Firefox not opening external applications

[Paul Lemmons]

Paul Lemmons wrote:
> Ok, I have given up on waiting for the mozilla-acroread plugin to 
> surface and I need to be able to open PDFs with FireFox. So I went 
> into FF preferences->applications PDF's and changed the program to 
> Okular. Now I see the download box appear and the file get downloaded 
> but the application never starts. I have tried a number of different 
> programs for PDFs and the result is the same: it downloads but app 
> does not start. I tried a number of other file types that open in 
> external programs and they have the same issue.
>
> Any ideas?

I did not know who to reply to so I am replying to myself to include 
everybody...

I tried firefox-3.5-kde.... no joy
I tried okular from command line... work like it should
I tried okular from firefox ... no joy
I tried firefox --safe-mode ... no joy

Any other thoughts?