Matt Haughey wondered if there was a way to specify Gmail as the default Windows XP mail handler application.

There are a couple of problems with making this happen — a) Windows wants to execute a binary in response to someone clicking an email link in a browser, and b) Gmail doesn’t exhibit an obvious way to launch with parameters (i.e., compose a new message to some email address).

The first problem, at least, can be solved as follows:

  • Open the Windows XP Registry Editor: Start | Run | Enter “regedit.exe” | Press Enter.
  • Browse to the following location: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto\shell\open\command.

Now, depending on which browser you’d like to use and its directory location, these values may change slightly. Please back-up the existing data value in the event you need to revert any changes.

  • Replace the default data value of the registry entry to the following, observing path differences for your particular configuration (this example shows my usage for Firebird):

“%ProgramFiles%\MozillaFirebird\MozillaFirebird.exe” http://gmail.google.com

This could just as easily be configured for IE, Opera, or anything else that can take a URL as a parameter. Here’s an example of Firefox being launched from a different drive and directory:

“d:\apps\MozillaFirebird\MozillaFirebird.exe” http://gmail.google.com

Ta-da. Whenever you click on a mailto link via browser, you’ll end up with
the Gmail login page. I’m not entirely sure how useful this is without a ‘compose’ window being loaded automatically, but…

[Update] G-Mailto solves the problem that I spoke of above (via Matt).