Monday, November 21, 2005

Making Firefox the default Browser

Unfortunately there are still a lot of websites that actively do not support Firefox. Why you wouldn't support a browser that actually follows web standards beggars me.
The ATO (Australian Tax Office) business portal website is one of these.
I have to use their software and when I do I need to make IE the default browser else it has a spit. They also use a release of JAVA several versions behind the current one, so I have to keep a machine available with this configuration just so I can do my tax reporting. It is very frustrating.
It got worse when I thought I would see if I could get it to run on my new machine. I figured I could always put Firefox back to being default after I finished testing. Well that was easier said then done. Some Googling found this most helpful page.
After I changed these settings:
Go to your Desktop; Open My Computer; Click Tools -> Folder Options; Go to the File Types tab, and assign the following things to Firefox: URL:HyperText Transfer Protocol URL:Protected HyperText Transfer Protocol URL:File Transfer Protocol HTML File HTM File (optional); When complete, load FireFox, click Tools -> Options, and click 'Set Default Browser'.

I found that it now opened tabs from Outlook in Firefox - the way it used to - so I didn't need to try the second option.
"Solution #2: SetBrowser (freeware)
Try a freeware utility called SetBrowser to force your system to use Netscape, IE, or Opera."


Posted by: Jethro | 12:14 AM |