Web Talk

If you happen to browse websites and blogs, at a certain point you might want to send an email to ask information, to contact a websmaster or to talk with somebody. Usually in the Internet it is sufficent to click on a web address link (mailto: websitename@extension.com) to be prompted by Windows Vista or Windows XP with email clients such as: Windows Mail, Outlook Express, Eudora etc. After that you will be faced with a window which already contains the email address. All you have to do is write the object and the body of the email and click Send. Quite easy, right? But what happen if you have a web email such as Gmail? Of course you can not click on any link because Gmail, as you know, it is a web application and doesn’t have any email client. The solution here is to use a little trick to configure Firefox 3 (by the way, the trick works on Firefox 3 and up) to set Gmail as a default email client. Here is the procedure:

1. In the Firefox 3 Address Bar (and further versions) type: about:config and press Enter.
2. Click on the I’ll be careful, I promise! button.
3. In the filter box type: gecko.handlerService
4. You should get a list of services. The first one should be gecko.handlerService. allowRegisterFromDifferentHost
5. Double click on gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost and give it the value: True (it is false by defaut).
6. In the filter box type: network.protocol-handler. external.mailto and make sure it is set to True.
7. Now copy the following string in the Address Bar and press Enter:

javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler
("mailto","https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s","GMail")

8. If you use a Google application use this string and press Enter (Change example.com to your own domain name) :

javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler
(”mailto”,”https://mail.google.com/a/example.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s”,”GMail”)

9. Firefox 3 should prompt you whether you want to add Gmail application. Click on the Add Application button.
10. From now on every time you click on any web address link, a small window will appear prompting you to use Gmail. Once you click on it you will be sent to Gmail web page.
11. For security reasons when you have finished with this procedure, type again about:config and press Enter. Set gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost value back to false.