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Browser does not launch for https

  • 22 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 4 views
  • Last reply by bdwgen

bdwgen
bdwgen
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After an upgrade, a browser is not launched for https links. http links do work. 

Per documentation, I have set
     network.protocol-handler.warn-external.https = true

When a link is clicked, a menu should open to allow selection of a browser, but it does not. When an https link is clicked, nothing happens.

According to documentation, setting network.protocol-handler.app.https directly no longer works. I tried setting it anyway, but as expected it has no effect.

FYI I am running Thunderbird 60.80.0 on Debian 10 (Buster).

Reinstalling thunderbird had no effect. Of course I did not delete my profile.

Any suggestion would be appreciated.

After an upgrade, a browser is not launched for https links. http links do work. Per documentation, I have set network.protocol-handler.warn-external.https = true When a link is clicked, a menu should open to allow selection of a browser, but it does not. When an https link is clicked, nothing happens. According to documentation, setting network.protocol-handler.app.https directly no longer works. I tried setting it anyway, but as expected it has no effect. FYI I am running Thunderbird 60.80.0 on Debian 10 (Buster). Reinstalling thunderbird had no effect. Of course I did not delete my profile. Any suggestion would be appreciated.

All Replies (2)

bdwgen
bdwgen Question owner
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I've tried all those things, including everything in hyperlinks-in-messages-not-working . None have any effect.

bdwgen
bdwgen Question owner
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I was finally able to resolve this - more or less.

There are, in fact, two problems involved.

(i) Once set, it is not possible to reset the browser that thunderbird launches to display http and https links. If we set 

    network.protocol-handler.warn-external.https = true

when an https link is clicked, a menu for selecting the browser is supposed to be displayed. This works once. However, once a browser has been selected, the menu will not get displayed again, even if we toggle network.protocol-handler.warn-external.https off and on. (And similarly for http links and network.protocol-handler.warn-external.http.)

To get the browser selection menu to display again, it was necessary to delete the handlers.json file in my thunderbird profile directory. I do not know what is in this file. I was unable to find any documentation about it whatsoever. However, deleting it allows the browser selection menu to be displayed - once.

(ii) Thunderbird is unable to launch Firebird Quantum 69.0.1. If it is specified as the browser, when a link is clicked, nothing happens. The browser is not launched and there is no error message. Note that this browser works correctly in all other contexts on my system (Debian 10 aka Buster). (E.g. Zotero can launch it to display web pages.)

However, thunderbird is able to launch Firefox Quantum 60.0.0esr. I have no idea why this slightly older version of Firefox works and the current version does not.

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