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I run NB5.5 under Java 1.6.0b84. When I select Show Javadoc, Firefox gives an error message "Cannot execute /usr/bin/firefox. Check that a valid external browser property is set. From the Tools menu, choose Options. Click Classic View button, expand IDE Configuration/Server and External Tool Settings node, then expand Web browsers and choose valid browser". To diagnose the problem, I defined a "browser" /usr/bin/emacs "{URL}". It is launched with a URL that is prefixed by the directory from which I launched NB, e.g. /home/cay/http:/cay-t41p:8082/resource/jar%3Afile%3A/usr/local/netbeans....
additional comment from reproter (from nbusers mailing list): /usr/bin/firefox exists on my machine. Well, whatever, maybe it has trouble with the invocation syntax. When I change the configuration /usr/bin/firefox -remote "openURL({URL})" to /usr/bin/htmlview {URL}, I get the message "Cannot execute /usr/bin/htmlview". Yes, /usr/bin/htmlview exists too.
It would be helpfull if you could run the IDE with following parameter: -J-Dorg.netbeans.modules.extbrowser=-1 Either pass it from command line or add this to a netbeans.conf file. The output will give us more clue what's happening.
What object did you run 'show javadoc' on? I guess it is a zip. file cotaining documentation. few comments: for unknown reason we probably translate passed URL into http: and make it accessible from internal HTTP server. Unfortunately it created something like /home/cay/http:/cay-t41p:8082/resource/jar%3Afile%3A/usr/local/netbeans.... with strange prefix and missing slash after http:
I right-clicked on the name of a method. I tried the -J-Dorg.netbeans.modules.extbrowser=-1 option, and there was no difference in behavior. Is there a log file that I should consult?
It doesn't change behavior. It only prints some logging into messages.log file located in your user directory containg IDE specific data (Help|About|Detail shows where is Userdir).
Here are the relevant lines from the log file: [org.netbeans.modules.extbrowser] 1148483527481> init [org.netbeans.modules.extbrowser] UnixBrowserImpl created from factory: org.netbeans.modules.extbrowser.FirefoxBrowser@829a91 [org.netbeans.modules.extbrowser] UnixBrowserImpl created from factory: org.netbeans.modules.extbrowser.FirefoxBrowser@829a91 [org.netbeans.modules.extbrowser] External url: http://cay-t41p:8082/resource/jar%3Afile%3A/home/apps/netbeans-5.5beta/enterprise3/docs/javaee5-doc-api.zip%21/docs/api/javax/faces/component/UIComponent.html#getValueBinding(java.lang.String) [org.netbeans.modules.extbrowser] Executable: org.openide.execution.NbProcessDescriptor@75b33eb1 [org.netbeans.modules.extbrowser] Retried: false [org.netbeans.modules.extbrowser] Command executed. exitValue = 1 I pasted the URL into firefox, and it worked fine--the page came up. Then I tried the following from the shell: $ firefox -remote "openURL(http://cay-t41p:8082/resource/jar%3Afile%3A/home/apps/netbeans-5.5beta/enterprise3/docs/javaee5-doc-api.zip%21/docs/api/javax/faces/component/UIComponent.html#getValueBinding(java.lang.String))" Error: Failed to send command: 500 command not parseable URL encoding the () works, however. $ firefox -remote "openURL(http://cay-t41p:8082/resource/jar%3Afile%3A/home/apps/netbeans-5.5beta/enterprise3/docs/javaee5-doc-api.zip%21/docs/api/javax/faces/component/UIComponent.html#getValueBinding%28java.lang.String%29)" I then tried "Show Javadoc" on a class name, and that worked fine. So, maybe encoding the () would do the trick. I still don't know why I got a crazy URL with Emacs, but, come to think of it, that may have been a red herring. Maybe Emacs prepended the current directory.
It could be a duplicate of issue 76970. What version of Firefox are you using? we probably won't address this issue in the 5.5 release, setting target milestone to 'future'
*** This issue has been marked as a duplicate of 104087 ***