Re: Why do certain links open IE instead of FF?

[Ralph Fox]

On Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:48:34 +0000 (UTC), jackd wrote:

> I'm using Win xp with all updates.
>
> I use Firefox for my browser. I do not have it set as my default
> browser. Almost every time I click on a link, it is Firefox that
> opens. I never use IE except when a Web page is not working right. Then
> I check with IE to see if the page was made by somebody who thinks
> everyone should be using IE.
>
> My question is why do some URLs I click on every once in a while open
> IE instead of FF? It doesn't happen often, but I'm just curious.


Generally there are two possible reasons.

1. Which application opens a URL, depends on the URL's protocol.

Examples of URL protocols
http://www.google.com/ -- HTTP protocol
mailto:jo...@invalid.com -- MAILTO protocol
ftp://mirrors.easynews.com/mozilla/ -- FTP protocol
nntp://news.eternal-september.org/XnsA1808CB825...@78.46.70.116
-- NNTP protocol

2. If clicking the URL tells Firefox to download a file and open it in
a helper application, the helper application could be IE.


--
Kind regards
Ralph