firefox file download help apps?

[Gabriel M. Elder]

On Tue, 2006-10-31 at 14:27 -0800, Lonni J Friedman wrote:
> I've got a bizarre problem with firefox (2.0), where I want to be able
> to tell firefox which helper application to spawn when encountering
> specific file types.  I can't figure out any way to add new types to
> its seemingly hardcoded list.  I could have sworn that there used to
> be an extension that provided this functionality, but i can't find it
> now either.  Anyone know?
> 
> -- 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> L. Friedman                                    netllama at gmail.com
> LlamaLand                       http://netllama.linux-sxs.org


Yeah, i've noticed this quasi-deficiency in firefox too. I can't locate
the extension, either; the mozilla folks keep changing their damn search
interface, each time for the worse, it seems.

What i'm about to say applies to my experiences with firefox 1.5.0.7. I
haven't had time to try 2.0 yet, so your mileage may vary.

Firefox will take cues from the nautilus mime application associations.
For instance, if you click on a hyperlink to, say, a .pls (shoutcast
playlist) file, in the absence of some other plugin that would intercept
that, firefox will prompt you as to what to do with that file. The
drop-down combo in this dialog will default to the "Open with" option
selected with the default application already specified in the combo.
Therefore, you can change the "open with" option in nautilus for certain
file types, giving you some measure of control as to how firefox will
handle those types as well.

There is, however, an application, available as an rpm package in the
core repository, called mozplugger. It's a glue application such that
firefox can call other apps to handle mime types using this one magic
plugin. Once installed, its configuration file lives at 
/etc/mozpluggerrc. I'm not aware of a gui configuration tool for it
however, so be prepared to get your fingers a little dirty digging in
with your favorite text editor.

Sticking with the .pls example, you can change the section for
audio/x-scpls from this:

audio/x-scpls:pls:Shoutcast Playlists
#       controls: mpg321 -q -@ "$file"
        HELPER(xmms -e -p "$file")

to this:
audio/x-scpls:pls:Shoutcast Playlists
	stream nokill /usr/bin/xine "$file"
#       controls: mpg321 -q -@ "$file"
        HELPER(xmms -e -p "$file")

if you've got xine installed. Even with this, tho, firefox still prompts
and shows a preference for the nautilus assocication in fc5. From what
i've seen in other distros, the behavior will foremost depend on the
mozpluggerrc.

Hopefully, you're online with a high-speed connection. You can try:
yum -y install mozplugger

Hope this helps. I agree, the multimedia handling for "rich internet
content" (cringe) is a little lacking. But with a little tweaking, you
can often get most mime types to work. Holler if ???s.

- gabriel