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From...
Navigator and IE: How to make them get along
August 12, 1998
Web posted at: 5:00 PM EDT
by Judy Heim
(IDG) -- Each browser has its virtues and, heaven knows, its foibles. You may prefer Internet Explorer for viewing graphics-intensive sites because of its smart image handling, but you may like Netscape Communicator better for Web searching because it seems to load text faster. Either way, some of your favorite sites will definitely work better with one or the other. If you tend to shuffle between Internet Explorer and Communicator, here are some tips for helping them coexist.
Choose your default browser: Would you like to choose which browser loads when you click on a URL in an e-mail message or on a URL shortcut on your desktop? You can easily designate Explorer or Communicator as your default browser.
To make Explorer your default browser, select View, Internet Options. Click the Programs tab, and check the box next to "Internet Explorer should check to see whether it is the default browser". Click Apply. Exit Explorer and reload it. When asked if you'd like to make Explorer your default browser, click Yes.
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To make Communicator your default browser, head to its preference file by selecting Start, Find/Files or Folders and typing prefs.js. Once Windows locates it, right-click the file and select Edit. Then add the line user_pref("browser.wfe.ignore_def_check", false).
This line will force Communicator to check whether it's the default browser. (A "true" value at the end of the line would set it to not check.) Save the file, and then reload Communicator.
Unfortunately, you can't arrange for one browser to pop up every time you click on an e-mail address and the other one to appear when you click on a desktop shortcut. Nor can you specify different browsers to show different desktop URL shortcuts. Readers sometimes ask if it's possible to configure the latter, but the answer seems to be no. (But if you know of a way, please write!)
Share bookmarks: You can import Communicator bookmarks into Internet Explorer just by dragging and dropping. Here's how:
In Explorer, select File, Open. In the dialog box, click Browse; then go to the Netscape Users folder that contains your preference file, and look for a file named bookmark.htm. It will probably be in C:/Program Files/Netscape/ Users/yourname. If you don't have an HTML version of your Netscape bookmark file, make one by clicking the Bookmarks button in Communicator and selecting Edit Bookmarks, File, Save As. Save the file as bookmark.htm.
Once you've loaded this file in Explorer, click the Favorites button. Drag and drop bookmarks from the Netscape list of links to the Favorites window on the left side of the screen.
Importing Explorer bookmarks into Communicator is not so easy; you need to use a bookmark import utility.
My favorite is the $20 shareware Bookmark Importer Lite 2.0 from WebObj Technology. This wizard transforms Explorer Favorites into Communicator Bookmarks and vice versa, placing them in the proper directories. It even lets you select which bookmarks to import.
For a free alternative, try IEConverter, a utility by Jae Yim that's available on PC World Online. IEConverter saves your IE bookmarks to a file called book.htm, overwriting your current Communicator bookmark files. For that reason, you should save your converted IE bookmarks to a different file (book2.htm) and load them separately in the browser. You can also use an editor like WordPad to cut and paste the two files together.
Use another mail program: Both Communicator and Explorer balk at firing up the other browser's mail program when you click on a Web page's mail link. But you can configure both browsers to load a third-party mail program like Eudora.
In Communicator 4.x, select Edit, Preferences. Under the Navigator category, click Applications. In the Description box, scroll down the list and look for an entry called 'URL:MailTo Protocol'.
If there is such an entry, highlight it and click the Edit button. Make sure that the Application button is selected, and in the Application edit box, replace the current path with the path to your mail program's executable file -- c:\eudora\eudora.exe, for instance. Click OK. If there's no 'URL:MailTo Protocol' entry, create one by clicking the New Type button. In the dialog box, type URL:MailTo Protocol in the MIME Type box, and type the path to your mail program's executable file--for example, c:\eudora\eudora.exe -- in the "Application to use" box. Click OK. When the program asks you for the file extension, type URL:MAILTO PROTOCOL.
In Explorer 4.x, select View, Internet Options, click the Programs tab, select your mail program from the Mail drop-down list, and click OK.