

This is an ultimate fix in XP:
Go to Explorer's Folder Options->File Types dialog box and scroll down the extensions list. Wherever you see an extention with the FB icon delete it. Yes... delete it. This will cause those extensions in future to open with the program defaulted by the XP file system... picture and fax viewer for gif, for example. It was the only way I could get all those obscure extensions to re-associate back, and keep the file system default, and it works.

I personally would not recommend making FB the default using its Options button on a Windows system because of the way IE is integrated in the file system. On XP, I personally would re-associate HTML, jpg, etc. on a one-to-one basis only and this requires work and knowledge of extensions... and it would be nice if an extension did this with a check list... and only this.
...Bill
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