So, as I settle in to using Linux, I'm actually reading my email in Thunderbird. Like 99% of the email-using public, I often get links sent in URLs to which I would like to go. That's why mail-readers (including Thunderbird) make things that look like URLs in mail messages clickable links. Every mail reader should be able to launch links in the user's default browser as a base out-of-the-box feature.

Somehow Thunderbird 0.7.3 missed this little feature.

On clicking on a link, the page is downloaded to a temporary folder and then I'm asked what application I'd like to use to view it. There are all sorts of support forums where people tell each other how to work around it (none of the suggestions worked in this case, unfortunately), with solutions involving creating a shell script and then editing your prefs.js file to specify the shell script as your handler for the http, https, ftp, etceteras protocols.

But what blows my mind is that this isn't blocking releases. I mean this is basic functionality that simply doesn't work. And it's not like this is a complex thing to fix. Out-of-the-box your action for clicking on a link should be to launch the user's default browser. For example, the Python code to do that is:

import webbrowser
webbrowser.open( url )

Sure, it may be more work in C or JavaScript, but that's the price you pay for inferior tools.

Hmm, now Firefox is getting balky about loading pages. Sticks with a frozen window for 20 seconds or so before displaying new pages. Maybe I'll try emerging the suite instead... though I'm kinda fond of Firefox when it works.