Many Firefox users do not know that they can change the default email client in the web browser easily. What even fewer know is that it is even possible to not only select desktop email clients but also the web based email providers Yahoo Mail or Gmail as the default provider for all mailto links.
The mailto links in the format mailto:email@example.com are launched with the default application that has been set in the Firefox web browser. To change that one needs to open the options of the web browser. Windows users go to Tools > Options to open the Firefox options.
Users then need to locate the applications tab and filter for the term mailto. The menu should then look pretty much like the menu in the screenshot above. They then need to click on the pulldown menu on the right side to change the default email client in Firefox. Displayed are the current email client, the web based email clients Yahoo Mail and Gmail, the option to always ask the user and to select another email client not on the list.
The last option opens the file browser which makes it possible to select an executable on the computer system. It is therefor possible to select installed and portable email clients on the local computer system. It does feel a bit strange that neither Windows Live Mail nor Aol Mail are available from the menu.
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That was a good tip. I feel like a dummy for not knowing that, but I didn’t, THANKS!
I’ve been curious about the missing Windows Live Mail myself.
This has been the case for a long time and Mozilla has to be aware.
Firefox also displays the “Although this page is encrypted warning…”
for only MSN sites with all such warnings disabled in Firefox.
Cynically side one could think this is all deliberate.
Seems impossible to add any other web based email other than gmail or yahoo. I created 2 new strings in ‘about:config’ , one with the name of the service & the second the address ‘mailto’ will open.
They were correctly written as I simply copied &these strings :
gecko.handlerService.schemes.mailto.1.name
Gmail
gecko.handlerService.schemes.mailto.1.uriTemplate
https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s
changing ‘mailto:1′ to ‘mailto4′ & adding my own parameters but whilst these new strings were saved in the user prefererences .js file, the option doesn’t appear in the options/applications/mailto dropdown box.
Quite a shame really.