simon.schönbeck.dk

Tag: profile

  • Firefox not opening mailto links in Flatpak Thunderbird

    Using Fedora Kinoite Thunderbird comes in a Flatpak. This caused me issues with mailto links in Firefox not opening Thunderbird’s new email window.

    Usually just setting Thunderbird as the default email client inside Thunderbird’s settings or KDE’s default applications would have worked. Even selecting Thunderbird inside the Firefox file handler applications settings would have done the job. However mailto links did nothing but open up the application selector in Firefox which did not work.

    The first two places were already set correctly (in Thunderbird and KDE) so not much more to do there. As I cannot directly select Thunderbird’s binary since it is a Flatpak, I tried to get Firefox to open the Flatpak binary instead and somehow customise the command being run.

    There was just no way to customise the command through its interface, unless I fiddled with handlers.json directly in my Firefox profile directory. I tried a few combinations and no dice. I was also still reluctant to believe that all other users would go through this mess just to get mailto links working which is such a basic feature.

    The most annoying part was that XDG actually returned Thunderbird as the default handler for mailto links:

    $ xdg-mime query default x-scheme-handler/mailto
    org.mozilla.Thunderbird.desktop

    But checking my ~/.config/mimeapps.list file revealed that there was no mailto handler defined. Adding the corresponding entries finally fixed the issue:

    [Added Associations]
    x-scheme-handler/mailto=org.mozilla.Thunderbird.desktop;

    [Default Applications]
    x-scheme-handler/mailto=org.mozilla.Thunderbird.desktop;

    Glad that I got it working but still not satisfied that this was really the way to go, so I decided to start from scratch.

    I went back to KDE’s System Settings>Apps & Windows>Default Applications>Email client. Despite having Thunderbird already selected I went and selected Other… instead. Here I could select Thunderbird again but interestingly there were more options:

    You will notice in my screen-shot the check-box stating “Remember application association for all files of type “x-scheme-handler/mailto“. This check-box once checked actually updates the same ~/.config/mimeapps.list file with the previous entries I mentioned earlier.

    So apparently this is an option which is not enabled by default when just selecting Thunderbird in the default applications list. Why not having mailto links working by default in KDE is a conundrum.

    I am sure there are edge cases not wanting mailto links to open the default email client, but I would assume the vast majority of users expect this behaviour of the default email client. What is the point otherwise of selecting a default application?

  • Post comment notification email woes

    After having done an upgrade of a very old WordPress install, notification emails were not arriving properly.

    Since this installation was originally set up almost two decades ago, back when emails were sent directly from the same hosting server to the MTA. Due to the level of spam this caused, emails nowadays have to be submitted through a proper mail system, not forgetting the fact that port 25 is now blocked at nearly all providers.

    I do run some mail servers myself, however I wanted something quick to move on so I decided to use Mailgun which I had an account with already. They actually provide their own Mailgun WordPress plugin so I was up and running as soon as the new DNS records had propagated. Emails started arriving immediately when I updated the Administration Email Address under Settings>General with the new email address. Great stuff!

    However I realised that a new comment would no longer trigger the comment notification email. Nothing in the logs of nginx revealed what could be happening. I needed to figure out if the emails were even generated, and if so, where did they get stuck.

    Luckily there is another plugin which logs each email sent by WordPress. Once I tested another comment and checked the plugin’s log page in WordPress, I immediately realised what the issue was. It was still being sent to the old administrator email address!

    Later I did spot that Mailgun’s own logs actually revealed the same data, but at the time in question I was under the impression that the emails never left WordPress.

    Now the mystery… why the heck was WordPress still using the previous email address from Administration Email Address? This field was updated and other admin notification emails were being received just fine.

    The issue when dealing with a self-hosted WordPress for oneself is that in the vast majority of cases, one is both the site administrator as well as the only user posting. Apparently the new comment notifications emails are only sent to the post author and not the site administrator. I had simply forgotten about the old email address under the posting user’s profile (Users>Profile)!

    Comment moderation emails on the contrary do go to both site administrator and post author.

    Do not forget to add or update your Gravatar profile with the new email address.

  • Running several Firefox versions simultaneously

    Ever been in the need of running more than one instance of Mozilla Firefox? Well, I have. Multiple times.

    I use Firefox for my browsing and development. Combining both in the same profile has been a pain many times especially when ones development is intensive leading to high memory and CPU consumption unfortunately ending with a browser crash.

    Some time ago I starting using Firefox Beta since it included the Sync feature built-in. At some point I wanted to revert back to the release version again as the add-ons needed to be ready for Beta as well and it could take the add-on authors some time to update leaving them disabled till then.

    The easiest thing is to run two or more versions simultaneously of Firefox which provides you with increased flexibility, especially if you do web development of any type.

    To proceed simply download another version of Firefox and install selecting the custom choice. Make sure you install it in a different path than your current Firefox installation.

    The key to get more than one instance of Firefox running is to use multiple profiles. To create an additional profile for your next version open the command prompt (if on Windows) and type the following:

    "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox" -profilemanager -no-remote

    Obviously change the path to match your own system if needed.

     

     

    Now the profile manager should be open and you can simply create a new profile and call it something else like e.g. “BETA”. Then click “Exit” afterwards to quit the profile manager.

     

     

    Next you need to edit the launcher of your newest installation of Firefox, by right-clicking its icon in the Start menu and selecting Properties. At the first text box add the following to the path:

    -P yournewprofilename -no-remote

    So it looks something like this:

    "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox Beta\firefox.exe" -P BETA -no-remote

     

    Save and launch your second instance of Firefox by clicking on the same icon. You should now see two different “Firefox.exe” processes in your task manager.

     

     

    In that same screen you were before you can also change the title and icon itself so that it is easier to distinguish which version is which.