setting safari as default browser
Windows XP is my work operating system, not by choice mind you. Recently the Safari 4 Beta was released (Apple’s internet browser), and I like it so much I wanted to set it as my new default browser. It wasn’t as easy of a task as it should have been.
There was some good information on the apple support forums, but it wasn’t very explicit so I’d like to detail the process here in case anyone else wants to set it as the default.
- This may not be an issue for you, first try to set it as the default from Safari’s Preferences
- Click the [Start] button and select the [Run…] menu item
- Type ‘regedit’ into the text field and click [OK]
- Inside the Registry editor expand the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT folder
- Scroll down to the ‘http’ folder and expand
- Expand ‘shell’
- Expand ‘open’
- Select the ‘command’ folder
- You should see a single entry with a browser in the Data field
- Double click the (Default) name
- Enter “C:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.exe” -url “%1” (with the quotes) in the Value data: field and click [Okay].
- Repeat the last few steps on the ‘https’ folder as well
The poster on the apple thread tries to make it sound like this is a Firefox issue. But Firefox works fine as a default browser, and even lets you switch to other browsers like IE and Chrome without a problem. This is an issue with Safari not setting the necessary keys to make it the default.
Hopefully this solves the problem if you had this same issue. Happy browsing.