steven n fettig's Jitterin' Thoughts

I thought Windows tended to have a convoluted manner in which one sets the default browser, but I just found out OS X/Panther does, too. I've finally given up on Safari and the constant minor bugs that one has to deal with. One of the things that I demand of most of the programs I use that deal with generic web surfing and email use is that they are available across a good number of OS platforms. Sometimes this is feasible and other times it isn't. In the case of web and email related work, this is definitely feasible through the set of programs that the Mozilla Foundation has come up with. I recently quit using OS X's Mail in favor of Thunderbird (I found that I could even sync my imap cache across the different platforms I use by copying some key files) and now I'm making Firefox my default browser. There used to be a menu item under the System Preferences called web whereby one could change the default browser. No longer is this the case. Nowadays - with Panther - you need to do this through the Safari preferences pane. How ridiculous?!? Why would anyone think of looking under Safari preferences to set the default browser for your user account in Panther? My biggest complaint about Windows was that items just like this were impossible to find - i.e. they were far from intuitive. Shame on Apple for pulling this little shenanigan.
So, for those of you wanting to change your default browser under OS X/Panther, open Safari, go to Preferences under the Safari menu. Under the General tab you will find the option to change to your favorite browser.
If you know of a better way of doing this, by all means, please let me know.