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Fix Firefox to launch MIME filetype handler applications Web Browsers
I run Safari on my iMac, but I find Firefox to be a bit quicker and a little more lightweight so i run it on my much slower Tangerine iBook. Safari properly handles the .SMIL files that npr.org sends to allow me to listen to Real Audio, but Firefox just saves the file. When I attempted to select RealOne Player as the helper app to launch for .smil files, it was greyed out. All of the applications were greyed out. Data files were selectable, but apps weren't. Searching for help out on the net, I found this bug report on Mozilla.org. Seems that files ending in .app aren't coded to be recognized as apps. Oops.

That got me thinking: what if I dug into the .app package contents and selected the actual embedded RealOne Player executable file? In the Finder, I control-selected the RealOne Player executable and did a Show Package Contents from the contextual popup menu. In the new Finder window that popped up, I navigated into the Contents folder. Then I Option-Command dragged the MacOS folder onto my desktop, creating an alias on the desktop. Then, back in Firefox, I was able to open the Prefs, select the Download options, and change the action on the SMI type by selecting the application by navigating through the desktop alias to the RealOne Player application.

Now Firefox launches RealOne Player for .SMIL files just like Safari does. This should be applicable to any other MIME filetype handler applcation also.

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Fix Firefox to launch MIME filetype handler applications | 10 comments | Create New Account
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A brilliant kludge
Authored by: SOX on Mar 30, '04 12:57:33PM

I was marvelling at this problem myself. There also seems to be 1) a lack of a mime type manager and 2) it does not seem to follwo the mime types set by IE or More-internet.<p>
your kludge has such a perfect something about it. very nice.



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A brilliant kludge
Authored by: allanmarcus on Mar 30, '04 02:45:32PM

Have you tried More Internet?

http://www.monkeyfood.com/software/moreInternet/

This is a pref pane to set helper apps.



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A brilliant kludge
Authored by: pbw on Mar 31, '04 02:10:54AM

I must be stupid. First, Safari is not opening RealOne when I click a SMIL link. It just downloads it to my default download folder. Second, I can't figure out how to set MoreInternet to handle the SMIL file. I click Add, typed in "SMIL", "smil", ".smil", and ".SMIL" and dragged RealOne as the helper file. Every time I click a SMIL link (such as the Hourly Newscast link on npr.org), Safari still just downloads a SMIL file. I tried restarting Safari and the computer. Help, please?



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A brilliant kludge
Authored by: Zo-1 on Mar 31, '04 07:12:29PM

That would be Misfox, made by. . .iCab! And free.

The system will also hold Helper settings made in Internet Exploder, but one hates to depend on that.



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Doesn't work with PDFs + Preview.app
Authored by: leono on Mar 30, '04 02:54:37PM

Doesn't seem to work with PDFs and Preview. I set PDFs to automatically save to disk, so that PDF would should up in Preferences > Downloads. I changed the action to Open with Preview (that being the Preview in Preview.app/Contents/MacOS/), but when I try to download a PDF now, I get:

/Users/me/Desktop/myPDF.pdf could not be opened, because an unknown error occurred. Sorry about that. Try saving to disk first and then opening the file.



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Doesn't work with PDFs + Preview.app
Authored by: hamarkus on Mar 30, '04 04:37:00PM

I've seen this error message from time to time in Mozilla, I think I narrowed it down to certain webservers but I'm not sure anymore. You can always get around it via the contextual menu, selecting 'Save Link Target as'.



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Fix Firefox to launch MIME filetype handler applications
Authored by: neuralstatic on Mar 30, '04 04:06:59PM

i finally started to look into my firefox setup -- i have that same frustration with npr files.

but i find i am unable to add any new mime types through firefox's gui. the "open file with ____" pull down menu has zero options.

and if i go through prefs, i can remove or edit, but not add new ones. and SMIL doesn't show up there. though i notice it's in the mime.rdf file?

any ideas?



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Fix Firefox to launch MIME filetype handler applications
Authored by: pbw on Mar 31, '04 02:03:00AM

I had a problem with the hint. When I chose the RealPlayer app under "RealOnePlayer/Contents/MacOS", it would try to launch Classic. I had to edit the mimeTypes.rdf file to point to the Applications/RealOnePlayer.app. Then it worked fine.

Neuralstatic: In order to add the SMIL to the Firefox Download File Types, I just clicked the SMIL link on the npr.org site. A dialog box came up asking me what to do. I chose Save File to Disk and clicked the checkbox to do this for all. Then SMIL showed up in Firefox's list.



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Fix Firefox to launch MIME filetype handler applications
Authored by: briank on Jun 09, '04 10:05:32PM
This hint doesn't appear to work with all apps. A quick read of this bug report led me to modify the mimeTypes.rdf file (the Firefox folks can't seem to make up their mind whether they want to be Phoenix or Firefox, so the location of this file will depend on the version you're using...on my system, it's ~/Library/Firefox/Profiles/default.ys9; your default dir will probably be different). Just type in /Applications/NeoOfficeJ or whatever for the NC:Path tag, and an appropriate value for NC:prettyName.

This bug report says there's been a patch, but it doesn't appear to have been applied to the latest nightly build.

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Fix Firefox to launch MIME filetype handler applications
Authored by: morganw on Nov 06, '04 03:10:07PM
Here's what my mimeTypes.rdf entry ended up looking like:

  <RDF:Description RDF:about="urn:mimetype:externalApplication:application/smil"
                   NC:path="/Applications/RealPlayer.app"
                   NC:prettyName="RealPlayer" />


This trick worked for me, but I didn't read the original post & one of the helpful comments carefully enough so it took a few tries.

When you save the SMIL file in order to create the entry in File Types prefs, you have to check the "do this every time" box.

It took me four steps: create the SMIL File Type entry, create the shortcut to the inside of the .app package, point Firefox at the raw executable, then tweak the .rdf to point at the .app instead.

I'm interested to know if just pasting the snipped of rdf would work, but my other Mac is used for testing iPods so I don't want to let Real anywhere near it.

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