How do I make Thunderbird open links in Chromium?

Question

Using Xubuntu 12.04

I want to be able to click links in Thunderbird emails and have them open in Chromium (package name chromium-browser). Instead, they open in Firefox.

I have tried the following:

1) xfce preferred applications (Chromium is not listed, so I had to hunt down the executable) -- next time I run chromium, it complains that it is no longer the default browser.

2) Telling Chromium to set itself as the default browser. Thunderbird opens links in Firefox.

3) update-alternatives. It's already listed as an alternative at the same priority as Firefox. The "open web browser" app menu item opens Chromium. Thunderbird opens links in Firefox.

I have looked through the entire preferences gui in Thunderbird (but not the advanced config editor yet) and seen nothing that mentions what browser to open links in.

Please note that this is not Google Chrome.

Answer 1

None of these solutions worked for me. I ran thunderbird using strace, and discovered, that regardless of what value I chose for network.protocol-handler.app.http, it was always attempting to launch /usr/bin/google-chrome. I searched the preferences, and was unable to find any place where this was defined. In the end, I just did: ln -s chromium-browser /usr/bin/google-chrome , and that seemed to fix it.

Answer 2

This is what i found working for me:

The right way to do it now is open your about:config (from the menu: Edit > Preferences > Advanced). Open the Configuration Editor and search for both network.protocol-handler.warn-external.http and network.protocol-handler.warn-external.https. These two are most likely to have a value of false. Change it to true and the next time you’ll try to open a link from some e-mail it’ll ask you which browser to use. Chromium isn’t likely to be shown in the list of choices, so use the navigate button. You can find Chromium at /usr/bin/chromium-browser.

Original text by Htbaa

Answer 3

Well, I have never used thunderbird but, this looks right -->

When you click on a web link in Thunderbird, it invokes the default web browser for the operating system. It is possible to change this behavior by changing the default browser. On Linux, another way (tried with TB1.5 under Suse and Debian) is to insert the following line in Thunderbird's prefs.js or user.js file (of course put in the correct path to your firefox):

user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.http", "/usr/bin/firefox");

You can find where Chromium is by typing -->

which chromium

into the terminal.

Source -->

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Changing_the_web_browser_invoked_by_Thunderbird

Answer 4

Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> General -> Config Editor...

Right click -> New -> String

Enter the preference name:

network.protocol-handler.app.http

Value:

/usr/bin/x-www-browser

Setting Default Browser

In the command line, type

sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser && sudo update-alternatives --config gnome-www-browser