Default browser

[Beartooth]

In the past, I have always set my default browser to Dillo, which 
is very fast and very safe; and it usually shows me at least enough to 
guess reasonably well whether I want to go on, switch to another browser, 
or skip the site.

I've managed to make it a partial default (under xfce4 in F18). 
Pan, for instance, routinely opens links in Dillo. Alpine, however, does 
not. (I run Alpine on a remote host, over ssh; is that relevant? It does 
open Firefox.)

Like so many other things of late, the software to set default 
choices seems to have been moved to some new place, without leaving a 
spoor behind to follow. So the place I found to set defaults is quite 
likely not the main one. What is??