Firefox: Open Links and Mailto's in external applications

I prefer to watch videos in my favorite video player VLC or SMPlayer instead of watching them embedded on the web. If you click on a video file on a website you open it either in your default video viewer or view it right in your browser using a plugin. You may also open websites in different browsers which is great for developers who are using add-ons to view websites in different browsers.

Just right-click the link and select the application that you want to use to view it from the menu. Launchy, that is the name of the Firefox add-on, supports more than 60 applications right out of the box with the ability to add more applications using an XML file it ships with.

If you for instance want to view the source you have the option to use Ultraedit, Notepad, Open Office or Wordpad which is pure overkill. It is convenient to remove all but one program unless you really use more than one source viewer.

I personally can see two great applications for Launchy. The first is for webmasters who like to test websites in several browsers as you can simply select to open a site in a different browser.

The second is for users who would like to open media files in external applications and for users who like to send images right to their image editing software.

Update: Launchy has not been updated for a while and it appears to be no longer compatible with recent versions of the Firefox web browser. A user has posted a fix in the review section that you may want to try out, but I cannot confirm if it is working properly.

A comparable extension is not available right now in the add-ons store.

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