Web browser button on top panel should open preferred application, rather than firefox/evolution

[Matthew East]

Hi,

I recently changed my preferred browser to epiphany, via the preferences ->
preferred applications tool. I noticed however that the web browser button on
the top panel doesn't open epiphany, it continues to open firefox. I presume the
same applies to the email button: I really think these buttons should open the
preferred applications.

I hope this is the right package to file under, if not, please reassign: thanks!

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

I've mailed ubuntu-desktop about this. Some parts like the upgrades are not
trivial because those settings are part of the users data and packages are not
free to change that. Marking as wishlist but I'm not sure we are going to do this.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Marking as 'ubuntulove' task.

[Loïc Minier (lool)]

I believe the a similar problem occurs with gnome-terminal and the system terminal preferred app: the Application > Accessories > Terminal link will always launch GNOME Terminal.

I guess GNOME or Ubuntu could provide mini wrappers around the GConf configured apps such as a command-line + desktop file for "configured-terminal" or "preferred-terminal"; another way would be to integrate with sensible-browser and x-terminal-emulator by making these lookup into GConf if under GNOME. This would be quite similar to what GStreamer does with gconfaudiosink.

[InsClusoe (insclusoe)]

Hi,

I would like to take up this task. But I wonder what the bug is or if it does not exist anymore.

The top panel icon is a Firefox launcher only. In the current default setup of gnome, the browser_launcher and email_launcher are empty. But if I set preferred browser to Epiphany and click on a link in GAIM, it is opened using Epiphany.

So, I don't know what needs fixing. Please correct me if I am wrong. I am new to all this.

Thanks.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

that's still an issue when using the panel launcher and not trivial to fix, there is a specification which has been written about the issue

[InsClusoe (insclusoe)]

Thanks for the reply. I actually picked it up from the bitesized bugs list on MOTU/ToDo page. Guess it's a Gigabyte sized bug. :-)

Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> wrote: that's still an issue when using the panel launcher and not trivial to
fix, there is a specification which has been written about the issue

--
Web browser button on top panel should open preferred application, rather than firefox/evolution
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/26394
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[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

This bug is very old and I don't know if the specification for this - in my opinion - trivial thing will be approved.

I think if someone installs a new browser and wants to stay with it, he/she can just remove the icon from the panel, add the right one and maybe choose to set this new browser as his/her default application (but that's just my opinion).

In case it helps: I came across the gconf-key /desktop/gnome/applications/browser/exec, which, in my case, contains the string "epiphany". It should be possibly to create a starter on the panel that factors in this key.

[KillerKiwi (killerkiwi2005)]

maybe xdg-open "http://start.ubuntu.com/10.10/" should be used for the default button?

[Alex Lourie (alourie)]

Is this still relevant? After the release of 11.10 which brings Gnome3 without icons, it doesn't seem to be relevant anymore.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

I'm going to go ahead and close this bug since it won't be fixed in old releases and currently we don't ship any shortcut launchers in gnome-panel in Ubuntu 11.10. Notably, the web browser button in Unity's Dash does automatically point to the user's default web browser.