Category Archives: FastMail

Making FastMail default mail reader in GNOME

In Ubuntu, I am using mail-notification to get notified about new e-mail in my FastMail account. From time to time I also click on some mailto link. In both of these cases I would like a FastMail page to be opened in Opera. But to make it a lil bit smart, I would like to open inbox when double-clicking on new e-mail notification, but in case I click mailto link I would like to be redirected to compose new FastMail e-mail url.
I have created a bash script, which does this job quite well. All you need to do is to copy the following text into clipboard, past it into some text editor and save it into /usr/bin/fastmail-mailto.sh.

#!/bin/sh
BROWSER="opera"

# Mailto URI may look like this
#mailto:foo@bar.com?subject=hi&body=message

# Most of the parameters are called the same, we just need to parse e-mail
uri=`echo "$1" | sed -e 's/^mailto:/*([^&?]+)[?&]?(.*)$/1&2/'`

if [ "$uri" ];
then exec $BROWSER "http://www.fastmail.fm/action/compose/?to=$uri"
fi

exec $BROWSER "http://www.fastmail.fm/"

After you are finished, you need to make the file executable by calling the following command: sudo chmod a+x /usr/bin/fastmail-mailto.sh.
Finally just go to Preferences > Preferred Applications and change Mail Reader to Custom with the following text: /usr/bin/fastmail-mailto.sh.

Making FastMail default mail application in Firefox

Recently I installed new Firefox 4 and was very pleased. I like the new look and the fact that there is a lot of plugins which are not available for Opera. My most favorite browser.
After a day of using it I faced a problem when I clicked on an e-mail link. I was used to be redirected into the FastMail account. Unfortunately there is no FastMail item under mailto actions in Firefox options.
Nevertheless it is very easy to add FastMail beside those actions. Follow these four steps:

  1. Open FastMail in new tab
  2. Copy the following javascript to add FastMail into the Firefox into the memory and put it on the address area of the tab where the FastMail link was opened
  3. Go to Options –> Applications and select new FastMail action on the mailto handler0004-firefox-fastmail
  4. Test new settings