Portable Browser :- How to be my Default Browser and/or use a URL Link

[alan10]

My desktop URL link is unable to access the Web based Admin console of my Netgear Router,
and various application "F1 / Help" buttons no longer give help when they need internet resources.

Previously I started with a conventional installed Firefox Browser,
but after erratic premature update releases chose the more stable Palemoon,
and placed the Portable variant on my secondary HDD because I dislike the junk that Mozilla browsers place on my system drive.
Everything worked perfectly.
I never recognized that once or twice a month only Firefox COULD meet a "Default Browser" requirement

With a brand new install of Windows on a new SSD,
and Palemoon continuing to work perfectly on original secondary HDD,
I thought all was well.
Now I know better.

My old desktop URL link to the Router was simply
http://192.168.2.1
I have now replaced that with a desktop shortcut to Palemoon plus argument
E:\Portable\PaleMoon\Palemoon-Portable.exe http://192.168.2.1
I may in future find more URL links that need replacing.

To access help on my applications I now have to firstly locate and secondly download relevant resources that I can quickly link to.

If I really have to then I will use a standard non-portable version of Palemoon,
But I am hoping for a clever trick that would make Windows use the Portable version as my Default Browser.

Regards
Alan

 

[A Guy]

May be geekier ways, but an easy way might be this:

Change Default Browser

Looks like with portable browsers, you will have to manually set the path.

A Guy

 

[alan10]

Thanks

That looks good. I will try it out and return with the results.

Regards
Alan

 

[alan10]

May be geekier ways, but an easy way might be this:

Change Default Browser

Looks like with portable browsers, you will have to manually set the path.

A Guy

Thanks, it works but unfortunately not portably.

I knew it would do things to the O.S., probably via Registry changes.

What I was not expecting was that when launched as my Default Browser it uses 25 MB in a new SYSTEM drive folder
C:\Users\Alan\AppData\Local\Moonchild Productions\Pale Moon\Profiles\4qbu47br.default.
This 25 MB includes a new 20 MB urlclassifier3.sqlite,
which I expect will grow with repeated use to the typical size of 50 MB.

It was 50 MB urlclassifier3.sqlite which made me look for a portable variant of Firefox.
At the moment the only solution I can see is to use a Reparse Point and relocate the system folder to drive E:\,
which is the technique I used when Firefox was installed.

Thanks for the advice.

Even though I cannot get the results I wanted,
I gained new knowledge which has to be a good thing

Regards
Alan