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how to set default browser to esr45 in macos?

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  • Last reply by guigs

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Running macos el capitan on my notebook. Using esr45 to run my wiki's tag query system, which ff47 doesn't support, but also have ff47 installed as well as firefox developer edition (ff49).

If I try to set default browser from "System Preferences -> General -> Default Web Browser", then I can get esr45 to show up on the list of options, but if I select it, ff47 is chosen instead. Selecting "firefox developer edition" DOES work, though.

Odd thing is that Quassel uses the currently running browser, whereas Dropbox keeps trying to fire up ff47.

How to fix?

Running macos el capitan on my notebook. Using esr45 to run my wiki's tag query system, which ff47 doesn't support, but also have ff47 installed as well as firefox developer edition (ff49). If I try to set default browser from "System Preferences -> General -> Default Web Browser", then I can get esr45 to show up on the list of options, but if I select it, ff47 is chosen instead. Selecting "firefox developer edition" DOES work, though. Odd thing is that Quassel uses the currently running browser, whereas Dropbox keeps trying to fire up ff47. How to fix?

Chosen solution

Okay. I got it to work by renaming version 47 from "Firefox.app" to "Firefox47.app", and renaming version 45 (ESR) from "Firefox.app" to "Firefox45.app" after changing the three instances of the string "firefox" in "Contents/Info.plist" to "firefoxESR". Both steps seem important, but I haven't tried every possible path of states.

Note that MacOS won't let you rename ESR to "FirefoxESR.app" somehow for some reason.

Conclusion: if someone understands what's going on, it would be nice for ESR to distinguish itself from mainline ff47 like FirefoxDeveloperEdition.app does. I think this is not the same as distinguishing itself to servers, so no need to worry about that.

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It is strange that the behavior is different, if you have both versions open does quassel open in a different browser if the active one changes? (for example will ever open in Safari?)

I did some research on Quassel and it looks like they had a recent update last week, however I did not see any bugs about urls not opening in the default browser. It did also say use the Mac OS version at your own risk, si I am not sure how its supposed to work.

However is there an option to right click on the url and open in the default browser? Reference

Modified by guigs

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I suspect Dropbox is doing the right thing, and Quassel isn't.

But, I think the real problem is that I cannot set the default browser (according to System Preferences) to esr45, it apparently thinks ff47 is a newer version, and tries to outguess me by selecting it instead. But, if I select firefox-for-developer (ff49), then it WILL switch to that.

I tried hacking on the "Info.plist" file of esr45 to make it look different (bundle names etc), but that didn't work. Maybe I didn't do it right.

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Chosen Solution

Okay. I got it to work by renaming version 47 from "Firefox.app" to "Firefox47.app", and renaming version 45 (ESR) from "Firefox.app" to "Firefox45.app" after changing the three instances of the string "firefox" in "Contents/Info.plist" to "firefoxESR". Both steps seem important, but I haven't tried every possible path of states.

Note that MacOS won't let you rename ESR to "FirefoxESR.app" somehow for some reason.

Conclusion: if someone understands what's going on, it would be nice for ESR to distinguish itself from mainline ff47 like FirefoxDeveloperEdition.app does. I think this is not the same as distinguishing itself to servers, so no need to worry about that.

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Wagle, thank you for posting your work around. If anything comes up with Firefox ESR in the future, the most direct support path will be in the ESR mailing list as well if we can't figure it our here or have been scratching our heads too long looking for a solution.

The link to the working group is on this page: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/