Firefox bug in webbrowser module on Ubuntu?!

[Paul Boddie]

SPE - Stani's Python Editor wrote:
>
> During optimizing SPE for Ubuntu, I found something strange. I have
> Ubuntu 5.10 "The Breezy Badger" and unfortunately this code is not
> working:
>
> >>> import webbrowser
> >>> webbrowser.open("http://www.python.org")
>
> It does not throw an exception, but is not able to launch a browser.

My opinion is that the webbrowser module is fairly obsolete, and that
on modern desktop environments one should use whichever mechanism that
is provided by such environments to open URLs instead. Consequently, I
made a package available for the purpose of performing such operations:

http://www.python.org/pypi/desktop

There are certain ways to override the autodetection in use within that
module, and a DESKTOP_LAUNCH environment variable can also be set to
configure its behaviour further. Unfortunately, attempts to confirm the
standardisation status of that variable failed to cut through the turf
wars, newbie-bashing and MIME type hair-splitting on the xdg mailing
list, but a Google search seemed to suggest that my application of it
isn't inappropriate.

Paul