Make webmail Firefox’s default mail client

Sep 30

How-To Guides David 5 Comments
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Buffer			Using web-mail is great, you can get to your email from any Internet connected computer and you don’t have to worry about saving all your email when you get a...

Firefox

Using web-mail is great, you can get to your email from any Internet connected computer and you don’t have to worry about saving all your email when you get a new computer. There’s one thing about it that isn’t so great; that’s when you click on an email link in your browser and it starts loading up the built-in email application that you probably don’t use. Wouldn’t it be good to just click an email link and be taken straight to the composition page of the web-mail service you use?

Well, with Firefox there is a way to set this up. It does require you to have some information about your particular mail service, I’ve tried to cover the most popular ones here. Roughly speaking, the following process is going to do: 1) Unlock Firefox to accept a different mail service, 2) Make Firefox load some code so it knows about your desired mail service, 3) Select that mail service as the default mail client, 4) Re-lock step number 1.

Note, that if you’re using an up to date version of Firefox and you use Yahoo or GMail, then you only need to follow step 3.

Step 1.

Start up Firefox and in the address bar type “about:config“, and if you haven’t done this before, you’ll see a warning page. Then you’ll see a very long list of settings, at the top, in the filter box type (or paste from here) “gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost“, that will filter us down to a single line, which you’ll see is set to “false”. Just double click it to that it is set to “true”, and the line will go bold.

Allowing Firefox to accept a new mai service.

Step 2.

The next step is to paste a line of code into your address bar that is specific to your mail service. Here is a list of the mail services I’ve been able to find the code for:

• Hotmail
  javascript:navigator.registerProtocolHandler('mailto','http://hotmail.msn.com/secure/start?action=compose&to=%s','Hotmail')
• GoogleMail/GMail
  javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto","https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s","GMail")
• Fastmail
  javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto","http://www.fastmail.fm/action/compose/?mailto=%s","FastMail"
• Zoho
javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto","http://mail.zoho.com/mail/compose.do?extsrc=mailto&mode=compose&tp=zb&ct=%s","Zoho Mail")

Once you enter this line, you’ll see a button asking you if you want to add the application. Go ahead and click it.

Adding your web-mail service as a new application

Step 3.

Next, for Windows & Mac users you need to go to your Tools menu and click Options, Linux users go to your Edit menu and select Preferences. When you get the pop-up box click on the Applications tab, and in the search box type “mailto“. This will give you a single line which has a drop down box, which should contain an option for the web-mail service you just added in step 2. Select it and click close.

Selecting your web-mail service.

Step 4.

This is simply a reverse of step 1. Open a new tab and type in “about:config“, then filter down to “gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost” again. Then double click the same line as before. You should see it be set to false and the bold effect switch off.

That’s it! The next time you click an email link you’ll be taken straight to the composition page of your chosen web-mail service. You might have to log in, but as soon as you do, you’ll land on the compose page. Well done

References:

• Firefox 3 default mailto – FastMailWiki
• Tech Support Forum – View Single Post – [SOLVED] Making Hotmail the default mailto in Firefox 3
• Set Web e-mail as default Firefox e-mail
• How to Change Firefox Default Email Client to Gmail, Yahoo AOL or Zoho

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