Adobe's default-browser advice worked for me

Since I helped open this particular can of worms, I feel responsible for sharing the latest news about an issue in which Adobe Systems' software opens Internet Explorer even when Chrome is set as the default browser.

I had a Twitter tirade in January after the umpteenth time that Lightroom showed me the location of a photo in Internet Explorer when I clicked the Lightroom's GPS photo location icon. Internet Explorer also showed when using Adobe Photoshop's browser-based help and when Lightroom launched my Flickr page after uploading images to the Yahoo Web site. The problems showed on my home machine with 64-bit Vista, but not my work Windows XP laptop.

Tom Hogarty, Lightroom's project manager, was sympathetic and brought the issue up with the company's engineers. They ultimately pointed the finger at Chrome, though, not at themselves. Lo and behold, the Chrome 2.0.164.0 update included this bug fix: "Fixed several problems with making Google Chrome the default browser on Windows Vista," according to Google.

But that fix is for the latest developer-preview version of Chrome--the fast-moving, relatively untested version that's not as reliable as the stable or beta versions Google also offers, which means most folks won't get it until the changes are better tested. Moreover, I installed the new version and still had the default-browser problem. Though I certainly wouldn't rule out some error or omission on my part, I decided to try the another fix suggested Thursday in an Adobe blog post by Jeffrey Tranberry: manually setting the default browser.

I eventually emerged victorious--but it took a lot of fiddling with Vista and a Chrome reinstallation.

Windows Vista offers multiple ways to set defaults. I had the best success with the topmost option.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

Vista helpfully offers a "Default Programs" option from the start menu, but then makes it unclear where to perform the action; I tried "Set your default options," "Associate a file type or protocol with a program," and "Set program access and computer defaults."

I had more success with the more straightforward first option, but not without a detour in which Photoshop's help system wouldn't load in any browser at all, instead throwing an error message at me suggesting I reinstall the application.

All my efforts to set the default browser consfused Photoshop to the point where its browser-based help system wouldn't work at all. Reinstalling Chrome fixed the problem.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

Instead, I reinstalled the stable version of Chrome and set it as the default during its installation process. That cleared up Photoshop's problems, and Lightroom now shows map links in Chrome as well.

The moral of this story: be careful assigning blame to one company or another for problems involving multiple applications and the operating system. Happily, I sidestepped that pothole in my irate tweet, but I confess that inwardly I thought Adobe the culprit since other programs seemed to have no trouble picking Chrome.

[Hep Cat]

What a pain in the behind. On the other hand, this is all you have to do on Leopard:

"Open Safari and choose Safari > Preferences, and then click General.
Choose any installed browser from the Default Web Browser pop-up menu."

That's it.

I think you let Adobe off too light. The usability of their mainstream software and especially their installer and updaters have gotten really bad. In fact, they've gone from bad to worse - capitol letters in window titles? Someone at Adobe has dstasteful design sense.

Photoshop has surpassed bloated; it is now corpulent. Only a matter of time before that cash cow gets slaughtered by some of the most clueless and insular management I've ever seen in Silicon Valley.

[pjhenry1216]

Wow, that would be completely counter-intuitive to me. If I wanted to make Chrome (as far as I know, its not on the Mac yet, right? But lets pretend cause I'm not sure what web browsers are on the Mac) the default browser, I'd have to open a completely different web browser and choose it through there? I find the Vista method much more intuitive. Lets see, I want to know how to make Chrome the default, I know, lets go to Default Programs. The problems that arose were then due to Chrome, not Vista.

And he didn't let Adobe off. He wasn't attacking anything about Adobe. The post was how he thought something was Adobe's fault and it ends up it wasn't. It wasn't even Vista's fault either (yet you'd like to think otherwise and even used a terrible example to try to show how its (not) easier on Leopard). It was Google's. Did you want him to end the article by saying, "Even though the purpose of this article was problem X and it ended up being Google's fault, I'd like to conclude by saying Adobe Photoshop is bloated."

[Shankland]

Adobe has all sorts of issues, yes. And they even launched a blog to address all the carping about their installation: http://blogs.adobe.com/OOBE/

But I have to say in this case I think the problem is more with Chrome and Windows than Adobe. Note that in your Mac OS X example you aren't even touching Adobe. I'd also observe that Safari on Windows XP thought my default Web browser was IE, so Apple apparently also has trouble with this issue too.

Re. Photoshop bloat: What features would you strip out? Would you prefer Adobe stop adding new features? I certainly find it a piggish application at times, but it seems to me that Adobe is in the good and bad position of having created software that's good for a very broad range of uses. I only use 5 percent of its features, but it's a different 5 percent than anybody else.

And I for one found some new features in recent versions useful--autoalign layers and related functions, better noise reduction and sharpening filters, and refine edges for selections, for example. One person's bloat is another person's time-saving tool. If you load Photoshop 3.0 on your machine, it'll scream. So where do you draw the line?

Don't get me wrong--Photoshop's gargantuan size is annoying to me, too, and I do wish Adobe could wring more performance out of it. But being a photographer, most of my complaints were addressed with Lightroom, whose feature set very closely matches what I care about.

[ghaff]

I haven't tried it recently but I couldn't get Trillian to use Chrome as the default browser. (In that case it kept using Firefox.)

[Shankland]

I didn't have that problem (but it's on my XP machine, which seems less problem-prone on this point), but Windows' desktop search opens URLs with IE.

[pjhenry1216]

If you're using Vista, its most likely the same problem and you should consider using the above steps as well.