So a few people have made mention that the gadget isn’t opening up links in the default browser window.  So far, I’ve spent the entire morning tracking this problem down.  I found out a few interesting things:

1. Any gadget that says it “Opens in the default browser” is merely making regular HTML links.  In our gadget, any non-web search does that and should work as long as the default browser is set right.
2. There is no code that I know of or can find to specify whether to open links in one browser or another.  At least, not without making the user specify the exact file to execute and then attempting to merge that with a url string.  Odds are it’s probably not going to happen.
3. I’m not exactly sure why the command window.open decides to open the window in IE, it just does.  I’m going to chalk this one up to the design of the sidebar or that FireFox is still slowly being integrated into Vista like it was in XP.  This might be a bug that will be rectified over time with one or more patches.

So ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the case that this little “Bug” is exactly that.  I wish I knew how to fix it, but so far as I can see, we’re all pretty much stuck with it until either Microsoft or Mozilla deign to fix it.  I will however keep an eye out for future fixes or perhaps codes and solutions that might help out in this area. 

P.S.:  We’re going to play with some ideas for the next update.  I’m not promising anything, but we’re going to give it a shot to see if we can get this fixed.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
and is filed under Development, Gadget Stuff.



You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.