Xfce Forum

Achilleas

Member

Registered: 2009-06-05

Posts: 5

Problem with Gnome preferred applications

Hello people of XFCE.
Apologies for starting two threads on the first day I registered, but I've been having a few issues for some time and it just occurred to me to post.

My problem (as the title suggests) is with the preferred applications and specifically the default browser.
In the XFCE preferred applications I have Firefox as the default browser (this is the options menu I get when I go to Menu > Settings > Settings manager > Preferred applications).

I also have Firefox as the default browser in the Gnome settings, which are accessed through Menu > Settings > Preferred applications (at least I suspect these are the Gnome settings).

I use XFCE exclusively, I just have Gnome as a backup manager and for a bunch of services I rely on (keyring, network manager etc).

Now the problem is this:
Apparently, Firefox does not recognize that when the Gnome preferred applications is set to launch "firefox %s", then this is actually Firefox. When the setting is as described, Firefox warns me that it is not the default browser and asks me if I want to switch it. Accepting the switch changes the entry in the Gnome settings to "/usr/lib64/firefox-3.0.10/firefox "%s"". Now the problem with this is that Thunderbird launches Firefox using this command when I click on a link in an e-mail, which bypasses the Firefox startup script and does not load any addons.
So the problem is twofold:

1. Thunderbird launches Firefox based on the Gnome default settings and,
2. Firefox changes the Gnome defaults to the full path when it is different.

Currently I have Firefox not check if it is the default browser as a workaround, but I would like to solve this properly. Is there a way to disable Gnome settings completely? Why does Thunderbird launch the browser based on the Gnome settings?

Thanks for any help.

Invisible

Member

Registered: 2008-10-11

Posts: 23

Re: Problem with Gnome preferred applications

Sometimes I don't know where to ask, so I hope someone would do this with me in similar circumstances.

I don't want to seem rude, but I think this is not the right place to ask. Looks like you have a problem with gnome, firefox and thunderbird, therefore you should ask in their respective forums.

In fact I think it is a firefox problem, I don't know why does it need the full path instead of accepting simply "firefox" and why it doesn't use the firefox startup script.

Anyway, I would try to set the gnome default browser to "firefox %s" again, and disable the firefox verification of it being the default browser. This should make it. Yet, it has nothing to do with xfce.

Achilleas

Member

Registered: 2009-06-05

Posts: 5

Re: Problem with Gnome preferred applications

Well you have a point in that it is a problem with Gnome's preferred apps, but I thought I'd ask in the XFCE forums hoping someone would help me "disable" all the Gnome related services and processes that aren't required.
I was afraid to remove all things Gnome related for several reasons (such as keyring manager and dependencies for AWN for instance) so I was hoping there was a way to disable the things that XFCE has replacements for.

Either way, thanks for the advice. You're probably right that the people over at Gnome would be more appropriate to ask how to get rid of their stuff.

I don't have the problem anymore by the way, since I went back to Xubuntu for other reasons.

Thanks

crimesaucer

Member

Registered: 2007-05-21

Posts: 103

Re: Problem with Gnome preferred applications

What you might want to check into is disabling something in gconf (maybe the gnome preferred applications so it doesn't conflict).

You could also ask this question in a place like ubuntu forums that has way more people in it (even if you don't use ubuntu), because lots of people run both gnome and xfce4 in there and might know a quick answer. You can also check the gnome forums.