The One with the Thoughts of Frans

I was happily using Belgacom FON Autologin instead of the behemoth of an official Belgacom app, but ever since Belgacom updated their portal code I’ve barely been able to connect at all. That’s Belgacom’s fault, not the app’s. I haven’t been able to connect through the web interface or the official app either, because it just times out or gives mysterious errors. Unfortunately Belgacom FON Autologin pretends to be a browser by sending information over the HTTP protocol, so it equally fails to connect.

Luckily I just came across FON AccessFon, an app that utilizes the WISPr protocol. In a magnificent 33 kB it manages to connect to Belgacom FON quickly and efficiently, and for every FON router rather than just Belgacom’s to boot.

With a bit of trial and error it worked out like this. Alternatively you could use /opt.

Create a file called something like firefox.desktop in /home/username/.local/share/applications/

In that file, put:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Firefox
GenericName=Web Browser
X-GNOME-FullName=Firefox Web Browser
Exec=/home/username/programs/firefox/firefox %u
Terminal=false
X-MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Icon=/home/username/programs/firefox/browser/icons/mozicon128.png
Categories=Network;Webbrowser;
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml;application/rss+xml;application/rdf+xml;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;
StartupWMClass=Firefox-bin
StartupNotify=true

To make it the default system-wide, manually add it to Xfce’s Preferred applications or your window manager’s equivalent. Also add it to Debian’s alternative system.

$ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-www-browser x-www-browser /home/username/programs/firefox/firefox 20
[sudo] password for username: 
$ sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser
There are 2 choices for the alternative x-www-browser (providing /usr/bin/x-www-browser).

  Selection    Path                                   Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /usr/bin/iceweasel                      70        auto mode
  1            /home/monkey/programs/firefox/firefox   20        manual mode
  2            /usr/bin/iceweasel                      70        manual mode

Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number: 1
update-alternatives: using /home/monkey/programs/firefox/firefox to provide /usr/bin/x-www-browser (x-www-browser) in manual mode

It’s not very pretty, but it does the trick.