Thunderbird 0.8.x, Firefox 1.0x

[Geert Janssens]

> - When I try the menu item "Release Notes" or "Thunderbird Help", I get
> an error message:
> ERROR: The browser specified in Preferences -> Preferred Applications
> does not exist.
> 
> I'm not sure what I should do with this error. There is no Preferences
> menu option, and no Preferred Applications option either. So I don't
> know where to set this.
> 
> For the above menu items, this is not really a big issue. I didn't need
> these options, but the bigger problem is, this error also pops up if I
> click a link in an e-mail message.
> 
> Any ideas where to configure this ?

To answer my own question:

Thunderbird uses the script /usr/lib/thunderbird-0.8.0/open-browser.sh 
to open URLs. This script is not working correctly on YDL. It assumes 
gnome as the default desktopenvironment, and the preferred browser to be 
configured via Gnome.

A solution would be to replace open-browser.sh's content with:
--
#!/bin/sh

export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME="/usr/lib/firefox-0.10.1"

url="$1"
if [ "x$url" = "x" ]; then
   url="about:blank"
fi

if $MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME/mozilla-xremote-client openURL\("$url"\); then
   exit 0
fi
exec $MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME/firefox "$url"
--
Note that this script assumes you want firefox as your url handler, and 
that firefox is installed in /usr/lib/firefox-0.10.1. If this is not the 
case, adjust the export line accordingly.

Cheers,

Geert Jan