Use an external mail app with Mozilla mailto links

May 02, '02 09:16:05AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

I found this hint on Mozilla's bug tracker (bugzilla), listed as bug #11459. Within this bug, you'll find comment #72:

I'm not sure if this applies to all builds of Mozilla or just the Mac OS X build, but adding a file called user.js to your profile folder (the same folder which contains prefs.js) and placing the following text in that file will fix this bug:
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.external.mailto", true);
From what I understand, this also works for ftp and nntp. This was pointed out to me by someone in the netscape.public.mozilla.macosx newsgroup.
Save the file as a plain text file, and place it in your Mozilla profile folder (buried in your Library -> Mozilla -> Profiles -> username -> some_mess.slt directory). Now quit and relaunch Mozilla, and voila, mailto links open with you default mail client.

[Editor's note: Try as I might, I could not make this work on my Mozilla installation (20020417 nightly). I tried just about everything I could think of - made sure that the Internet pref pane had my preferred client and account info, changed the user.js "Open With" to match the existing prefs.js (which points to Classic Communicator?), cut and pasted the source from the bugzilla page to eliminate typos, etc. All that I've succeeded in doing is disabling mailto: links all together ... is anyone else able to get this working?]

Comments (22)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20020502091605391