Hello there johndthompson We try to help you We have read your message.

Please read the form attached.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/hyperlinks-in-messages-not-working

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird

If you have more questions Send us a message back.

Greetings Firefoxvolunteer.

Thanks. The problem I had was not inserting hyperlinks in message composition, but rather clicking on links did not open the link in Firefox. It turns out that somehow Firefox no longer considered itself to be my default browser (despite having been explicitly set as such in my Ubuntu settings, and despite having both network.protocol-handler.app.http and network.protocol-handler.app.https pointing to "/usr/bin/firefox %s" in prefs.js). For some reason, Thunderbird decided that no browser was available to handle http and https protocols. Why that triggered an error message about feed subscriptions remains a mystery.

In any case, I rebooted to see if that might help, and after rebooting, Firefox threw a window asking to be made default browser. I agreed, and when I opened Thunderbird and clicked on links, lo and behold, they opened in Firefox.

So the problem is solved, but it's still not clear why or how Firefox stopped being my default browser (it's been my default browser for years now, ever since its first incarnation as "Phoenix," and then "Firebird," remember those?), or why a failure to handle http and https protocols should trigger an error message about feed subscriptions.

Hello there johnDThompson.

Oké good. Yes I know that there where browsers in the past with good names.

Have a good day ,bye.

Greetings Firefox volunteer.