In Slackware, to get links that come in Thunderbird emails to open with Google Chrome instead of Firefox, just edit the mime types RDF schema.

.thunderbird/<profile_name>/mimeTypes.rdf

And, in the item containing the HTTP protocol handler, replace Firefox with Google Chrome.

<RDF:Description RDF:about="urn:scheme:externalApplication:http"
                 NC:prettyName="firefox"
                 NC:path="/usr/bin/firefox" /> 

For example,

<RDF:Description RDF:about="urn:scheme:externalApplication:http"
                 NC:prettyName="google-chrome"
                 NC:path="/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome" />

The above configuration opens HTTP links with Google Chrome. You might want also to open HTTPS links with Google Chrome. In order to do this, add a tag similar to the previous one but replacing "http" with "https". You can add this tag below the previous one.

<RDF:Description RDF:about="urn:scheme:externalApplication:https"
                 NC:prettyName="google-chrome"
                 NC:path="/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome" />

You would expect Thunderbird to work with the Freedesktop.org utils, such as, xdg-open. However, I have never managed to get this working.

This post is an adaptation from the post on Making Thunderbird Open Links in Chromium.

Tags: slackware