I have a vanilla install of Ubuntu Hardy Heron. In Firefox, when I click someone’s email that uses the mailto link, it opens up the Evolution email client. This is the suck if you don’t use a desktop email client which more and more smart people are doing these days.

I use an email with my own domain, hosted on Google Apps for all my email needs. With a little inspiration from this page, I got Google Apps to be the default email client instead. Here’s how…

- Fire up your favorite text editor
- Copy and paste the following code:

#!/bin/sh

firefox "https://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.org/mail?view=cm&tf=0&to=`echo $1 | sed 's/mailto://'`"

Replace “yourdomain.org” with your hosted Google Apps domain

- Save the file with the “.sh” extension (example: “google_apps_mailto.sh”)
- Use a terminal to make the file executable with the following command:

$ chmod u+x path_to_file


The path_to_file is the location of the script. (example: “~/google_apps_mailto.sh”)

- In Firefox, go to Edit > Preferences > Applications > mailto > Use other…
- Browse to and select the file you just created earlier

Woohoo! Now when you click a mailto link, it should compose a new email in the browser using Google Apps. Test it out by emailing me if it worked info@ozz314.org.

Update:
Thanks to this comment, there’s a more elegant way to do this.

1. In Firefox’s address bar, copy and paste the following and hit enter:
   about:config
2. Click “I’ll be careful, I promise!” when the warning appears
3. In the “Filter:” field, copy and paste:
   gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost
4. Double click the found result to change the boolean value from false to true
5. In the address bar, copy and paste the following:
   javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto","http://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.org/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s","Google Apps")
6. Replace “yourdomain.org” with your own Google Apps hosted domain and hit enter
7. Click “Add Application” when it asks you a question
8. go to Edit > Preferences > Applications > mailto
9. Choose “Use Google Apps”

That’s it! Test it out by clicking my email, info@ozz314.org.

I wish Firefox had it as a default option instead of the craptastic Yahoo! Mail.

You’ll need the latest version of VirtualBox (1.6) with Guest Additions installed in Ubuntu.

• With the Virtual Machine powered off and selected in VirtualBox, go to:
  Machine > Settings… > Shared Folders
• For “Folder Path”, click the icon to browse for the folder you want to share.
• For “Folder Name”, enter a name to describe the share.
• Click “OK” and start the virtual machine again.
• Create a mount point which is basically an empty folder.
• Fire up the terminal and type:
  sudo mount -t vboxsf folder_name path_to_mount_point
  folder_name is the name you typed in earlier to describe the share
• Woot! You should be able to browse the shared folder now.

I recently installed Ubuntu Hardy Heron via VirtualBox on my MacBook. Everything worked great except I only had the option of 800×600 and 640×480 for screen resolution. However, my MacBook’s resolution goes up to 1280×800. To get the maximum resolution, edit xorg.conf and restart. See the code below for the edits.

To edit the xorg.conf file. Fire up the terminal in Ubuntu and type:

$ sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Then find and replace the following:

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Configured Video Device"
	Driver		"vboxvideo"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier	"Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
	Monitor		"Generic Monitor"
	Device		"VirtualBox graphics card"
	DefaultDepth	24
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth		24
		Modes		"1280x800" "800x600" "640x480"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

- Finally, restart Ubuntu and enjoy!