Does not register itself as a handler for http URIs

[Rachel Greenham]

Binary package hint: chromium-browser

When I set chromium-browser to be my default browser, URLs opened from other applications and xdg-open still open in Firefox. The exception is that Thunderbird will correctly open the URLs in chromium-browser.

I originally submitted this as bug 726504 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xdg-utils/+bug/726504 which was marked invalid with the comment "This isn't a bug in xdg-utils, chrome must register itself as a handler for http URIs." So as the same issue shows up with chromium-browser, which is from the repos (and to which I subsequently switched anyway because google-chrome-unstable was being unstable ;-) ), I'm reporting it again as a chromium-browser bug, that probably needs to be pushed upstream to google as Chrome itself exhibits the same issue - or at least similar, see below about the alternatives symlink.

Chromium certainly *thinks* it's the default browser, and claims as such in its preferences dialogue.

However:

rachel@mab:~$ ls -l /etc/alternatives/x-www-browser
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 2011-02-20 18:37 /etc/alternatives/x-www-browser -> /usr/bin/google-chrome

That's not chromium-browser's binary, but Google Chrome's (specifically google-chrome-unstable in this case) so *that* changed this symlink but chromium-browser, set as default since, didn't. But Thunderbird *still* correctly opens its urls in chromium-browser and everything else still opens their urls in firefox.

So I don't know what's going on there.

Sorry I don't still have a Maverick machine around, so I can't confirm, but my memory is that I didn't have this problem on Maverick.

But basically what it looks like is that the comment on the xdg-utils bug implies that there is a set mechanism for "registering" as a default browser that google chrome and chromium aren't using.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: chromium-browser 9.0.597.107~r75357-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-5.32-generic 2.6.38-rc6
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-5-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Mar 5 10:22:25 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100429)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: chromium-browser
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-02-26 (6 days ago)
chromium-default: CHROMIUM_FLAGS=""

[andypiper (andypiperuk)]

I see the same issue in Natty alpha 3 - I set Chromium as my default browser (and it shows up in Unity launcher as my preferred browser) but URLs clicked from other applications still open in Firefox 4, which is also installed.

[Rachel Greenham (rachel-strangenoises)]

Have installed Maverick on a machine (not only to test this, but remembered to do so). I can confirm this problem does not arise on Maverick; Chrome/Chromium being set as the default browser works just fine. So this is definitely a bug in Natty's xdg-utils. Have objected to my original bug's being marked invalid. FWIW. :-)

[Rachel Greenham (rachel-strangenoises)]

On 10/03/11 20:10, Rachel Greenham wrote:
> Have installed Maverick on a machine (not only to test this, but
> remembered to do so). I can confirm this problem does not arise on
> Maverick; Chrome/Chromium being set as the default browser works just
> fine. So this is definitely a bug in Natty's xdg-utils. Have objected to
> my original bug's being marked invalid. FWIW. :-)
>
Andreas Moog responded in the other bug (linked above), it seems
relevant here:

> Chrome needs to be updated to follow freedesktop.org's spec, see
> http://standards.freedesktop.org/shared-mime-info-spec/shared-mime-info-
> spec-latest.html#id2869854. So you are right, it's not invalid, it is a
> bug in chrome, which we don't ship in ubuntu (we have chromium).
>

[Evan Martin (Chromium) (evan-chromium)]

I asked about this and got this response:

"Fortunately I know what this one is. This is indeed a bug in xdg-utils, as originally filed. In natty, the new gnome uses a new mechanism for default browserness. xdg-settings needs to support the new way; it's filed as http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=73231 as well. Really it should be filed in whatever bug tracker upstream xdg-utils uses, but since I'm basically the guy who needs to fix it, crbug.com is probably best anyway."

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

According to upstream bug report, this is fixed.