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How do I change what happens when I click on a link when no options are presented?

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by Jayhawk

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The article says to select "open with" from a dialog box, but the dialog box never opens. It also says to go to "Applications" in the "General" page of "Options" and change the action for that file type.

   The does nothing because the file type is not listed, and when I enter the file type in the search box nothing happens.

I have made it so that .avi videos open in VLC video viewer, but .mp4 open and run within Firefox. I don't like the way they look doing so, and I want to have them open and run in VLC, but cannot find any way to make them behave as the .avi videos do. When I click on an .mp4 link the popup box asking me what to do does not come up - the video simply begins running in Firefox. I am running the current version of Firefox.

I have tried deleting the file as suggested in the trouble shooting guide, I have restarted Firefox, and I have rebooted my computer. No good.

The article says to select "open with" from a dialog box, but the dialog box never opens. It also says to go to "Applications" in the "General" page of "Options" and change the action for that file type. The does nothing because the file type is not listed, and when I enter the file type in the search box nothing happens. I have made it so that .avi videos open in VLC video viewer, but .mp4 open and run within Firefox. I don't like the way they look doing so, and I want to have them open and run in VLC, but cannot find any way to make them behave as the .avi videos do. When I click on an .mp4 link the popup box asking me what to do does not come up - the video simply begins running in Firefox. I am running the current version of Firefox. I have tried deleting the file as suggested in the trouble shooting guide, I have restarted Firefox, and I have rebooted my computer. No good.

All Replies (4)

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Hi Jayhawk, the "link" context menu only works for basic links, not scripted buttons, so on sites that do not use a link, you don't have those options.

Do the MP4s open in a separate tab by themselves -- you can see the media address in the tab -- or do they open in a player embedded in a page? Firefox has a preference to disable the "stand alone" media player so in that case you should get a download dialog. This doesn't work for embedded players. If you want to give it a try:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste ALONE and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the media.play-stand-alone preference to switch the value from true to false

Does that work for the site you want to download from?

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To clarify my previous post:

The context menu is the short menu that appears when you right-click. For links, you have the additional option Save Target As... Save Link As... on the right-click context menu to download whatever the linked page/file is. I'm assuming that is missing or doesn't work well.

Modified by jscher2000 - Support Volunteer

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Note that there are also prefs that enable support for playing MP4 files.

  • media.mediasource.mp4.enabled
  • media.mp4.enabled
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Your reply at 9:39am solved the problem for me. Thank you.