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CDPedia open Parallels Firefox on Export

Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2009 4:59 am
by alex3683
Hi to all!

I just added all my CDs to CDPedia and wanted to export the list to html.
When I clicked the export button it started exporting into the right directory and everything went fine so far. Then i recognized that my Parallels Windows and especially the Firefox inside Parallels was opening. It tried to open that exported page in there which didn't succeed due to limited access to the host system (mac os x).

My bug report based on these facts is as follows:
1. There MUST be an option to disable showing the exported page automatically after export. I personally want that!
2. My native Mac OS X Firefox is set as default browser. So why is there the need to open Parallels and a Windows firefox instance? There seems to be something wrong.
optional: 3. Perhaps one could give the user the possibility to select his favorite browser for preview.

So this is nothing that stops the program from working, but it's really annoying. My Macbook isn't the fastest anymore and powering up Parallels takes a while and slows everything down even more. Additionally I personally dislike it, if a program forces me to see something from what I already know, first how it looks like and second where I put (i.e. exported) it. There is no need (at least for me) to do that.

Would be happy if that was fixed :)

Thanks
Alex

Re: CDPedia open Parallels Firefox on Export

Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2009 6:33 am
by Conor
1. There MUST be an option to disable showing the exported page automatically after export. I personally want that!
Download the beta version and hold down the option key when clicking on the export button.
2. My native Mac OS X Firefox is set as default browser. So why is there the need to open Parallels and a Windows firefox instance?
This is a problem we encountered originally with our free program Bwana (a manual page reader for the browser). CDpedia asks the system to preview the page in the users default browser. The problem is Parallels exposes Firefox on Windows to Mac OS X as the default browser to launch. Depending on how you look at it the problem is with Parallels or the Finder (Launch Services) not preferring the OS X version. Even if we re-wrote our function to explicitly ask for a browser the system would still return the Parallels version when we ask for Firefox.

Re: CDPedia open Parallels Firefox on Export

Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2009 7:23 am
by alex3683
Conor wrote:
1. There MUST be an option to disable showing the exported page automatically after export. I personally want that!
Download the beta version and hold down the option key when clicking on the export button.
Okay, thanks, that seems to work. But wouldn't it be nice to disable this permanently via a simple checkbox? I guess I'm not the only one who sometimes wants to export fast without having a preview.
Conor wrote:
2. My native Mac OS X Firefox is set as default browser. So why is there the need to open Parallels and a Windows firefox instance?
This is a problem we encountered originally with our free program Bwana (a manual page reader for the browser). CDpedia asks the system to preview the page in the users default browser. The problem is Parallels exposes Firefox on Windows to Mac OS X as the default browser to launch. Depending on how you look at it the problem is with Parallels or the Finder (Launch Services) not preferring the OS X version. Even if we re-wrote our function to explicitly ask for a browser the system would still return the Parallels version when we ask for Firefox.
Thanks for this hint. So I accept that this seems to be a general problem with Parallels or the Finder.
Therefore getting a bit offtopic: Do you perhaps know where I can change that behavior? You seem to have already done some investigation that might help if I run into that problem with other software.

Hope I'm not bugging you too much or even better could help improve your software tiny bit :)

Alex

Re: CDPedia open Parallels Firefox on Export

Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2009 8:25 am
by Conor
We are always happy for the feedback. On how to fix the issue with launch services you can try MisFox to select the default application for http protocols. Although the bug might still persist if you can't give it the actual path to the application but is solely based on the name; try changing the name of Firefox on Parallels to "Firefox Windows".

Re: CDPedia open Parallels Firefox on Export

Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2009 10:26 am
by alex3683
MisFox didn't help. My solution now was to disable sharing application between OS X and Windows completely. Although this is kind of a hard way it is sufficient for me as I don't need that.

P.S.: I don't know how to "rename" an application in Windows :)

Re: CDPedia open Parallels Firefox on Export

Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2009 12:01 pm
by Alex
alex3683 wrote:P.S.: I don't know how to "rename" an application in Windows :)
Select the file in question, then hit F2 which is the equivalent of hitting enter on a Mac, it highlights the text for you to change it. Put in the name you want and then hit enter again.

Re: CDPedia open Parallels Firefox on Export

Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2009 12:57 pm
by alex3683
Alex wrote:Select the file in question, then hit F2 which is the equivalent of hitting enter on a Mac, it highlights the text for you to change it. Put in the name you want and then hit enter again.
Of course I know how to rename a file, but does that help windows recognize Windows Firefox as another Browser than the Mac one? Simply renaming the Firefox.exe would break some links, but is that an appropriate way to tell an OS X application to use its applications and not those from Windows?
Nevertheless I would say that my problem is "solved enough" for me to work with CDPedia (while adding that tiny checkbox would be nice for sure :D).

Re: CDPedia open Parallels Firefox on Export

Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2009 5:53 pm
by sjk
alex3683 wrote:MisFox didn't help.
You could also try:

Rubicode - RCDefaultApp

… but it probably won't work if MisFox didn't.

Re: CDPedia open Parallels Firefox on Export

Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 5:09 am
by Alex
alex3683 wrote:Nevertheless I would say that my problem is "solved enough" for me to work with CDPedia (while adding that tiny checkbox would be nice for sure :D).
The problem is not with CDpedia, but OS X and Parallels. I think there should be a way in Parallels to prevent this from happening, short of removing all sharing between OS X and Parallels as you did, but I'm no expert in Parallels really. I would suggest you look through their forum or try contacting their support.

Re: CDPedia open Parallels Firefox on Export

Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2009 1:15 pm
by alex3683
Alex wrote:The problem is not with CDpedia, but OS X and Parallels.
Yesss. I know that already :) I just wanted to say, that there might be other people like me that also would like to have a convient way to disable the export preview completely (independently from the browser that is opened, which may be safari, firefox or as in this case the parallels firefox).
So either integrate this checkbox or see my problem posted here as solved, because the real annoying part of the problem is out of control of CDpedia and I found a way to cirumvent this.
Thanks for the support.