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Open Links in Firefox from Internet Explorer

on September 20, 2007 in Tech for Life

04/27/11: Updated with a working download link.

I have been trying out Newzie for a week now after Ryan of CyberNetNews wrote about it as the Best Desktop Feed Reader. You might have probably heard me praise GreatNews one time or the other. But, Newzie is really a well thought out and zippy little RSS reader. Yes, it is portable too and an online counterpart is coming soon which is missing in GreatNews. I will post a complete review after I have gotten myself used to all the features it has to offer.

One thing, I have come across while using Newzie is that it uses Internet Explorer for its HTML rendering engine. If I wanted to open a feed in Firefox, I could do that with Newzie (although it takes 2 clicks right now). But, if I wanted to click on links inside the feed, it opens them right inside Newzie. I am not too fond of that.

In Firefox, you can use IE View or IE Tab extensions to open links in IE. How do you do it other way around?

I want to open links that are in Internet Explorer to open in Firefox.

So, I started looking at how I can open links in Firefox (or Opera or Flock or Safari for that matter) from within IE. And this is how you do it.

Open links in your Default Browser

Just install this IE add-on in your computer and you will get a ‘Open in Default Browser’ context option in Internet Explorer.

  • Download this zip file.
  • Unzip to your C drive so the folder looks like C:\open-in-default-browser
  • Double click on the open-in-default-browser.reg file to import it into your Windows Registry.
  • Restart IE to start seeing the context menu option
  • That’s it!

It’s not many times I have had the need for this but it was good know that the option is there if someone needs it. Newzie does have support for the Gecko rendering engine (the engine that runs Firefox) but it is not out of the box and it is not for the faint hearted.

Until they support Firefox naively, I can right click on my feed headlines or any link from Newzie and open it in Firefox.

[via MSDN Forum]

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  • http://cybernetnews.com Ryan Wagner

    That Newzie really is fantastic, and that trick is pretty helpful! :)

  • http://www.shankrila.com K-IntheHouse

    And I thought I’d never find anything better than GreatNews. LOL!

    Now that I read the title of this post.. I must have been drowsy when I wrote that. Should have made it clearer than mud. :-)

  • http://www.techiesden.com Vaibhav

    Good one, a nice trick. Usually we don’t look for these but this little trick is nice, but will it support any other browser with IE?

  • http://www.kylescove.com Kyle Eslick

    I’ve been meaning to try out Newzie for awhile now and probably will this weekend.

    I’m pretty picky when it comes to feed readers, so we will see if its better than GreatNews ;)

    One quick correction – GreatNews is sync’d with Bloglines, which is web-based. They are also working on syncing it with Google Reader, although they have been working on that for quite a while now.

  • http://www.shankrila.com K-IntheHouse

    Vaibhav, thanks a lot buddy! It should support any browser that is set as your Default Browser. But, I have tested it only with Firefox.

    Kyle, me too. I still miss a few killer features like Labels and the ability to store posts in those labels indefinitely. But, Newzie has a lot of things going for it too.. and their support responded very quickly to some of my questions!

    You are right about the Bloglines sync with GreatNews, syncing with Google Reader will be tremendous leap in my eyes.

  • http://www.techiesden.com Vaibhav

    Ok, in that case, i will try it with safari, and flock :)

  • http://www.shankrila.com K-IntheHouse

    I’d love to hear if it worked for you. :-)

  • buba

    You write / spend so much time promoting firefox just like others which is understanble.

    Unfortunatly many (even popular) indian sites don’t care about multi browser support. All those sites fail miserably when loaded in firefox. When some frequent visit sites fail then we hesitate to use firefox next time.

  • http://www.shankrila.com K-IntheHouse

    Buba.. thanks for taking the time to comment and welcome to ShanKri-la.

    It is a sad fact that there are a lot of sites on the internet that aren’t compatible with browsers besides IE. My solution to those sites is to use extensions like IE Tab. You could change to IE right from within Firefox with a single click in your status bar. Also you can permanently add sites to IE Tab list as you browse and they will always open with IE as the rendering engine automatically right within Firefox.

    I am not against IE or any other browser it’s just I like to share the fun I have with Firefox with my friends and readers alike. :-)

  • http://www.mp33pm.co.uk HitMeWithIt

    Hey try this!
    FireFoxView.
    It does exactly what you are requiring…it just doesn’t seem to have had much exposure as it took me about an hour or so of searching to find it!
    http://www.iosart.com/firefox/firefoxview/

    Until then I had it the same way as you…with the registry edits etc. Firefoxview is better for portability of future reinstalls though!

  • http://www.shankrila.com K

    Hey thanks a lot man! That is a great extension.. it definitely is a rock solid alternative to the one I posted about. I will include this in my next week’s Firefox extension Picks. :razz:

  • J

    That zip file is long gone. Can somebody post the actual registry listing so I can do it by hand?

    Thanks.