[PLUG] Firefox forgot what program to open a ZIP file with

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Wed Mar 7 08:06:48 UTC 2012


On Tue, 6 Mar 2012 21:54:07 -0800
Dale Snell <ddsnell at frontier.com> dijo:

>On Tue, 6 Mar 2012 21:00:21 -0800
>John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net> wrote:

>> Does anyone know how to tell Firefox what to open files with?

>The only way to get around this annoyance (and yes, it's happened
>to me, too), is to feed it the actual name for the program you
>want.  If you're running Gnome, it's probably
>/usr/bin/file-roller.  (That's what Gnome insists on calling
>"Archive Manager" in the menus.  Can't be confusing the poor
>lusers with actual program names, now can we?)  When Firefox pops
>up that whutdoido? dialog box, click on browse, and type the
>absolute path and filename into the address bar.  Then click Open,
>and Firefox should be happy.  After that, FF should remember what
>you did before, and will present that as the default option.

Thanks for the name of the executable. 

Unfortunately, the popup window in Firefox doesn't have a place to type
a path and filename. All you can do is select "other," then navigate
to /usrbin/file-roller and select it. I did so, and it worked, but then
I repeated the action and Firefox went right back to wanting to open
the file in gedit. There was no "always use this program" button.

But knowing the name of the executable I was able to effect a permanent
cure by going into Edit > Preferences > Applications. I still had to
browse to /usr/bin/file-roller (no address bar to type in), but Firefox
now remembers what to use to open a .zip file.

The present problem is solved, but what will I do next time a program
wants to know what to open a file with and I don't know the name of the
executable? There was a recent discussion here about how dpkg / apt /
apttitude and other package managers do a lousy job of keeping track of
what is installed. I might suggest a simple text file to which every
package manager must add the name of package, the name of the executable
and its popular name; and remove same when the package is uninstalled.
I shouldn't have to wander all over the internet to find out what
programs are installed on my computer and how to launch them.



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