gwern0@gmail.com writes:
So I was recently contemplating my xmonad.hs (http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Config_archive/Gwern's_Config.hs) and wondering whether my XMonad.Actions.Search and other extensions were yet in their ideal form, and it occurred to me: why do I have to keep writing "firefox"? I even have a shortcut defined, 'ff', which I use at least 8 times.
Why am I constantly supplying Firefox as a parameter? Well, the answer is that those functions *need* a browser to use, they can't get away with getting it from somewhere else. There is no somewhere else, as there is no POSIX standard way of letting a user define a preferred browser (yes, I know about Debian's x-www-browser stuff, but that's Debian, and I know about environmental variables, but I don't think there's any standard $BROWSER like there is $HOME or $EDITOR).
Not from lack of trying, http://catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/. [...]