Marcia found this during her testing (presumably with a Bon Echo nightly). Steps to reproduce: 1. Install a feed reader for Vista. 2. In Options > Feeds choose that application as your default reader. 3. Go to any feed; e.g. http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot Results: Feed preview is shown instead of the external feed reader being opened. Expected results: External feed reader is opened and the feed is added. I imagine this is failing somewhere in nsWindowsShellService::OpenApplicationWithURI, but it's hard to tell since any errors that would be thrown are being silently caught (in feed code).

this might be the feederreader's fault. I am able to launch the application called feederreader (found on sourceforge) What 3rd party app are you using?

dougt: I will spend a little more time on this today. In looking at the steps adam listed, that is not exactly what i am seeing STR: 1. Go to a site that has a feed. 2. Select a client side feed reader, such as FeedDemon. 3. Click subscribe now Feed demon doesn't launch. I tried three different feed readers (Sharpreader FeedDemon and RSS and ATOM feed reader), and in each case I couldn't get the feed to be added to the feed reader. In some cases, (1) The feed reader launches but the feed is not added to the client. I can see, as Doug points out, where that is likely a different problem. (2) The feed reader seems to launch, but doesn't really fully launch. The end result after limited testing is it is extremely difficult to add feeds for the three apps I tried - something funky is definitely going on. I am running as the Admin on this machine.

does ie7 have the same problem?

Using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061013 BonEcho/2.0, I was able to get a reader called RSS Bandit to work as the default feed reader and add various RSS feeds. Regarding IE, I am still hunting around for a pref that allows you to use a client side feed reader. The RSS pref content area does not have a pref to set this.

Rob S./Mano any thoughts here?

Please don't CC @callingid.com ;)

Most likely these apps don't respond to an rss link on the command line. That's a missing feature in their software, not ours. I just checked the latest Feed Demon - they now support this and Minefield has Feed Demon in the helper list. I think we can close this bug out.