Using Firefox in Emacs

November 22, 2004 4:39 PM
Upon searching for a browse-url that works with firefox, I came across the one at EmacsWiki that uses mozilla-xremote-client. It had a deficiency though. While using JDEE to test applets, you need a file:/// before the filename for it to work in firefox. So, here's the modified version:

(defun browse-url-firefox-new-tab (url &optional new-window)
  "Open URL in a new tab in Firefox."
  (interactive (browse-url-interactive-arg "URL: "))
  (if (string= (substring url 0 1) "/")
      (setq url (concat "file://" url)))
  (let ((cmd (shell-command-to-string
	      (concat "~/firefox/mozilla-xremote-client -a any 'openURL("
		      url ",new-tab)'"))))
    (unless (string= "" cmd)
      (message "Starting Firefox...")
      (start-process (concat "firefox " url) nil "~/firefox/firefox" url)
      (message "Starting Firefox...done"))))

(setq browse-url-browser-function 'browse-url-firefox-new-tab)

If the path begins with /, it automatically adds file:/// before calling mozilla-xremote-client.

This is useful in emacs-wiki-mode to view a published wiki file using this snippet:

(defun load-html-firefox ()
"Load Wiki's published html file into a firefox tab."
(interactive)
(browse-url 
 (expand-file-name 
  (emacs-wiki-published-name (emacs-wiki-page-name))
  emacs-wiki-publishing-directory)))

(define-key emacs-wiki-mode-map
  [(control ?c) (control ?F)]
  'load-html-firefox)

Shell script that loads a url in a new firefox tab:

#!/bin/bash

url="$1";
case $1 in
/*)
url="file://$1"
;;
esac
if ~/firefox/mozilla-xremote-client -a any "openURL($url,new-tab)"; then
echo "Loaded $url in new tab";
else
echo "Launching Firefox...";
~/firefox/firefox $url &
fi

CategoryEmacs