Clicking a link does not open browser.

[Wouter den Haan]

When clicking a link in Evolution or Liferea (and probably in all other programs), or even when choosing the "Open link" option, a browser window does not open.

A workaround for this is to open Firefox first and then click the link. But it's still not pretty.

[Wouter den Haan (wouterdenhaan)]

I filed it as a bug in gnome now. It probably belongs somewhere else, but since i'm not familiair with the inner-working of ubuntu I have no idea where to file it.

[Wouter den Haan (wouterdenhaan)]

Having set my preferred browser to Epiphany now, the problem disappears. I guess this makes it a bug in Firefox.

[Ariel Vardi (ariel-vardi)]

I had the same bug.
The default browser in Preferred Applications was set to Firefox with 'Open link in a new tab' selected as the behavior. The command in the field was: firefox -remote "openurl(%s,new-tab)". I never set this command, so I guess it's what's set in the package. This doesn't work.

On the other hand, if you choose 'Open link with web browser default' as the behavior, then it works fine and firefox opens the link even where there was no instance of it running prior to that. And the interesting part is that this default behavior is actually to open the link in a new tab as well.

I don't know what is set by default in Preferred Applications, but there is something wrong with the command used to open the link in a new tab.

Steps to reproduce:
1) Open Preferred Application, make sure Firefox is default browser and 'Open link in a new tab is selected'
2) Make sure no instance of Firefox is running
3) Open evolution and read a mail with an http link in it.
4)>Click on this link and notice nothing happens.
5) Go back to Preferred Applications and change the behavior to 'Open the link with browser default'.
6) Try to click again on the link in evolution.
7)> Notice Firefox now opens fine and goes to the right url.
8) Click again on a link in evolution, and notice it opens a new tab in Firefox

[Juanjo Garcia-Ripoll (worm)]

In my case what I find annoying is that the default behavior reuses firefox windows.

I typically have several copies of firefox running on different desktops and when I click on a link in evolution it opens the link in god-knows-which-window and i have to search through the desktops.

I think a sensible default would be to open the link in a new window.