Hi yankeespride,
Sorry you are having problems.

Please See Problems with email and how to find help
Note all the blue text such as above are clickable links.

The settings you are looking at relate to using an email client client. They handle email in the more traditional way. Maybe consider Thunderbird for that.

• https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/
• A bit complicated to read but also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_client

If you are using Webmail where the emails remain out on the internet that is where Firefox as a Web Browser is used.

• Problems with email and how to find help

All you probably need to do if using Firefox to read email such as gmail is to bookmark your sign on page for gmail

• Possibly https://accounts.google.com or https://mail.google.com
• And maybe their help forum https://productforums.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=forum/gmail#!forum/gmail

Hello John. I appreciate your reply. Are you familiar with the location in Wndows XP that I am referring to? It's the Set Program Access and Defaults icon located in Add/Remove Programs from the Control Panel. I understand using web mail where the emails remain out on the Internet like aol, yahoo, and gmail. I can access email fine this way using bookmarks to navigate quickly to each email program if I have to. But I was trying to find out why Firefox appears as an option for the heading Default Browser in "Custom" while none of the email clients I listed -- gmail, yahoo, aol -- appear under the Default Email Program heading in "Custom."

gmail, yahoo, aol aren't email clients, they're webmail portals which can't be set as a Default Email client.

Hi the-edmeister. Thank you for your response. How come in several screen shots I've seen online searching for this solution in XP, the default email programs listed contain at least one of: yahoo, gmail, and aol? I understand they're web mail portals, but they are still appearing under the "Default Email Program" heading in "Custom."

Can you provide an example of screenshots like that?

Hello. I don't know if I was over tired last night or what, but today I cannot find those images searching on google, showing Yahoo Mail and/or Gmail as a default email program to choose from. I'm trying to include 2 screen shots I took. On the 2nd screen shot in IE, I have looked under Programs to change the default email there as well, but Gmail and Yahoo are not even options. How do I add them as options in the Email drop down list?

I think perhaps you may be misunderstanding what the settings are for.

Firefox can handle Web Based email such as Gmail, Yahoo and AOL. By handle Webmail I mean it will let you read compose and send emails, and receive emails from those services.

XP itself is not able to do that it will use a web browser such as Firefox for webmail, or a suitable email client like Thunderbird. These articles help explain this

• What is the difference between web-based e-mail and client based e-mail? https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071127015322AAGysIt
• http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_difference_between_email_and_web_mail

You could read up about Thunderbird and install that.

• https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/features/
• Install Thunderbird on Windows
• IMAP Synchronization

Or you could just use Firefox which is probably the simplest and best solution.

Thank you for your response, John. Following up on this, how do I add Aol web mail as an option for my default email in the "mailto" section of Applications in Firefox? I see Yahoo mail, Gmail, Outlook Express (currently default), but I don't see an option to add other web based emails. There is an option for "use other" that lets me browse my C: Drive for applications, but Aol has webmail (aol.com/mail); I just don't see an option to add aol.com/mail. I'm adding a screen shot.

If a webpage has mailto type content that is a special link identifiable as an emailaddress then Firefox will look for a suitable application, Thunderbird for instance when you click the link.

I did not know the options for gmail & yahoo were still available in the Firefox settings. If they still work and you are already signed in to your webmail account they will try to start an email message or if not signed in they should take you to a login page.

You can only choose from what is shown, and not add multiple webmails. You can choose always ask. You can choose Thunderbird, if you install that.

Looking more closely I wondered if merely changing a pref could change the webmail options available, but I could not get that to work.

What you should be able to do is find and install a suitable extension that will help you with handling webmail have a look through this listing

• https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/search/?q=mailto&platform=windows&cat=all

Also see

• Change the program used to open email links

Thanks again, John. In the mailto application in Firefox options, there are gmail, yahoo mail, and outlook express (default) as I've said. I think I changed the default to yahoo mail. From what I understand now from you, I cannot add multiple webmails like aol or hotmail. I've never even considered Thunderbird, maybe because I'm comfortable with webmail, and don't want to make my life more difficult, although I'm sure TB is user friendly. A suitable extension does seem like the best option, so I'll take another look at the link you provided.

I'm sorry to be a pain, but I posted another question early this morning, regarding a radio station website that's loading, but won't play the station. It just buffers (trys to load) on Firefox, but plays fine on Chrome. If you have any insight into this, I'd really appreciate it.