Windows Vista

1. Click the Start button, then click the Default Programs item.
2. Click on the Set Program Access and Computer Defaults item.
   
   
   
   
3. In the Access and Defaults window, click on the Custom radio button to expand the Custom category.
4. Underneath Choose a default Web browser click the radio button next to Mozilla Firefox.
   
   
   
   
5. Click OK at the bottom of the window.

Windows XP

1. Click the Start button, then click on the Control Panel icon to open the Windows Control Panel.
2. Click the Add or Remove Programs icon to open the Add or Remove Programs applet.
3. On the left side of the Window click the Set Program Access and Defaults icon.
4. In the Access and Defaults window, click on the Custom radio button to expand the Custom category.
5. Underneath Choose a default Web browser click the radio button next to Mozilla Firefox.
6. Click OK at the bottom of the window.

Ubuntu Linux

1. In the System menu, open Preferences, then Preferred Applications.
2. On the Internet tab under Web Browser, choose Firefox in the drop-down.
3. Press Close.

1. From the Dock, open Safari.
2. From the menu bar, click the Safari menu and select Preferences....
3. Click the General icon, to display the General preferences panel.
4. In the Default Web Browser: drop-down list, select Firefox.
   
   
   
5. Quit Safari.

Manually set File Types (Windows XP)

If links from programs like Outlook fail to open in Firefox, you can try to set the file handling options manually.

1. Open Windows Explorer
2. In the menu bar, click Tools > Folder Options...
3. Click the File Types tab
4. Find (NONE) url:Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, click it, and then click Advanced.
5. Click the open action and click the Edit.
6. Fill in the fields with this information:
   • Action: open
   • Application used to perform action: "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -requestPending -osint -url "%1" (Assumng you installed Firefox to the default location. If not, use your own path, surrounded by quotation marks)
   • Use DDE: Checked
   • DDE Message: "%1",,0,0,,,,
   • Application: Firefox
   • Topic: WWW_OpenURL
     
     
     

Repeat steps 5 and 6 for the (NONE) url:Hyper Text Transfer Protocol with Privacy option.

Troublesome programs

Some programs are hard-coded to open Internet Explorer rather than the default browser. Programs that do this are listed below along with possible solutions, if available.

• MSN Messenger
• AIM 5.9 - upgrade to the latest version of AIM.