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1

Tuesday, March 4th 2008, 3:21pm

unsetting the mailto: application

I'm having issues with mailto: links. On one of my machines when i click on a mailto link (or in Firefox File -> Send Link) nothing happens.

If the machine doesn't have a mail client setup the browsers will tell you there is no email client on clicking on a mailto link. If there is a mail client, the mailto: will open that mail client and a new email.

In my case, the system thinks there is a mail client (therefore no message about no mail client) but the mail client is not where the operating system thinks it should be so nothing happens.

In Firefox I have set the "network.protocol-handler.warn-external.mailto" setting in "about:config" to true so that i will get a popup telling me what application is going to be used for the mailto:

Example:
"An external application must be launched to handle mailto: links.
Requested link
mailto:abc.def@ghk.com
Application:/opt/thunderbird/thunderbird0.9/thunderbird "%s"
If you were not expecting this request it may be an attempt to exploit a weakness
in that other program. Cancel this request unless you are sure it is not malicious."

The application it mentions (/opt/thunderbird/thunderbird0.9/thunderbird) does not exist on the computer. Therefore I'm guessing this is why nothing happens. So to solve my issue I want to remove this setting so that there is no mail application specified so i get the "no mail client setup" message instead.

QUESTION: How do i remove this setting so that i will get the message that there is no mail client?

Looking on one of my machines which is KDE 3.31-6.1 on RedHat i can see that the Application setting is mentioned in the following place

System Tools -> Configuration Editor -> Desktop -> gnombe -> url-handlers -> mailto

If I change the command to point to a location of a valid location of an email client then clicking a mailto: link will open this email client. The popup above shows the newly changed location therefore im presuming I have found the right place to make this change.

I cant see a way to 'remove' this mailto option, but i did test that if you uncheck the 'enabled' checkbox, then on clicking a mailto: link you see the message "Firefox doesn't know how to open this address, because the protocol (mailto) isn't associated with any program" which is what i want.

However...... :)
On my KDE 3.3.1 on SUSE there is no Configuration Editor under System Tools (and it can't run gconfig-editor) so i cant work out how to change the email application the operating system will use.

I did find the configuration file
./.gconf/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/mailto/%gconf.xml that contains the mail client mentioned in my example above. Butt i noticed changing this didnt always affect the Application that firefox lists in the popup. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didnt (i did close firefox each time and clean cache each time)

QUESTION: What is the correct way to change the system so that NO email client is set for the mailto: links?