I’ve been enjoying some of the Adobe AIR apps during it’s development over  the past year.  Among several Twitter clients that have popped up in the last few months running on AIR, I’ve really enjoyed Twhirl.

Now, if you’re a Twitter user, you know that its a great way to share links and more.  Works great – except when you’ve set a browser other than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as the default web browser.  I happen to be partial to Firefox, and use it constantly, so when an Adobe AIR based app launches IE when I click a shared link – it’s upsetting.

Luckily in the final version there is an Adobe KB article with instructions on how to fix that problem.  Personally I think their reason that it doesn’t work in the first place is lame:

Windows Vista does not make the required additional registry entries correctly when a browser other than Internet Explorer is set as the default browser. When an attempt to load the URL is made, Adobe AIR uses Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) to connect to an open instance of the browser registered for URL requests. If that fails, Adobe AIR falls back on Shell Execution.

Other non-Microsoft (and Microsoft!) applications have consistently and successfully launched the correct browser for me.  Why not AIR?

At any rate, here is how to fix the problem.

• Launch “Default Programs” off the Vista Start Menu
• Click on “Set Program Access And Computer Defaults” in the Default Programs dialog
• Select “Custom” from the list and choose your preferred browser from the list of recognized installed browsers.
• Click OK and your done.

Next time you launch your AIR app, you will be able to follow links and have them load in your preferred browser.