File associations, firefox

[Peter Garrett]

On Thu, 05 Oct 2006 01:11:02 +1000
Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au> wrote:

> Hi there.
> 
> Having upgraded to Firefox 1.5, I now can't seem to find any way to add
> file associations within Firefox. I want to tell it to run javaws when
> it sees a ".jnlp" extension.

This is a Firefox thing, not a Gnome thing....

In Firefox, try this:

Type  about:config in the location/URL bar

Filter on browser.download   and you should see a line that says

browser.download.hide_plugins_without_extensions   default  boolean  true

Double click that line and it should change to

browser.download.hide_plugins_without_extensions  user set boolean false

Now go to Edit - Preferences - Downloads in Firefox,  and look for "View &
Edit Actions" . You should find that you now have a lot of ( admittedly
somewhat confusing) options for choosing default apps. Fortunately
anything you do here is reversible though.
> 
> More generally though, where does one set up file associations in
> Ubuntu/GNOME? If I have a file, I can use "Open with" to set up an
> association with files of that type. I can also look at the properties
> of such a file and use the "open with" tab. That tab only allows me to
> select from existing applications or to add a new app, the remove button
> is greyed out.

Yes, greyed out here too. In general though, you want to add a choice and
then click it on the left to make sure it will be chosen as the default, so
the fact that the list grows is usually not an issue...
> 
> Similarly with Firefox; I get the feeling that as an ordinary user I
> don't have sufficient permissions to change file associations. Although
> if I start Firefox as root (sudo firefox) it has *fewer* associations,
> and I still can't add anything.
> 
> So - where are they, so I can get at them with sudo?

I don't think it's a permissions issue - try my suggestion for Firefox
outlined above. It looks like the Firefox developers have decided that the
flexibility should be deeply buried by default ;-)

Peter