File associations, firefox

[Peter Garrett]

On Thu, 05 Oct 2006 02:17:49 +1000
Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au> wrote:

> On Thu, 2006-10-05 at 01:54 +1000, Peter Garrett wrote:
> > Type  about:config in the location/URL bar
> > [...]
> 
> Well, that is a very useful thing to know!
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Yeeees - except that I still can't delete anything and (much more
> importantly) I still can't ADD anything! I want Firefox to
> run /usr/bin/javaws when I click on a file with a ".jnlp" extension.

Erm - are we on the same page? "Download Actions - Remove Action - Change
Action " 
> 
> But more generally I want to be able to tell Firefox to run the program
> X for files of type Y, for any X and Y. It's a simple thing, and
> something that has been and is doable in every other browser known to
> man, so why not in Firefox?!?

It is not for me to comment on the inscrutable workings of providence ;-)
Seriously though. I agree that this functionality should be easy. One way
to get a choice is to delete all the options - then whenever you click on
something you should get a choice, and be able to specify what you want.
This is a bit of a pain though.  You can try it with a new profile of FF
so that you don't break anything important:
- type

firefox -ProfileManager

( notice the capitals ) 
> 
> > 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...
> 
> Not really a very acceptable answer ;-) 

That would be because I don't know the answer ;-) It was more of an
observation. I will note your name, and ensure that I make no attempt to
answer your questions in future ;-P

> So where are these things
> stored? Then I can go get 'em with a text editor :-)

Probably deep in the bowels of gconf somewhere - try typing
 
apropos gconf

and/or

gconf-editor &

If you feel genuinely masochistic, explore ~/.gconf/apps/nautilus 

<Disclaimer>
 I will not be responsible for the breakage if you tweak
something incorrectly in gconf 
</Disclaimer>

;-)

Peter