Making Firefox use Thunderbird for web feeds

I was saving this tip for today, because it’s a bit of a Christmas present, courtesy of alta88.

Users of both Firefox and Thunderbird may have noticed that when you get the feed preview screen in Firefox 2, and use the drop-down list to add the feed to Thunderbird, it does not work. There are bugs filed for this. One that I know of, is bug 350735.

To make it work, you’ll need to close Firefox, and go into the \components\ folder, in the Firefox program directory. (eg. C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\components ), and open the file FeedConverter.js in a text editor. You had better make a backup of it first. Because of the line breaks, Notepad won’t work; but Wordpad will work.

At around line 332, you’ll see text that looks like:

case "client":
var clientApp =
prefs.getComplexValue(PREF_SELECTED_APP, Ci.nsILocalFile);
//@line 393 "/cygdrive/c/builds/tinderbox/Fx-Mozilla1.8-release/WINNT_5.2_Depend/mozilla/browser/components/feeds/src/FeedConverter.js"
var ss =
Cc["@mozilla.org/browser/shell-service;1"].
getService(Ci.nsIShellService_MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH);
ss.openApplicationWithURI(clientApp, spec);
break;

Replace that (select, copy, paste) with:

case "client":
const PREF_SELECTED_APP_ARGS = "browser.feeds.handlers.application.args";
const PREF_SELECTED_APP_URIPREFIX = "browser.feeds.handlers.application.uriPrefix";

var clientApp = prefs.getComplexValue(PREF_SELECTED_APP, Ci.nsILocalFile);
var feedhandlerArgs = safeGetCharPref(PREF_SELECTED_APP_ARGS, Ci.nsIILocalFile);
var uriPrefix = safeGetCharPref(PREF_SELECTED_APP_URIPREFIX, Ci.nsIILocalFile);

var file = Cc["@mozilla.org/file/local;1"].createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsILocalFile);
file.initWithPath(clientApp.persistentDescriptor);
var process = Cc["@mozilla.org/process/util;1"].createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsIProcess);
process.init(file);

if (uriPrefix) spec = uriPrefix + spec;
if (feedhandlerArgs)
var args = [feedhandlerArgs, spec];
else
var args = [spec];

process.run(false, args, args.length);
break;

Save and close FeedConverter.js.

Next, open Firefox and use about:config to add the following preferences:
Add the String preference browser.feeds.handlers.application.args.
Set the value to -mail.
Add the String preference browser.feeds.handlers.application.uriPrefix.
Set the value to feed:. (Include the colon.)

Enjoy, and have a merry Christmas. 🙂

Bugzilla.mozilla.org upgrade

According to bugzilla.mozilla.org,

On Tuesday, December 26, at 6pm PST (2am UTC) we will be upgrading Bugzilla to the current pre-release of version 3.0. We are expecting the upgrade to take anywhere from 4 to 6 hours. Bugzilla will be down for the duration of the upgrade process. For more information, see the upgrade notes.

Freakin’ sweet! For those of you who haven’t seen it, Bugzilla 3 looks quite different from version 2. You can test it at bugzilla-test.mozilla.org

Warning when opening a large number of tabs

Firefox 2 has a lot of small usability changes, that are great. I’m sure we’ve all accidentally middle-clicked on a bookmark folder, or live bookmark, only to be bombarded with many many tabs opening many many web sites at once. In Firefox 2, if you trigger an action that will open 15 or more tabs at once, Firefox will ask for confirmation.

But what if you want to change that threshold? Well there’s a preference setting for that. 🙂
Enter about:config in the address bar. In the resulting page, search for the preference browser.tabs.maxOpenBeforeWarn.
Double-click on it, and set the value to the number of tabs in which you want to start receiving the warning.

Open bookmark folders in new tabs

In a somewhat controversial decision, it was decided that if you open a group of tabs (middle-click on a bookmark folder) in Firefox, those new pages will be opened in the currently opened tabs, rather than being added. There is, however, a setting to make groups of tabs be opened in new tabs, rather than the existing ones.

Enter about:config in the address bar. In the resulting page, search for the preference browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace.
Double-click on it, which should change the value to false.

Removing the ‘Go’ button in Firefox 2

Among the changes in Firefox 2 is that the ‘Go’ button is now attached to the address bar, when customizing toolbars. Some Firefox users may prefer not to display the ‘Go’ button, because they use the |Enter| key, or use the Paste and Go 2 extension.

You can get rid of the ‘Go’ button by entering about:config in the address bar. In the resulting page, search for the preference browser.urlbar.hideGoButton.
Double-click on it, which should change the value to true.

Automatically spell checking single line text fields

Firefox 2 users may have noticed that the built-in spell checker does not automatically check single-line text fields, such as Google.com. Instead, you need to open the context menu (right-click), and choose Spell check this field. With multi-line text fields (for example, the Detailed Comments box at hendrix.mozilla.org), the spell checker is automatically turned on.

To get the spell checker to automatically check all text fields, enter about:config in the address bar. In the resulting page, search for the preference layout.spellcheckDefault.
Double-click on it, and change the value to 2.

Going on support newsgroups hiatus

In light of Chris Hofmann’s recent call for a discussion regarding building better Firefox support, I looked at the list of tasks I wanted to accomplish on the Mozilla Support site; and found that I’ve been taking too long to accomplish them. The main reason is because whenever I boot up my computer, and check the support newsgroups, there’s usually hundreds of posts to go through. (mozilla.support.firefox and mozilla.support.thunderbird together, had almost ten thousand posts in November alone)

And so I’m going on hiatus from those groups, to get my updates to the support site done. My apologies to David Tenser, who’s been waiting for me to write patches, and file bugs.

SeaMonkey 1.0.6 and 1.1 Beta are available

SeaMonkey 1.0.6 and 1.1 Beta have been released.

Keeping the net secure and previewing new features

The SeaMonkey Council is pleased to announce two new releases simultaneously:
First, SeaMonkey 1.0.6 continues the successful 1.0 series of the SeaMonkey all-in-one internet suite, fixing several security vulnerabilities and various stability issues (see the release notes for more information). The SeaMonkey Council recommends that all users upgrade to this stable, well-tested version.
Second, the SeaMonkey project has been working hard on improving its software even further, adding new features such as tab previews, spell checking in the browser, an e-mail tagging system, an improved Linux startup script, better new mail notifications, an updated Chatzilla IRC client, and more. A new preview showing off those improvements, SeaMonkey 1.1 Beta, was also released today. This version is intended for developers and testers (but not yet for end users). The SeaMonkey Council encourages interested people to test the Beta and help identify the remaining bugs. Be sure to read the release notes before testing though, as they list not only the new features but also a number of known issues. Any problems that are not already known should be reported to the developers via Bugzilla so that the final SeaMonkey 1.1 release can continue the traditional high quality expected from the Mozilla suite and the SeaMonkey 1.0 series.