Setting Gmail as the Default Firefox E-mail Client

It has long been one of the few things I have disliked about Firefox that I can’t get the browser’s ‘Send Link’ function to use Gmail instead of the operating system’s default e-mail client. I tend not to use a desktop based e-mail client like Thunderbird or Outlook in favour of Gmail’s web based interface and I find it irritating that I have to copy and paste a URL into Gmail when I want to send a link. Well now I’ve found out that Firefox 3 can in fact provide the functionality that I want!

Firefox has the ability to allow web-based protocol handlers to accept links like mailto: and irc:. This means that as long as the online service accepts the protocol you can pretty much use anything to handle these links. The Mozilla Links blog explains how to set up Firefox to allow Gmail to be the client for e-mail.