Comments (7)

By Matthieu, 2012-08-19 20:36

For a while now, Google has allowed you to sign in to multiple Google accounts and switch back and forth between them quite easily. Firefox also allows you to use Gmail as the default application for mailto: links.

This is all fine and dandy, until you click a mailto: link and decide you don’t want to send that e-mail using your primary Gmail account. In my case, this happens when replying to posts on craigslist. I always assumed there wasn’t a “clean” solution, resigning myself to copying and pasting the e-mail and subject lines, or even at times clicking the mailto: link on my Android phone, which allows me to select any account on my phone to send the e-mail from.

Finally decided to do some research and found a solution on the mozillazine forums.

To summarize:

1. Go to about:config in Firefox
2. Set gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost = true
3. Open the Web Developer scratchpad. (Firefox> Web Developer> Scratchpad or Tools>Web Developer > Scratchpad)
4. In the scratchpad, type the following line of JavaScript:

navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto",
  "https://mail.google.com/mail/b/[email protected]/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s",
  "Description of your Gmail Account");

5. Repeat the line as many times as necessary, once for each of your Gmail accounts.
6. Once you have created all the necessary lines, go to Execute > Run.
7. The “information bar” will pop up in your main Firefox window, asking you if you want to add your Gmail account as a handler for mailto: links. Accept once for each account.
8. That’s it. Now when you click a mailto: link, you’ll be prompted which Gmail account to use.

Comments (0)

By Matthieu, 2012-01-06 15:58

Remove the Open File Security Warning in XP | vNate.

A concise tutorial on how to disable the annoying “Open File – Security Warning” popup and associated time delay/latency in Windows XP SP2 and higher.

Comments (0)

By Matthieu, 2009-07-22 20:04

I’ve been using Windows 7 on my laptop since the 6801 build was first leaked in December ’08. However I only recently noticed that there is NO built-in tool for properly editing file type associations anymore. This is quite an annoyance, as I like to be able to assign custom icons and actions to my file types, such as adding an “Edit with Dreamweaver” to html files or “Open with Photoshop” to images. Having never used Vista, and since most of my time is spent on Linux and Mac OS now, I never noticed this annoyance before… ah Microsoft… I was happy with Windows 7 until now and this had me seriously considering going back to my XP/Leo/Ubuntu triple-boot.

Anyway enough rambling. Fortunately for my Windows 7 install, Google has answers for everything. A few minutes of googling revealed this page, which links to a handy little open-source(!) utility called Types that provides all the functionality of the built-in tool from Windows XP/2003 and older.

Types: a remedy for Microsoft's silliness.

Thank goodness for Sourceforge. And to the folks in Redmond… What is the deal with REMOVING functionality from your products? OK, you can provide a simple interface, but don’t make that simple interface slower and confusing for old users with old habits… or at least provide a way to revert to the classic behaviour! Which reminds me of another useless invention, the “Network and Sharing Center”…. but that’s another story.