Before you cry "heresy," and mark this bug WONTFIX or INVALID, I ask you take a moment to consider this request for enhancement and the reasons behind it. Mozilla has become my primary browser, and I am "testing" it in this manner. However, there are several pages I visit which use plugins (Shockwave, Flash, RealPlayer, etc). Because I consider Mozilla a testbed browser, I do not feel it is appropriate to hit Mozilla with additional plugins. On the other hand, official releases of other browsers such as Netscape 6.1 or Internet Explorer 6 are more appropriate for plugins because these are "finished" versions, for all intents and purposes. Similarly, when I preview in Mozilla a webpage I'm developing, I'd like to be able to look at that page in Internet Explorer, Netscape 6, Netscape 4.x, Amaya 5.1, etc. (This assumes the page has been saved and Mozilla is ooking at it via a file:// or http:// url. I'm not suggesting Mozilla Composer open up to these other browsers.) For these reasons, if Mozilla could attempt to detect browsers the operating system currently has, and provide a menu on the main toolbar, it would be immensely useful to myself and perhaps other developers. Specifically, if I have a URL in the location bar, and I select a browser (such as Netscape 6.0.0) in the dropdown menu, Mozilla should attempt to call up that browser to that page. I do not necessarily recommend this for commercial browsers such as Netscape 6.1. I would not necessarily care if Mozilla attempted to automatically detect them, or if Mozilla simply provided a menu option for me to manually locate a browser program. But being able to call another browser to the same page from Mozilla would, at least to me, have a great value. Opinions? Comments? Ruthless flames of indignation?

Sounds like redundant bloat. Mozilla should ideally run plugins flawlessly so it would be of more value to the project if you test them in Mozilla and not other browsers. Mozilla isn't a desktop environment. In order to start other web-enabled applications you should instead use shortcuts or the START menu. Or use the start-menu's "run" command with whatever addition parameter the various apps use to start up loading a particular URL. If this RFE is at all accepted, at least make it possible to build without such a "feature".

You're totally wrong! Since Netscape 6 is based over Mozilla I don't understand how it could be more "finished" product than Mozilla. Furthermore, Mozilla releases comes out much faster so it's obvious that they includes latest fixes. The same thing over Internet Exporer 6, I've been told by an IE adept that IE 6 *IS STILL* a Beta. They probally released it to make concurrence over Netscape 6... And since you consider Mozilla as a "testbed browser" then you should stress it with plugins. As said R.K.Aa if a feature like that is included it should be on special builds, or as an option in prefs.js

Looks like the plugins issue is pretty much DOA, reduced to my personal tastes... Mr. Guyot, I know Netscape 6.x is based on Mozilla. I also know the plugin architecture has changed significantly and there are not a lot of plugins written for the new architecture. (This is an evangelism issue, of course.) (2) We all know both Netscape and IE browsers are buggy. But the versions currently out are considered "good enough for commercial release". Mozilla, being an experimental development browser with far higher standards, isn't "good enough" in its own eyes, but sufficient for the end-user community. (I recall this issue being debated ad nauseum over at MozillaZine. Asa Dotzler has spoken on this more than once, I believe.) I, as a developer for the end-user, want to see these pages in as many commercial browsers as possible to anticipate what's going to happen. I'm just trying to see if I can reduce: -- Selecting and copying the location.href URL -- Starting the new browser if I don't have it already running -- Pasting the location.href URL and pressing "Go" into a single drop-down menu. If I have to manually preset the browsers and the command-line config, that's something I can accept as a website developer. As a website developer, especially one using the Mozilla browser, I'm supposed to have some knowledge of how to browse a computer's file system, so I should know enough to set up specific browser callup settings with a general dialog box for this feature. Also, I didn't say it was "more finished", as you put it. I said "finished for all intents and purposes", meaning the browser companies considered them adequate enough to inflict on the general public. Mozilla.org has a much higher standard (pun not intended) of quality. Nonetheless, I don't want to turn this into a debate on "what's beta and what's not". :-) *holding out an olive branch* R.K.Aa mentioned using the run command from the prompt. In a sense, that's what I'm asking Mozilla to provide. The developer would through a popup form preset a browser, and specify where the location.href would go. Then, when the developer is on said page and wanting to look at the page in another browser, he or she clicks one selection in the menu and the other program starts, loading the page specified in the location.href. Is this bloat? Perhaps. It would make my life as a webpage developer so much easier. Mr. Guyot, I appreciate your enthusiasm. I agree that I should throw my heart and soul into finding chinks in the Lizard's armor. I simply see some chinks (JavaScript, for example) as more vital than others (plugins for tv clips), and I am personally willing to accept going to a lesser browser which they design plugins for to view what I want. Maybe this is a chink that is more of a scratch than a dent, but in terms of ease-of-use, reducing a large number of manual steps to only two manual steps and a scripted action would be immensely valuable to me. Please, don't think I'm asking for this just because I like to see features plugins provide. That just happened to be the first reason I named.

On a more serious note, would a feature like this be a security hole? It doesn't sound like one, if the developer using this is the one presetting the browsers into the menu.

i don't see a reason mozdev.org couldn't host an xpi oriented project to do this. nor do i forsee this as ever being added to the main mozilla build. Whether mozilla.org would be willing to host this in /extensions/ i'm not sure. (I doubt it, however, I don't set policy). If you're interested in gathering people to work on this, you might try asking in news.mozilla.org/netscape.public.mozilla.* (pick one group, maybe general -- probably not), or perhaps news.mozdev.org (read www.mozdev.org for insight), or you could ask on irc.mozilla.org (probably #mozillazine, however possibly not)

Ok, based on a brief discussion in #mozillazine (thanks for the advice), the indications are this is a dup of bug #68702. Not that I can understand half of what they're talking about in that bug... :) can someone knowledgeable confirm this?

See also bug 92719, [RFE] Support for opening a URL into IE.

At request of reporter, marking as dupe of bug 68702. -> Networking, for parity with dupe *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 68702 ***

VERIFIED:dupe.