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Formerly I could change the default HTML viewer to Notepad using about:config (view_source.editor.external etc.) Now this fails. Why?

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  • Last reply by cor-el

Ted Polet
Ted Polet
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Environment: Windows 7, Firefox 53.0.3 (32-bit) Add-ons: Firebug, NoScript and Browser-Security. These were installed previously. I installed Adblock Plus, but switched it off as it seems to slow down the browser.

Problem: I build websites using plain HTML and self-developed HTML macros. In order to edit a macro page for a specific goal, I open the page in Firefox and use ctrl-U to edit the source HTML code in Notepad. After editing I save the page and refresh it in Firefox. This used to work up to a few months ago. Now I found the settings in about:config were changed back to default, possibly after a recent update to Firefox.

Setting the relevant switches in about:config doesn't work for me: 

    view_source.editor.external  -->  true
    view_source.editor.path  --> C:/windows/notepad

instead of opening notepad, Firefox keeps displaying the standard source viewer which doesn't include an editing and saving function.

Any ideas how to solve this?

Environment: Windows 7, Firefox 53.0.3 (32-bit) Add-ons: Firebug, NoScript and Browser-Security. These were installed previously. I installed Adblock Plus, but switched it off as it seems to slow down the browser. Problem: I build websites using plain HTML and self-developed HTML macros. In order to edit a macro page for a specific goal, I open the page in Firefox and use ctrl-U to edit the source HTML code in Notepad. After editing I save the page and refresh it in Firefox. This used to work up to a few months ago. Now I found the settings in about:config were changed back to default, possibly after a recent update to Firefox. Setting the relevant switches in about:config doesn't work for me: view_source.editor.external --> true view_source.editor.path --> C:/windows/notepad instead of opening notepad, Firefox keeps displaying the standard source viewer which doesn't include an editing and saving function. Any ideas how to solve this?

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cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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Note that you may need to escape a '\' as '\\'.

What path do you see if you evaluate this code in the Scratchpad?

You can open the Scratchpad (Shift+F4) and run the below posted code to check the view source path. Open the Environment menu in the Scratchpad and select Browser to run the code in Browser environment. You will see a warning bar: This scratchpad executes in the Browser context.

  • paste this code in the editor area
  • click Run to run this code
  • click Display to see the result 
viewSourceAppPath = Cc["@mozilla.org/preferences-service;1"]
.getService(Ci.nsIPrefBranch)
.getComplexValue("view_source.editor.path",Ci.nsIFile);
viewSourceAppPath.path;