How To Make Hotmail Or Livemail As Default Email Client In Firefox

In Firefox, when you click on a mailto hyperlink (an email address given on a contact page of a website), the default email client is opened in the compose mode. By default Firefox 3.0 only has Gmail and Yahoo mail in the list of mail clients. Users of Hotmail, Livemail will first have to add the respective mail applications to Firefox’s list before choosing either Hotmail or Livemail as a default email client.
The steps to do this involve editing an about config entry in Firefox. About:config is a place where user preferences are stored. One of our articles explains how to open and modify entries in about:config.
If you are already aware of about:config, then here are the steps to add a new email application in Firefox:

1. Open about:config and search for “gecko” in the Filter field.

2. Double click the first entry gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost
to change the value to true. Now you can close the about:config.

3. For installing Hotmail mail application, go to a new tab and enter the following text into the
address (location) bar and hit enter:

NOTE: When you copy and paste the following lines of javascript in your browser, you may find that they do not work as intended.  Replace the curly double quotes with simple ones, before you hit Enter.

javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler(“mailto”,”http://hotmail.msn.com/secure/start?action=compose&to=%s”,”Hotmail”)

Instead if you want to install a protocol handler for Live Mail then use the following command:

javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler(“mailto”,”http://mail.live.com/secure/start?action=compose&to=%s”,”Livemail”)

4. Click “Add Application.” The Hotmail/Livemail protocol handler has been installed.

5. Go to Tools –> Options –> Applications. Scroll down the list by content type and find mailto. In the drop-down menu to the right, select ‘Use Hotmail‘ or ‘Use Livemail‘ according to your wish.

See the screenshot below:

6. You can change back the setting gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost to false now that you are done with the installation.

Now you’re done. The next time you click on a email hyperlink it will open up in a mail application of your choice.