crash report starts mid browser instead of preferred firefox

Thank you for reporting this bug. Unfortunately, we need a little more information.
Which distribution does this happen under? Is it happening with all three, or running a specific desktop, i.e. gnome, xfce?

I am running Xubuntu Jaunty 9.04, but have not had this issue.

It is running all together. started with plain ubuntu 8.10, upgraded to 9.04 a2, installed xubuntu-desktop, and later netbook-remix. normally running gnome as far as I know, but the desktop recently changed to the netbook starter screen; but with gnome panels.

I do keep up with daily upgrades, but maybe I will reinstall from scratch once alpha4 is released.
(but I think I will preserve the /home directory)

Ah, I currently only do the firefox/gconf special casing if GNOME is running. For that, I test whether "gnome-panel" is running, but that might not work on netbook edition because they don't have a panel.

Can you please give me the output of

  gconftool --get /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command
  pgrep -x gconfd-2
  pgrep -x gnome-settings-daemon

? Thanks!

took a while...
apport did use se firefox last week, but today even thunderbird extension manager did start up MID browser.

jeroen@MSI-Wind:~$ gconftool --get /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command
firefox -new-tab "%s"
jeroen@MSI-Wind:~$ pgrep -x gconfd-2
4526
jeroen@MSI-Wind:~$ pgrep -x gnome-settings-daemon
jeroen@MSI-Wind:~$

that is: the last command you asked did not get a result.

Ah, perfect. I'll check for gconfd-2 then. Thanks!

r1330

This bug was fixed in the package apport - 0.146

---------------
apport (0.146) jaunty; urgency=low

  * apport/report.py, _generate_sigsegv_report(): Turn into a class method, so
    that it can be used by test cases in other modules as well. Also add
    missing Signal field.
  * apport/crashdb_impl/launchpad.py: Fully enable operation with
    staging.launchpad.net.
  * apport/crashdb_impl/launchpad.py: Add initial test suite, performing data
    upload, Python and SEGV bug reporting, report download, report updating,
    tag and duplicate handling. This happens on staging.launchpad.net.
  * apport/crashdb.py: Add new interface duplicate_of(id) to return the master
    bug of a duplicate. Also document that close_duplicate() with "None"
    master bug will un-duplicate the bug.
  * apport/crashdb_impl/{launchpad,memory}.py: Implement duplicate_of() and
    add test cases. The Launchpad test case reproduces the
    "duplicate-of-a-duplicate" regression, which now got fixed in
    python-launchpad-bugs bzr head.
  * apport/ui.py, open_url(): Also consider a sesssion as "GNOME" if gconfd-2
    is running; some variants such as UNR do not have gnome-panel; this fixes
    using the preferred browser for them. (LP: #322386)
  * debian/local/apport-collect: Add new option -p to explicitly specify a
    (binary) package name instead of guesstimating it from the bug's source
    package tasks. Document new option in debian/local/apport-collect.1.
    (LP: #333875)
  * apport/crashdb.py, duplicate_db_consolidate(): Add logging about removing
    invalidated bugs from the duplicate database, now that this actually
    works.
  * debian/local/ubuntu-bug.1: Update for the possibility to specify a package
    name or PID without any options. Also document the "ubuntu-bug linux"
    special case. (LP: #348985)
  * debian/local/ubuntu-bug.1: Add missing documentation of the case of
    specifying a path name.
  * backends/packaging-apt-dpkg.py: When unpacking source trees, try
    "debian/rules setup" last, since it is the least common variant.
  * debian/local/ubuntu-fat-chroot: Divert away
    /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.1b3/xulrunner-bin. It is called on debian/rules
    patch in xulrunner-1.9.1 and hangs eternally in the fakechroots. This is
    only a temporary kludge, though, until the next xulrunner version lands.
  * apport/crashdb_impl/launchpad.py: Add test case: Update a bug report which
    got marked as a duplicate during processing. This reproduces #349407.
  * apport/crashdb_impl/launchpad.py, update(): Intercept and ignore IOErrors
    when changing the bug priority. This happens if a bug gets duplicated
    underneath us. (LP: #349407)
  * apport/crashdb.py, get_crashdb(): Print syntax errors from parsing
    conf.d/*.conf to stderr.
  * apport/crashdb_impl/launchpad.py: Support new CrashDB option "project"
    which can be set to a LP project name to file bugs against that project
    instead of the distribution. Add test case for filing crash bug against a
    project, updating it, duplicating/unduplicating it, and determining fixed
    version. (LP: #338835)
  * bin/crash-digger: If apport-retrace exits with 99, consider it a transient
   ...