Annoying firefox problem with associations

[Barney_DK]

Hi,

Since I've threatened to wipe out my windows partition, I've been trying to get my girlfriend to use Suse, and firefox for browsing.
She then hit a problem last night which I can't believe the developers haven't got a fix for.. So I must be missing something.

She got a couple of attachments in yahoo mail, a jpeg and a .doc file. Normally, if I click on either of these in Konqueror etc, then they open with open office, or kuickview, so I know the control panel associations are there.

However, she could not open the attachment in firefox. It offers you the chance to select a program, and remember ir next time, but this is not really a good solution for a typical seasoned windows "click it and it works" person.
under "file types" in the download preferences, I cannot add new ones on the fly.

I know I could say "save it to disk and then open it through your normal file browser", but that's not really the point is it?

Does anyone know anyway to add new file associations, or even get firefox to use the ones from KDE control panel?

Thanks

[hard candy]

this is not really a good solution for a typical seasoned windows "click it and it works" person.

Why not? WinXp asks me this all the time for IE6. If I check the "remember" box, I don't have to do this again. What does she do when Windows asks her this question?
You could set some default file associations for the desktop and system. Look through the menus for system and settings. That's basically what Microsoft has already done for you when you install it.
Try installing Quicktime in Windows, it asks you if it can handle certain types of files by default. So it's not something that is "automatic" in windows.

"so I know the control panel associations are there. " And what the heck is a control panel doing in linux? I thought that was patented by Microsoft :)

[ArgPirate]

I thinks you should be able to do it through like prefrences and helper applications. but in my firefox i didnt have to do that it just asks if i want to save it or open it with the default app. anyways you should be able to do all that in helper apps.

[lagdawg]

I have the same problem, whenever I try to open a word document it won't open correctly unless I save it to the disk and then open it.

On a side note, at work I have to use Windows, so i have installed firefox on the computer. However, whenever I open a movie it uses Quicktime by default for mpgs and such. I would much rather use WMP, anybody know how to fix this.

[YeNotGuilty]

uninstall quicktime?

hehehe

[Barney_DK]

If you right click on the quicktime icon in the system tray, there should be an option for quicktime preferences. This should contain an option for automatically playing file types in quicktime. mpg is one of the ones you can turn off I think.

Had a similar problem with real one player in windows which keeps wanting to open Oracle stored procedures because they have a .pls extension.

[psych-major]

How many PC's have been infected with nasty stuff because of the way IE6 automagically runs code for you in the name "convenience"???

Anyway, I got my wife to switch to Firefox via Windows 2K about 6 months ago and she loves it, I asked her if she found it tough to make the switch and she felt like it was actually more user-friendly than IE!

So on to the real problem...
Obviously you want the migration to SuSE/Firefox to be a successful one, so I have 2 suggestions:
1. get her started with Firefox on her Windows box, to get her used to it.
2. take a few minutes and add the basic file type associations for her by opening each one, selecting the default behavior, and checking the remember box. The easiest way to do this would be to point Firefox to file:///home/user/wherever _your_docs_are and browse around and click on stuff like .doc, .xls, .jpg. whatever. I think about 5 minutes or so should take care of it and then to her it will look like it "works just likw Microsoft" but you will know better!

By the way, to change exisiting file associatiation behavior for Linux Firefox, go to Edit/Preferences/Downloads and go from there.

Also, it might make a difference which was installed first: OpenOffice or Firefox. On mine, Firefox was installed first, and then Oo, so Oo is now the default when Firefox encounters a .doc. I know SuSE comes with Oo, and then I assume you installed Firefox after, so the association would need to be set. I might be totally out to lunch, but it's worth checking out...