1138161 - other programs fail to open links in "default browser"(set to firefox) since updating to 36 (Xubuntu)

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[georgezhu]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:36.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/36.0
Build ID: 20150224134236

Steps to reproduce:

Possibility 1:

1. Open Thunderbird
2. Check a mail that has a web-URL in it
3. Control-click it

Possibility 2:

1. Open QuiteRSS
2. Open any link with the external browser

Possibility 3:

1. Right-click IBus tray icon
2. Select "about"
3. Click "Website" link

Possibility 4:

1. Open Pidgin
2. Click a link someone sent you

etc.


Actual results:

A new empty Firefox window is opened. The link is not followed at all.

NOTE:
This only happens if the program is set to use the "default browser".
I don't actually know what programs do when it's set to that setting. Some programs like Pidgin and QuiteRSS allow me to set the program to open links in manually, and setting them to any of "x-www-browser", "sensible-browser" or directly to "firefox" actually makes opening links work again.

However, all programs worked by default before the 36 update I installed last friday. And this breaks many programs that don't have this setting(like the IBus example).


Expected results:

The link is opened in a new tab. This happened before, and this is what happens if you configure all external programs' browser choices manually now(if that's possible to do).

Comment 1

[georgezhu]

I found out doing something like `xdg-open http://ddg.gg/' is also broken for me. I suspect it has something to do with that. I don't really know how xdg-open works internally to start a program, though. `firefox http://ddg.gg/' works as noted in OP.

Comment 2

[georgezhu]

Okay I spoke about it on IRC and found out the problem:
Firefox 36 removed the decades-old deprecated '-remote' command, which was still being used by a .desktop file('/usr/share/xfce4/helpers/firefox.desktop') in Xubuntu, thereby breaking the opening of links in Xubuntu. It will be fixed in the next update of Xubuntu.

Comment 3

[Sylvain Viart]

Is there an instant fix for Xubuntu?

Just removing -remote in the file('/usr/share/xfce4/helpers/firefox.desktop') ?

X-XFCE-Commands=%B -remote "openURL(about:blank,new-window)";%B;
X-XFCE-CommandsWithParameter=%B -remote "openURL(%s)";%B %s;


(In reply to georgezhu from comment #2)
> Firefox 36 removed the decades-old deprecated '-remote' command, which was
> still being used by a .desktop

Comment 4

[georgezhu]

Yeah what I did to fix it was change the lines you quoted to simply:

X-XFCE-Commands=%B;
X-XFCE-CommandsWithParameter=%B %s;

Sorry for forgetting to mention it. Note that it might not be completely correct, I don't know .desktop files, I just did what seemed logical and it works.

(In reply to Sylvain Viart from comment #3)
> Is there an instant fix for Xubuntu?
> 
> Just removing -remote in the
> file('/usr/share/xfce4/helpers/firefox.desktop') ?
> 
> X-XFCE-Commands=%B -remote "openURL(about:blank,new-window)";%B;
> X-XFCE-CommandsWithParameter=%B -remote "openURL(%s)";%B %s;
> 
> 
> (In reply to georgezhu from comment #2)
> > Firefox 36 removed the decades-old deprecated '-remote' command, which was
> > still being used by a .desktop

Comment 5

[Sylvain Viart]

(In reply to georgezhu from comment #4)
> Yeah what I did to fix it was change the lines you quoted to simply:

Hep, tested yesterday. :) Same remark, I'm not sure about the syntax but worked instantly.

The link to url wont open any more under xubuntu. And the fix didn't came up quicly. I though it could be a ThunderBird bug, until I found your post. After seeing another blank page in FireFox from another program.

Thanks for posting it, and thanks to search engines…

Comment 6

[Andy]

Another thanks, this fixed the problem for me in Mint 17 XFCE x86 :)

Comment 7

[Zeioth]

SOLUTION:
Run these commands and select the desired browser.
sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser
sudo update-alternatives --config gnome-www-browser

EXPLANATION: For some reason this operation is not performed automatically when you change your default browser in "settings > preferred applications".

MORE INFO: If you don't see your desired browser when you run this commands, then you can enter in "/var/lib/dpkg/alternatives" and manually change the values.

SOURCE: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1900454&p=11565660#post11565660

Comment 8

[Zeioth]

This bug have been reported in launchpad:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mozilla-firefox/+bug/794720