After a lot of digging into the various involved components including some "stracing" I found out why it didn't work and how to fix this:
It seems the default applications are found via .desktop files in /home/<user>/.local/share/applications. I had some older entries in there, probably from Ubuntu editions from a few years back (I am not a fan of re-installing and usually update from one to the next version). There were several firefox entries in there, when I removed all of them, I could not select firefox any more as default application in the system settings, however when I copied over the firefox.desktop entry from /usr/share/applications/ and re-selected firefox as the default application, I can now open http-links from all the applications again. Not sure who or what is to blame here, somehow my deleted-files folder does not show the removed .desktop files any more, so I cannot post them to allow for closer analysis, maybe the original reporter with the same problem can post the files. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to libgnome in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1035221 Title: xdg-open/gnome-open opens blank firefox Status in “libgnome” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Status in “xdg-utils” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: Both xdg-open http://google.com and gnome-open http://google.com result in a new Firefox window, with a single "empty" tab. This is not the expected result - I expect the page to open in a new tab/window. Running firefox http://google.com gives the expected result. Whilst I am seeing the bug under quantal (regression from precise) the packages xdg-utils and libgnome2-0 are the same version in both cases. "/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command" is set in both cases to "firefox %s" --- ApportVersion: 2.4-0ubuntu6 Architecture: amd64 Dependencies: DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10 InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Alpha amd64 (20100217) NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia Package: xdg-utils 1.1.0~rc1-2ubuntu6 PackageArchitecture: all ProcEnviron: TERM=xterm PATH=(custom, no user) LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-9.9-generic 3.5.0 Tags: quantal running-unity Uname: Linux 3.5.0-9-generic x86_64 UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to quantal on 2012-04-14 (117 days ago) UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libgnome/+bug/1035221/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
