GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 784290
Don't use a different browser for "About" > "Web Website"
Last modified: 2017-06-28 15:45:55 UTC
In "About" in the menus we find in the middle of the screen a link to "Web Website". By the way, there is no mouseover preview of what URL clicking "Web Website" will take us to. [BAD] OK we click it, and lo and behold, after a long time on our slow machine... ***Firefox*** starts up and probably tries to open whatever URL you had there, before I killed it as best I could. Odd, $ env|grep fire $ env|grep BROW BROWSER=epiphany $ ls -l /etc/alternatives/|grep fire #same with "iceweasel" $ ls -l /etc/alternatives/|grep browser lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 06-24 23:44 gnome-www-browser -> /usr/bin/epiphany-browser lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 41 06-24 23:44 gnome-www-browser.1.gz -> /usr/share/man/man1/epiphany-browser.1.gz lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 2009-10-29 infobrowser -> /usr/bin/info lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 2009-10-29 infobrowser.1.gz -> /usr/share/man/man1/info.1.gz lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 2016-07-29 www-browser -> /usr/bin/lynx lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 2016-07-29 www-browser.1.gz -> /usr/share/man/man1/lynx.1.gz lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 06-24 23:44 x-www-browser -> /usr/bin/epiphany-browser lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 41 06-24 23:44 x-www-browser.1.gz -> /usr/share/man/man1/epiphany-browser.1.gz Anyway OK you dug up Firefox from some setting somewhere but please don't use it. Just use yourself (epiphany).
Hm, I dunno about this one. It kind of makes sense to always open the link in Epiphany. On the other hand, all other about dialogs would open the result in the default browser. I think the tiebreaker is that it's not technically possible to change this without getting rid of our use of GtkAboutDialog, and we surely don't want to do that. So I am going to close this WONTFIX, even though it's not a bad suggestion. Aside: here's how you query or set the default browser, if you prefer to use the command line rather than the Details panel in System Settings: $ xdg-mime query default x-scheme-handler/http $ xdg-mime default epiphany.desktop x-scheme-handler/http
(In reply to Michael Catanzaro from comment #1) > Hm, I dunno about this one. It kind of makes sense to always open the link > in Epiphany. On the other hand, all other about dialogs would open the > result in the default browser. I think the tiebreaker is that it's not > technically possible to change this without getting rid of our use of > GtkAboutDialog, and we surely don't want to do that. So I am going to close > this WONTFIX, even though it's not a bad suggestion. > > Aside: here's how you query or set the default browser, if you prefer to use > the command line rather than the Details panel in System Settings: > > $ xdg-mime query default x-scheme-handler/http > $ xdg-mime default epiphany.desktop x-scheme-handler/http gio mime x-scheme-handler/http gio mime x-scheme-handler/http epiphany.desktop And same for x-scheme-handler/https. Please don't use xdg-mime, it's awful.
Never mind! I will try to find out what your website is with Google. Google leads me to https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_(浏览器) which in the left side panel I find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Web which in the right side panel I find https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Web which lo and behold is the offline manual online! So I have with good confidence probably found whatever "Web Website" links to. (Note: normal users would have given up, not having "gio" installed, nor knowing about xdg-mime nor being able to read its manual page.) And I have found the manual in .html format which I will attempt to recursively download maybe, for offline use. Anyway, I recommend, besides having the "special" link to "Web Website", also provide a "normal" backup link next to it. You can say <a href="boobytrapped link>Web Website</href> (<a href="https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Web">https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Web </a> Why? Because 90% of users moving to epiphany will NOT have that xdg stuff configured properly (it will be still configured to the former massive ugly browser they are trying to get away from and probably have already removed.) Nor will they have any idea of that xdg stuff. So in effect you have locked them out of access to your primary contact / website... Ah the irony, can't even use the browser to browse its own website.
Then use the GNOME Settings: Details -> Default Applications -> Browser You can change the default browser there. You could also uninstall firefox, that'd work as well.
I don't think I am using gnome. All I know is I am using icewm and nodm. Anyway I hope this is the only such boobytrapped link.